Why I Am Cutting My Goodreads Goal In Half

As we’re nearing the end of 2016 I have been thinking more about what goals I want to set for 2017.  For a reader who loves using Goodreads, a major part of that is deciding what to set my Goodreads reading goals at.  For 2017 I have decided that I am going to cut my Goodreads goal IN HALF.

I have been participating in the Goodreads challenge since 2013. Since I started book blogging in 2014 I have significantly increased the number of books that I read every year.  In 2015 I set my goal at 75 books originally but passed that a little over halfway through the year so I increased it to 110.

In 2016 I decided to set my initial goal at 110 and I ended up passing that goal a few months ago.  With my success at surpassing my goals you might be wondering why I have decided to cut my goal in half.  Well, I have several reasons that really all add up to the same thing: pressure.

• I’m a very competitive person, even with myself so when I log in to Goodreads and see that I’m 1 book ahead of schedule for my goal, all that makes me want to do is increase that number to 2 and then 3 and then 4, etc. I want to get as far ahead as I possibly can.  That means I’m putting pressure on myself to read as fast as I can and as many books as I can.
• Over the past year I often found myself choosing what books to read solely based on the page counts rather than what I felt like reading.  Because of that, I’ve been neglecting a lot of the bigger books (500+ pages) that I’ve been wanting to read because it would take me longer to add a finished book to my goal.  Example: I absolutely LOVE the Outlander series but I haven’t finished one of the books since last DECEMBER! I had been holding off on starting book 6 until recently because it is so massive.
• In addition to avoiding the bigger books, I’ve also been avoiding the classics, non-fiction, and a lot of adult fiction I’ve been wanting to read because those take me a little bit longer to read than YA fiction.  Obviously there is nothing wrong with reading YA books, I love YA. But I also love other genres so I’ve been feeling a little guilty about excluding some of those just because it takes me longer to read them.
• When I start feeling guilty, I end up having a hard time being in the mood to read.  Nothing I pick up feels right so I end up spending days to weeks at a time not reading anything at all.  And then when I do feel like reading again, I feel behind so I start picking up the shorter books again.  And the cycle just repeats itself.  I have had a lot of reading slumps this year.  I hate that!  I shouldn’t feel guilty about what I do or don’t read.
• In addition to the above reasons I also have some other things that I will be working on in my personal life that will take up more of my free time.

Overall, I’m just looking to cut out some of the stress and pressure in my life because this past year has been incredibly stressful.  So I will not be participating in any other challenges and will also probably cut back on any readathon participation as well.  I will still be here blogging and posting on my social media sites.  In addition to cutting back on my Goodreads challenge, I will also be limiting my ARC and review requests so I have more time to devote to the books that I have been neglecting.

What are you planning to set your Goodreads goal at for 2017?