2021 Goals – Reading and Life – Keeping it Simple

I was talking to my sister and best friend two days back and telling them all about my goals or to-do lists and my best friend said, “Prachi di, have you added some chill time in your goals too? Your goals sound too much, even to hear about!“

We laughed it off that day, but a day later, I realised I was again setting myself up for failure by slotting in too much. So, I went back to my original 2021 goals draft and edited it to make it simpler 🙂

The key words for me this year will be : Simple, Share and Soothe.

That is, I want to keep my work, life, goals – simple. I want to try and share my writing and thoughts more, and I want to do things that will soothe my body and soul this year 🙂

What are your key words this year?

So, here are my revised goals for 2021:

• Reading : I’ve set up the same 72 books to read goal on Goodreads, but its not going to be a hard and fast rule. I want to read for joy and to widen my horizon and thought process. So I want to try and include more of the following in my reading:
  • Non fiction reads
  • New releases
  • Books from my existing TBR shelf
  • Finish the below series:
    • Deathnote series
    • Throne of Glass series
    • Curse-breaker series
  • Read as many books as possible by the authors below:
    • John Boyne
    • Kurt Vonnegut
    • Neil Gaiman
    • RF Kuang
    • V.E. Schwab
    • Rin Chupeco
    • Fredrik Backman
    • Others, if discovered, will be added
  • Track my reading better – via graphs if possible

• Writing : I still feel like I’m not where I want to be with respect to my writing life. I’m definitely improving my writing practise and hours each year and I’m happy with that. I feel like I’m still quite far from publishing a novel, but one has to write a book first 🙂 So here are my writing goals this year:
  • Write 500 words daily – This could be as part of journaling, or blogging or writing a short story, or a chapter of my novel WIP. I can take 1 day break in a week, but that should be it. This was inspired by Stephen King’s memoir on writing
  • Track my writing practise using the tracking mechanism that V.E. Schwab uses, which she kindly shared with her followers on IG. I found it simple and easy to follow 🙂

• Other life goals for this year : As with each year, I like to add something that will help me grow as a person and some self care routines. I also remove some goals that aren’t working out or don’t look feasible. So for 2021, I want to try and stick to the following goals for my life:
  • Run or walk daily (with 1 cheat day a month) for 30 minutes – so that’s a total of 353 days and I’m on track so far for this month 😀
  • Try and do more charity to help children in need, wherever and however I can
  • Try and learn a new skill or practise an old one (maybe something from the ones listed below):
    • Learning a new language on Duolingo
    • Gardening
    • Rekindle playing the keyboard or drums

And that’s it! Those are my goals or things I want to try and attempt and achieve in 2021 🙂 You’ll notice I haven’t included driving a car or traveling in this year’s goals, since I cant plan for them with the current situation. Wish me all the best!! 🙂

How about your goals? What have you decided to do in 2021? Do leave me a comment or a link to your blog in the comments, so I can stop by and cheer you on too 🙂