The Apple Watch is supposed to be the ultimate fitness tracker, but in many ways, I find it lacking. The most frustrating aspect of its self-setting goal scheme is how it assumes I always need to improve. The algorithm only knows how to increase a goal. So if I have the best training month of my life, I’d better buckle up because next month the Watch is going to set the bar even higher. It’s an impossible paradigm to operate in, and one that leads me to eventually tuning the watch out.

My reading habit ebbs and flows. I started tracking my reading progress on my website back in 2018. That, combined with my use of Goodreads, resulted in my transformation into a reading machine. I read 30 books in 2018, and 40 in 2019.

So should I read 50 books in 2020? Even if I had the time and backlog of books to do it, would I want to?

Reading for pleasure is supposed to be just that, pleasurable. We spend our entire youth being taught that reading is a task list item, a requirement. As adults, when we discover the joy and adventure of reading, why let an arbitrary goal drag us back down to the tedium of our education?

I’m not setting any more reading goals. My aim is to read 12 a year, but if I don’t, oh well.