Hi, friends! If you’re new here and have no idea what a reading queue is, you can check out my original 2024 reading queue post, my mid-year update, and what I learned and am doing differently for my 2025 queue and this will make more sense. I’ve gotten at least a handful of new subscribers since my last post (which for me is very rapid growth) so hello and welcome!
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Do you remember how I said my reading queue is not meant to be a to-do list? And how I said it was fine that I added more books to this year’s queue since I read so many last year? Well, guess whose demand-avoidant brain almost immediately started looking at this year’s longer queue as a to-do list and got super overwhelmed. (Hint: it’s me!)
At the beginning of the year, I started calculating how many books I’d have to read each month to get through the queue by the end of the year, and estimated how many books from each category (poetry, nonfiction, fantasy, middle-grade, etc) I’d have to finish in order to “stay on track” and for a short while, I tried to convince myself I wasn’t overwhelmed. But I was struggling to pick up any new books despite having the time and energy otherwise.
Instead of beating myself up about this, I made adjustments. As Kendra Adachi (of The Lazy Genius) would say, “learning to pivot is more important than learning to plan.”
First, I reminded myself that the goal is not to complete the list; it’s to help me prioritize reading, keep my momentum, and feel less overwhelmed. I let myself take a break from reading — except for my Pride and Prejudice and Anne of Green Gables slow-reads, which I was joyfully keeping up with. These steps were helpful. I no longer felt that sense of pressure. But I also noticed that my reading energy was now very concentrated on my slow-reads, and suddenly I had a whole list of books I wanted to read slowly and annotate that hadn’t originally been on my queue! Because I am practicing being kinder and gentler to myself, this felt like a great opportunity to do that.
I realized, looking back, that even though I told myself this wasn’t a to-do list, I was still treating it like one. I had limited the queue to what I felt I could reasonably complete in a year instead of just adding the books I genuinely wanted to remember and read most at the time, and after “finalizing” the queue for the year, I only added books if I decided to DNF one, in order to keep the number the same. I had to create what I called a “spillover queue” in order to have a place for new books I was really excited about that hadn’t made it onto the original queue. (You might be thinking: but that’s not how queues work! You would be correct.) So, I consolidated back to one queue and decided it needed to be more of a living thing, adding books as I found them and removing them as I read them or lost interest.
So: this update is mostly to say that I am following the dopamine, friends. I have added a handful of already-planned slow-reads to my queue, and because I once again don’t feel pressure to read anything beyond what I really want at any given time, I have started reading more outside of my slow-reads as well — plenty of which were, of course, not on the queue.
I feel satisfied with my reading again, and I’m really proud of myself for recognizing what wasn’t working so quickly and making adjustments instead of trying to push through and/or wait until next year to change anything. I’m sharing here in case any of you are experiencing a similar struggle with feeling like something just isn’t working and like you need permission to make a change. It’s okay to reevaluate and adjust! You don’t need to wait until the next new year or next season or the beginning of next month or even one more minute.
How is March treating you so far? Is there anything that’s just not working? I’d love to hear from you in the comments! And as always, feel free to share if this resonated with you.
Being responsive to our own needs can be so challenging. It's like....I have to do this one thing a certain way or else I've failed my goal. But...the only person who gets to decide what goals you have and how to get there...is yourself. I think your body was wise in letting you know that it didn't want the pressure of doing something that's meant to be enjoyable, and you were wise to listen =)
Good for you for reclaiming agency from the internalized forces compelling us to prove our "productivity" with metrics!!! Fist pumping up a storm for you here! Thank you for sharing this part of your process with us.