How to Read More: Confessions From a Recovering Perfectionist - Grit & Grace

I know what you’re thinking. Didn’t you say you were going to be writing about love, Becky? Yes, I did share in my last post how I’d be writing about my wrestling through the concept of love as told by 1 Corinthians 13. My thoughts on reading and how to read more as a recovering perfectionist had to come out, though, and since I love to read, I figured it would be a great segue to my next love study post.

How to Read More: Confessions From a Recovering Perfectionist
Book 22 of 30 in 2020.

I’ve always loved to read. When I was a child, it seemed as if I had all the time in the world to read whenever I wanted to. Figuring out how to read more seemed to only be limited by how many books the library would allow me to check out at one time.

Honestly, I never had to figure out how to read more. Reading goals? Reading challenges? Not really a thing for me or part of my vocabulary back then. If I wanted to read more, I just did.

Fast forward to several decades later, and while I may still have 24 hours in a day, how I spend each day has changed quite a bit. Because of this, I needed to get to know the wonderful world of reading goals and challenges.

I remembered my love of reading.

At some point a few years ago, it just hit me. I remembered my love of reading. There’s something about mid-life that makes people think back to the past. I really missed reading.

Don’t get me wrong – I’ve read plenty of books as an adult. After my early reading years as a child, reading had slowly morphed into a have-to. There seemed to be less time to read for pleasure. Most of what I continued to read was because I felt I had to.

It started with a hashtag.

#beckyreads2018. My goal: to read one book a week for 52 weeks.  As I so often do, I choose to jumpstart an area I’d like to change with a challenge, to challenge myself, and turn it into something I can have victory over. I might be slightly just a bit extremely competitive.

52 weeks and 21 books later, I hadn’t even made it halfway. With all my hopes for victory, I had no real strategy. I just knew I had to read a book a week. Seemed simple enough, so I plowed ahead with no real plan.

If you’re doing the math, 21 isn’t even half of 52. I was five books away from at least hitting the half-way mark. Five. books. away.

Crying about it wasn’t going to help me move forward, so I decided to take stock of the positives so I could move on and salvage at least a shred of whatever goal-setting dignity I had left. It was time to be honest with myself: I was not as consistent and intentional as I should have been to reach my goal, but I was definitely the most consistent and intentional I had ever been with a reading challenge, seeing as it was my first reading challenge ever. It’s important to celebrate small victories, so I set my sights on #beckyreads 2019.

If at first you don’t succeed.

I decided to try again the following year. Ditching the hashtag seemed like a good idea. No posting of photos or catchy quotes from each book read. I’d be heading off the grid for 2019’s challenge, and thought if maybe, just maybe, I focused less on sharing my journey and more on just my love of reading and wanting to read more, I’d succeed at reading more.

A total of 13 books were read in 2019. That’s seven fewer books than 2018. Instead of moving ahead in my reading goals, I was going backwards.

Two years in a row of setting a goal, and falling short. While I did end up reading more, I hadn’t really made what I felt were significant strides in the how many books I read each year department. I was discouraged, but determined to keep trying.

I read 30 books in 2020.

A new year brought yet another opportunity to try and read more. Along with that came a trip to North Carolina that made my Ten Best Moments of 2020, where reading by our cabin’s fireplace was a definite highlight that helped kickstart 2020’s reading goal.

It still amazes me that I read so many books.

How did I do it?

There is power that exists in just 15 minutes.

Hannah Brencher, Fighting Forward

I started getting comfortable with 15 minutes. As a recovering perfectionist, I usually have an all or nothing approach to doing things. I shifted my focus from trying to read a whole book or a whole chapter, to setting my timer for 15 minutes. I’d set the timer every day and read.

That inner critic of mine kept insisting I wasn’t making any real progress by reading for only 15 minutes. But still, I kept at it. A year’s worth of 15 minute pockets of time translates to over 90 hours. Take that, inner critic!

If I really loved to read, and I really wanted to read more, then I’d have to set some intention behind it. It took both of them for me to move forward in my reading goals.

It takes love and intention, friends. I feel there’s a metaphor in there somewhere.

And speaking of love and intention, I want to celebrate my 2020 reading achievements with a BOOK GIVEAWAY! Make sure you’re following me on Instagram for all the details, which I’m hoping to share in the next week. Stay tuned!


Becky is a Miami native, and has lived here all of her life. Married to her husband for over 20 years, they lead a very active lifestyle along with their three teenagers and Riley, their rescue dog. Becky loves to teach, and has had the awesome privilege of home educating her children for over twelve years. When not teaching academics, Becky loves to equip, encourage, and empower women through the teaching of her group fitness classes. Becky and her husband lead various ministries, and their family loves to serve the community through the countless opportunities provided over the past twenty years+ in their local church. She enjoys filling her "free" time with reading, writing, watching movies, and just spending time with the family. Becky has a passion for living her life with grit and grace, and encouraging others to do the same.


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