I assume you’re an avid reader like me, or at least you want to be, because just as with eating, where the appetite is often bigger than the stomach, our reading goals regularly surpass our reading leisure.
In my case, this was evidenced by mountains of unread books that used to lie scattered all over my apartment.
Typically, I would start reading a book, lose interest over time, and set it aside, where it would gather dust as a monument to my reading ambitions and make me feel guilty whenever I looked at it with remorse.
Over the years, I realized that reading more complex books should be approached similarly to working out at the gym:
Systematically and regularly.
This means:
Planning reading time: Reserve fixed times in your calendar for reading.
Setting achievable goals: It’s psychologically advantageous to break down the reading workload into smaller sections and goals, as long books can be intimidating. Therefore, break down large reading goals into smaller segments. For example, if you want to read a 1000-page book in a month, plan to read 33 pages a day.
Creating a reading list: The YouTuber Odysseas recommends making a list of books you want to read over the course of a year. Add up the page numbers and divide this by the number of days in the year to determine your daily reading quota.
Take, for example, the book “War and Peace” by Tolstoy. It has a formidable 1,225 pages and is a colossus that can bring even the most determined reader to their knees.
By dividing the reading into manageable portions, however, the project becomes more manageable. For instance, I can plan to finish the book in 10 sessions.
Per session, I would then need to read 122 pages. That’s still overambitious, but of course, I’m free to conquer this monster in 20 or even 30 reading sessions.
In the latter case, I would only need to manage 40 pages per session, which is more realistic.
The Notion Book Tracker
As an enthusiastic Notion power user, I’ve naturally also created a template that allows me to calculate my daily reading quota based on the books on my reading list.
The template is based on the method of YouTuber Odysseas but offers a bit more flexibility. Because in the case of his reading list, you would always need to know at the beginning of the year which books you will consume in the next 12 months. In my opinion, that’s unrealistic, as interests can change quickly, and you will continuously discover new books as a reader.
Instead, the template proceeds as follows:
It adds up the page count of all unread books on your reading list (whether it’s a single book or several thousand).
It divides this page count by the average days you need to read a book, multiplied by the number of unread books on your reading list.
In the example of our template, we have 3,466 pages from 7 books to read. We set the average reading time at 10 days. As a result, the template now calculates that we would need to read 50 pages a day.
The average reading time can, of course, be adjusted: For example, if you want to read 30 books a year, set it to 12 days, for 20 books 18 days, and for 10 books 36 days.
What sets this book tracker apart from other Notion templates?
Most book trackers for Notion I know of mainly focus on aesthetics. There’s nothing wrong with that, but in my eyes, they are often too impractical. With my template, on the other hand, I try to help you get a better overview of your reading goals and calculate a daily reading quota.
My focus was on keeping the template simple and not overloaded with features. I hope I have achieved that.
If you want to try out my template, get your free access here: