Weekday Reading Experiment // How Much Can I Read While Balancing Everyday Life?

Image by Tabitha Turner

I started a weekend reading experiment to get myself to read more consistently. Then I thought well I kind of have to focus on the weekdays too if I want to be a consistent reader. I struggle with balancing my work life with my home life so I want to get to a point where I am just naturally reading all the time. Let's see how I did, shall we?

Week 1

I was a lot more realistic with my weekday reading plans compared to my weekend reading plans. I don't know in what world I thought I was going to read eight books during a weekend... I planned on reading four books this first week:

• Rescue at Lake Wild by Terry Lynn Johnson - 208 pages (Middle Grade/ARC)
• Ways to Grow Love by Renée Watson - 192 pages (Middle Grade/ARC)
• Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories by Sandra Cisneros - 165 pages (Short Stories Collection)
• The Unexpected Everything by Morgan Matson - 366 pages (YA/Reread of a Favorite)

Total: 880 pages

So based on my calculations (that are hopefully not wrong) that's 176 pages a day which shows how even if I'm trying to be realistic, I am still way off from reality. Here's what I actually read:

• Day 1: Rescue at Lake Wild - 67 pages
• Day 2: N/A
• Day 3: The Unexpected Everything - 52 pages + Rescue at Lake Wild - 36 pages = 88 pages
• Day 4: The Unexpected Everything - 53 pages + Rescue at Lake Wild - 85 pages = 138 pages
• Day 5: Rescue at Lake Wild - 25 pages (completed book #1) + The Unexpected Everything - 48 pages = 73 pages

Total: 366 pages

Completely off of what I wanted to read but I got to finish a book and I was consistently reading except for one day. I'm actually pretty happy with this week looking back.

Week 2

Now I have been doing my weekend reading experiment in conjunction with this one so it seems I have learned to be less ambitious with my reading this time around:

• Mustard, Milk, and Gin by Megan Denton Ray - 55 pages (Poetry Book/Project)
• Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories by Sandra Cisneros - 165 pages (Short Stories Collection)
• Ways to Grow Love by Renée Watson - 192 pages (Middle Grade/ARC)

Total: 418 pages

So much more reasonable. Like at least I learned something. I would like to eventually kick up my reading goal and watch a lot less YouTube but that's not going to happen anytime soon. And even if I did watch less I would most likely try more creative projects instead of reading more. Anyways, let's see how I did:

• Day 1: Mustard, Milk, and Gin - 24 pages
• Day 2: Mustard, Milk, and Gin - 20 pages
• Day 3: Mustard, Milk, and Gin - 11 pages (book #2 complete) + Ways to Grow Love - 28 pages = 39 pages
• Day 4: Woman Hollering Creek - 5 pages
• Day 5: Woman Hollering Creek - 79 pages + Ways to Grow Love - 15 pages + Something is Killing the Children - 128 pages (book #3 complete) + Whispers in the Dark - 25 pages = 247 pages

Total: 335 pages

Well I read every day. Those 5 pages though... 😂 I learned about a readathon so I started reading horror towards the end. You might be able to tell but at this point and still today I am struggling with reading Ways to Grow Love probably because it's a sequel but it also jumps around a lot without that much cohesion. Woman Hollering Creek picked up but currently I'm stuck on a short story that I can't bring myself to read *sigh* You might also notice that I read the majority of my pages on Friday probably after realizing I'd only read 88 pages until then. So at least I pulled through at the end and was close to my page count from last week.

Week 3

I have to preface this week by saying I realized how much I should not be doing readathons. I even wrote a discussion about it because it damaged my page count this particular week. I may have been having a bad week too but the readathon did not help. I also expected myself to read 1,000 pages in 7 days which if you've seen this post and the weekday one you know that was really stretching my reading. I didn't have a plan of what I wanted to read surprisingly but this is what I got to read in five days:

• Day 1: Invisible Girl - 36 pages 
• Day 2: Whispers in the Dark - 119 pages
• Day 3: N/A
• Day 4: Los Tipos Malos - 46 pages
• Day 5: N/A

Total: 201 pages

I don't know why having unrealistic expectations for my own experiment and for a readathon had different outcomes. I read at least 100 pages less than I usually did. I think that readathons are just not for me unfortunately. 

Conclusion

I compared my results with weekends vs. weekdays and of course I read more over the weekend. Less stress and more time will do that for you. I think on average I can safely say that I will easily read 600 pages a week in total which isn't bad. That's 2,400 pages a month on average. Now, my goal was to get myself reading consistently but I think the last week threw it off. I definitely read more for those three weeks than I had been so I did improve my reading consistency. I have noticed since I haven't been tracking my pages every week that I haven't been reading as much or not as much as I would like. I've read very randomly when there are a couple of books I am still in the middle of. I never want to force myself to read a book but I want to finish three books that I am currently reading already! I think if I spaced things out more where I read multiple books, was more realistic with my weekly goals, and tracked how many pages I read I would see a difference. I am going to start tracking my reading again to see if I can be consistent over a longer period of time. I also like splitting up page goals by the weekdays and weekends because the number goal is a lot less daunting (which is probably why I did badly with the readathon reading at the end). 

How do you balance your reading during weekdays?