So last week, when I was participating in 2 simultaneous week-long readathons, I noticed a definite uptick in my reading productivity, as well as a corresponding reduction in stress since I was channeling a lot of my spare time and thoughts into books. I thought it would be interesting to see if I could duplicate the reading productivity and stress-reducing aspects of a readathon without an actual readathon going on the week afterwards, by self-tracking my reading day to day without any prompts or the social aspects of a readathon. I wasn’t sure whether it would be something I would be able to stick to, whether I’d lose interest, or whether tracking my daily reading would make me feel better or worse about the amount of reading I was getting done, but I thought I’d find it at least kind of interesting nonetheless. And I did!

So, here are my day-to-day stats for my week-long reading tracking experiment. It was a pretty typical work week (aka fairly busy), with a good amount of friends/family time on the weekend, so I think it was a pretty good snapshot of what I can achieve reading-wise when I actually keep track and push myself a bit. I didn’t try to make myself read anything in particular, and instead mostly started out by continuing books I’d started during the readathons last week.

Day 1

Pages read: 14% of Neon Gods (eARC), 20 pages of Honey Girl, 112 pages of The Body Myth

Books started: Neon Gods by Katee Robert

Books finished: None

Day 2

Pages read: 64 pages of The Body Myth, 22 pages of Riot Baby, 13 pages of Hummingbird Salamander

Books started: Riot Baby by Tochi Onyebuychi, Hummingbird Salamander by Jeff Vandermeer

Books finished: The Body Myth

Day 3

Pages read: 92 pages of Riot Baby, 17 pages of Hummingbird Salamander

Books started: None

Books finished: None

Day 4

Pages read: 60 pages of Riot Baby

Books started: None

Books finished: Riot Baby

Day 5

Pages read: 56 pages of Honey Girl, 1 hour of Rosaline Palmer Takes the Cake on audiobook

Books started: Rosaline Palmer Takes the Cake by Alexis Hall

Books finished: None

Day 6

Pages read: 33 pages of Honey Girl, 1/2 hour of Rosaline Palmer Takes the Cake on audiobook

Books started: None

Books finished: None

Day 7

Pages read: 76 pages of Honey Girl, 20 pages of Act Your Age, Eve Brown, 5 1/2 hours of Rosaline Palmer Takes the Cake on audiobook

Books started: None

Books finished: Honey Girl

As you can see, I did pretty well! I managed to read and/or listen to at least something every day, I read from a variety of books, and I was actually able to finish some of them. Let’s take a look at my overall stats for the week as well:

Reading experiment wrap-up stats:

Total pages read: 913 pages

Total books finished: 3

Books started, but not finished: 4

So, my reading experiment week ended up being very similarly productive compared to my readathon-laden previous week (last week I read a total of 986 pages and finished 4 books, only slightly more than this week). I still felt motivated and enjoyed tracking myself, and I think that in itself helped inspire me to read more than I would in a typical week, even without an official readathon going on.

I had fun doing my reading experiment this week (even though I’m pretty sure no one but me will actually find this interesting!) and I’m actually considering repeating the experiment next week to see whether or not I can keep up the momentum. We’ll see!