75 Booked Challenge

[maryquitecontrary]

I don't look at Tiktok and only sporadically at YouTube, but when glancing at recommended videos tonight on YouTube, one entitled "75 Booked Challenge" caught my eye.

The short version is that a popular BookTok account, @emilypaigebooks, created a reading version of "75 Hard", which is apparently an extreme fitness/dieting challenge (which I'd blessedly never heard of until now).

The original guidelines are as follows:

• Complete two 45-minute reading sessions each day (one of them not in bed). Physical, e-, or audio books are all fair game.
• Finish a water bottle during each reading session.
• Log all your reading in a physical journal or app.
• No purchasing new books—everything you read must already be owned, bought secondhand, or borrowed from a library.

I've generally been wanting to find "hacks" to help me read more, and since the 'ole ADHD brain loves a good gimmick, this seems like a way to potentially do that.

Except I know from the get-go that the guidelines as written aren't going to work for me. Luckily, customizing the challenge seems to be encouraged. :D

My "rules", I think:

• Read 45 minutes per day.
• Drink an amount of water while reading.
• Log reading/thoughts on Dreamwidth.
• Continue to read down my unread, owned books.

I could wait to start this at the beginning of 2026, but I seems somewhat more intelligent to just...not wait and not add any pressure to the urge to start things "new" at the beginning of the year, only to immediately falter under said pressure. Which is from myself. Because I'm AWESOME.

So, I guess this is a thing I'm doing now? 🤷‍♀️