My 2017 Personal Challenge

Written by
Joshua Holmes
Published on
January 4, 2017
Read time
Category

This year I've decided to take a leaf out of Mark Zuckerberg's book and set myself a challenge for the year.

Generally, when you consider New Years Resolutions, you think of a laughable ploy to make people feel like they're going to be more productive or get them self out of a rut. But the vast majority of them are famously (or infamously) not achieved.
For myself, I generally don't set anything and just consider new things I learn each year as an achievement in itself.

However, something that has disappointed me is that I stopped reading for enjoyment because I've had to read so many mind numbing course books. And let's be honest, I stopped doing that to because it was fucking terrible.
Another facet to this is that with the world of social media and online news sources trying to catch your eye, you begin reading smaller and smaller things quicker and just skip the long stuff.

In this light, with university finished and the move to a new city, I'm setting myself a challenge rather than a resolution (although most will consider them one in the same).
Much like Zuck a couple of years ago, I'm going to read 25 books (minimum) this year. After a long absence and knowing the length of some I want to read, I feel this is a reasonable amount. One approximately every fortnight.

My goal is to learn something new and find some more interesting reads. I have the first few books picked out. These include Work Rules, The Lean Startup, Chapter One, #AskGaryVee and Steve Jobs.

I'm actually really excited for this as it's something I've been hounding myself to get back into for years.

If you have suggestions, please send them my way.

You can follow my progress on Goodreads.

Headshot of Josh in black and white

Joshua Holmes

Josh is a product design leader based in Melbourne, Australia.
He has been working in the design space for 7 years across various industries.