Friday, December 27, 2013

Thinking about the New Year: Part One

First a quote that I've heard numerous times:

"You are the same today as you’ll be in five years except for two things: the books you read and the people you meet." (Charlie Tremendous Jones as quoted by Michael Hyatt).  At the end of the year, it's only natural to look back at 2013 and remember the good times and the bad.  Accomplishments and regrets.

One thing that I did NOT do was read well.  I had the best of intentions.  Then as I fell behind, I made the crazy plan of trying to read through the Bible in 90 days.  This was unsustainable from the beginning because of my Sunday work schedule.  I essentially set myself up for failure.  In 2014, I am going back to a Scripture reading plan that did work for me in 2012- Professor Grant Horner's Bible-Reading System.  10 chapters a day is a chunk but completely do-able on a daily basis.  I've already started this actually- today I start day 3. And this handy app makes keeping track of your reading easy even if you don't have a Bible handy- just a computer.  You can use the ESV bible online- and if you set up a free account, you can even journal and take notes online as you read!


But I also found a blog titled 52 books in 52 weeks.  52 books sounds like a lot.  It is.  But like anything challenging in life, it just needs to be broken into smaller chewable pieces.  If the average book is 210 pages, I need to schedule 30 pages of reading a day.  This is approx 25-45 minutes of reading a day- depending of how dense the work is.  I'm on the bus at least an hour a day.  So if I convert half this time to reading, presto chango, in a year I will have knocked out 52 books.  I have already started One Way Love: Inexhaustible Grace for an Exhausted World by Tullian Tchividjian and have 4 other books to round out January.  I plan on adding to the widget on this blog as I finish and pick out new books for February and beyond.

So that's a start.  I have a couple of other plans for 2014 that I'll be sharing before the new year.

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