I’ve never been one for New Year’s resolutions. They’ve always felt like goals that set us up for failure rather than success. That run away from us and get way too ambitious. Admirable, but not practical.

But last year, I made one anyway, a New Year’s resolution to read a certain number of books by the end of 2018.

With one day left on the calendar, I’m not going to make it. By more than one book. More than a couple of books. I realized this over a month ago, that given how slowly I read and how busy the end of the year always is (no matter how much I try to get done ahead of time) that there was no way I was going to reach my goal.

I’ve talked before on this blog about how reading should be fun and absolutely NOT a chore, and I know—the idea of setting a goal to read x number of books in y amount of time sounds completely antithesis to that. I mean, doesn’t it take the joy out of reading to make it something you can fail at?

But here’s the thing about a reading goal: Even if you don’t read the number of books you set out to, you’ll still have read however many books you did read. My goal wasn’t there to stress me out, it was there to keep me reading. It encouraged me to pick up a book instead of turning on the TV or scrolling through social media. And with that goal in mind, I probably read more in the last year than I would have otherwise.

I’m not saying we should only set goals we know we can achieve or that we should avoid challenging ourselves just so we don’t fail, but too often, New Year’s resolutions can become twisted ways to be mean to ourselves, to pick apart all the things we don’t like and set about trying to fix them, all in one swoop.

This year, do yourself a kindness. Set a reading goal. You deserve something that will be good for you, no matter what the outcome.