At the beginning of 2014 I wrote about my goal, theme and challenge for the year. I’ve posted a few updates throughout the year but want to take some time now to do a final review. 2014 Goal: Read 24 Books Self Grade: 7/10 My goal was to read 24 books – I finished at 17. I had hoped to cover 12 fiction and 12 non-fiction. I actually read 3 fiction and 14 non-fiction. I also got 50 hours through the 60 hours of Les Miserables. I started the year off doing pretty well. I cruised through the first 8 books, thanks largely to utilizing audiobooks. I hit a rut in the summer when I stopped listening to audiobooks as I trained and got stalled in the paper books I was reading. That resulted in months of no progress. I eventually got back in the habit though & finished strong by
We are now in December and I’ve only finished 13 books. I don’t think I’m going to be able to hit the goal 100%, but maybe if I push to the finish I can at least clear the 2/3 mark. I was falling behind in the Fall & hoped that after my Ironman in September I would be able to catch up. The Ironman got cancelled though and I registered for a new race in November. That meant a few more months of training and a shorter window of post race time in which to read more. Time to push to the finish line. To date this year I’ve read: The Millionaire Next Door* David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits and the Art of Battling Giants* The Joy of Less The 4-Hour Workweek* The Art of War* Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring The 7 Habits of Highly Effective
I have not made much progress in the past two months. To date this year I’ve read: The Millionaire Next Door* David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits and the Art of Battling Giants* The Joy of Less The 4-Hour Workweek* The Art of War* Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People* Warren Buffett’s Management Secrets* The Triathlete’s Training Bible I am currently Reading: Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers Shepherding a Child’s Heart Les Miserables* *Denotes audiobook I’m having a hard time believing Les Miserables is only 60 hours. I feel like I’ve been listening to it forever and checking the table of contents recently I realized I’m not even a third of the way through it. I’ve grown a bit tired of it and now instead of listening to audio books for all of my workouts, I’m only using them for my
I am ahead of schedule… sort of. To date this year I’ve read: The Millionaire Next Door* David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits and the Art of Battling Giants* The Joy of Less The 4-Hour Workweek* The Art of War* Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People* Warren Buffett’s Management Secrets* I am currently Reading: Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers Shepherding a Child’s Heart Le Miserables* *Denotes audiobook That is why I feel I am only ‘sort of’ ahead of schedule. Six of my eight completed books were audio books. I haven’t been reading as much as I’d intended, but I have really been enjoying my waterproof iPod during my training bikes, swims & run (plus the occasional car trip). I had intended to stick to non-fiction for audiobooks, but I was cruising through them. Some are only 3-4 hours long
2014 Goal: Read 24 Books I’m on track.* In January I completed ‘The Millionaire Next Door’ and am half way through both “Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring” and “David and Goliath”. *The asterisk is because of a decision I made that audiobooks count. It wasn’t my original intent to listen to books, I wanted to read them. As I started I realized how much time I would be spending training for my Ironman, 1-5 hours a day, so I invested in a waterproof mp3 player and got some audiobooks so I could leverage that time. I’m going to try to consume less than 50% of my books as audiobooks and I’m going to try to limit it to the non-fictions. I feel like I am able to learn from a non-fiction even when listening to it while I’m not able to slow down and imagine the world
Last year I blogged about a few efforts I had defined for my year and really enjoyed it. I stretched myself a bit, had something to strive for, and had a decent success rate. One of the most surprising benefits was that by explicitly setting a challenge, and knowing I would do this in future years, I had an easier time saying no to other ideas I had. I realized that I could set them as a challenge in the future, and thus felt no guilt that I wasn’t doing anything to achieve them in 2013. This year I will do the same. I’ve of course learned a bit and will be making a few modifications to the process. Goal – Something I want to accomplish that is measurable and relatively continual. eg. exercise X times per week or watch less than X hours of TV per week. Theme – A