New Life Resolution

# My Experiences Reading

I have always loved reading; I still remember spending countless hours in the basement of my local library, devouring book after book. My reading habits, however, have ebbed and flowed since my library basement days. In particular, during my freshman and sophomore years of university, I found it difficult to justify spending time reading when school and extracurriculars demanded almost all of my time awake.

It was only after interning at an investment firm where my coworkers valued reading that I was able to rediscover the utility and joy of reading.

# Why I Enjoy Reading

Reading for me has widened my mental horizon, allowing me to have a better understanding of reality and of diverse opinions. I especially enjoy reading books which challenge my current view of the world in order to have a more nuanced understanding of the often subjective truth. Reading has also helped me see connections between different fields of study, helping me become a more effective lateral thinker.

For me, reading is very enjoyable, therapeutic even. Being able to dive into a topic, or even a new imaginary world, is an incredibly intellectually rejuvenating exercise.

# New Goal in Life

This year, instead of having an annual goal, I've decided to expand my goal horizon; in order to prevent my current reading habits atrophying once more, I'd like to set a goal of reading 1000 books by the time I'm 30. I have currently read around 400 books (excluding the numerous children's books I've read as a child/ adolescent) and there are around 2600 days until my 30th birthday, meaning my reading pace must be one book every 4-5 days.

In developing this goal, I had thought of other metrics which would not only capture the quantity of the books but also the quality of books. In particular I thought of tracking the number of pages read, but the size of books does not correlate with the content quality. I also thought of tracking the reviews of the books and coming up with a metric which is derivative of the books' popular opinions, but I don't always agree with popular opinion and I find, for niche books, that there may not be enough reviews to calculate a representative popular opinion.

In the end, I just settled with a quantity goal, although I'm sure I will read some valuable books in my journey to 1000.