说 明

这是上一期英文版播客节目的文字内容，供感兴趣的朋友查阅。 以后的英文节目，我会把节目与文字版一同放出，查看起来更方便一些。 点击图片可前往收听该期节目。

下期节目是相同主题的中文版，除了相同内容之外，还会有一些贴士和技巧，记得查看哦，下周三上午7:00更新。

It's a brand new year, and you made a new year's resolution of reading more books this year, the same as last year. You told yourself, 'this time, I'll definitely complete my reading goal!' Just as you did the same time the previous year. But then you realised, 'I don't know which books I'm going to read, and I don't even know how many books I want to read this year.' That's not good, but no worries, you are not alone. I've been there too. Here're a few tips that I'm using for setting up my annual reading goal in recent years. It works fine for me and maybe works for you too.

1. Define your themes

Before you decide which books you want to read, define your themes of the year first. Do you have any goals to complete this year? For example, getting promoted, learning a foreign language, or become a Judo master? These are your themes.

For example, if you want a promotion, the related theme could be 'career development.' By defining your themes of the year, you will know your general direction of reading books. Then you can easily research the books align with your themes. You can search the recommendation on Goodreads, Amazon, or just by the advice of friends.

My themes of the year are 'senior designer,' 'family investment,' 'fitter me,' and 'bilingual content creator,' so I know that I need to add lots of design-themed books and financial books to my reading list this year.

2. How many books do you want to read this year?

All the good long-distance runners know a rule when they are training for a marathon: Be realistic. If your longest-running is 5k, don't start a full marathon now. Reading books is the same. Start with how many books you read in the last year. Add approximately 10%-15%.

In the past few years, I kept reading 50 books every year, but 90% of them are Chinese. Last year I managed to read 35 books and 33 of them are in English. This year, I want to read 40 books in total. I think it is a reasonable goal, which can push me to improve, but also not beating myself over the head with books.

3. Check your themes and make choices

Now you have two metrics - themes and the number of books you want to read. You can set the numbers of books for each theme of the year. I have four themes and a goal of reading 40 books in 2020, which means I can equally read 10 books for each theme. But I want to read more books about design and financial because I think these two dimensions are easier to learn by reading books. For the theme 'fitter me,' I want to improve it by do more workouts and pay more attention to my diet. So as the theme 'bilingual content creator,' practice is better than reading.

So I choose at least one book a month for each of my two themes 'design' and 'financial.' After finishing these two books, I'll read a general topic book. Reading like this helps me achieve my big goal for the year, and also enjoy the reading.