Remember a few weeks ago when I proudly proclaimed that I was an avid reader? Well, depending on your definition, that might have been a premature April Fools day joke.
Why? Well, in recent years, my favourite thing to do has been not finishing a book. I know, I know! For some reason, it seems like we have all been conditioned to finish reading the novel we picked up, no matter the cost.
Well not anymore, and Goodreads is even getting on board with this - they are introducing a new, Did Not Finish shelf! 🥳🎉
If you don’t use Goodreads, it’s basically a place where you track what you’re reading, rate books, brag about how many books you read in a year, things like that. I think the inclusion of this new shelf is a reflection on a slow but steady change in mentality for book nerds…
You Do Not Have to Finish the Book
For years I believed that if you started reading something, you had to finish it. This felt like a hard and fast rule, never to be excepted.
Then a few years ago I saw an Instagram post that said:
“You have permission to not finish the book.”
And apparently that was all I needed!
Since then I have stopped finishing books that are not resonating with me, and I do not feel guilty about it anymore. If I made it halfway through, or 40 pages through, or even right to the last chapter and it wasn’t working, that was enough information.
Close book and move on, life will continue.
Understandably, I do not feel this is a well-circulated idea. We had friends over for dinner recently and one of them was describing a book in great detail, explaining the ideas clearly, talking about what he liked about it, and then almost apologetically added:
“Oh, but I didn’t finish it.”
Which made me think - why do we still think finishing is the goal?
Everyone has different goals for reading - to relax, to learn something, to be entertained, to kill time, whatever it is. If the book is doing that for you, great! If it’s not, thank it for it’s service, and show it the door.
Unfortunately, Some Things Do Need Finishing
Ahh, the inconvenient flip side - some things do need to be finished.
And I know this because one of the things I am currently not finishing is writing a book. A little ironic, dontcha think?
Because unlike a reading an existing novel that isn’t working for me, this is something that I have committed to creating. This is something Future Me would be extremely pleased about if Present Me would just sit down and make steady progress on it.
So the question becomes:
How do you tell the difference between something you can safely abandon and something you should keep going on?
If you’re trying to decide whether something belongs on your Did Not Finish shelf, or whether it’s something you should quietly keep going with, here’s the question I keep coming back to:
In six months, will I be relieved I stopped, or will I wish I had continued?
Six months is far enough away to remove the mood of the moment, but close enough that you can still picture yourself there.
If you’re not sure how to answer that question, a few things that help:
Ask yourself:
Am I avoiding this because it’s hard, or because it’s wrong for me?
If this quietly disappeared tomorrow, would I feel lighter or disappointed?
Is this something Future Me would thank me for finishing?
Am I stuck because I don’t care about it, or because I care about it too much?
If a friend told me they were quitting this, would I agree with them?
For me, finishing my 11th audiobook this year is not a huge goal. There will be more (much to the chagrin of everyone around me who hears me talk about them.) Writing my own book? Well, that a big one. Now, if I could only find the motivation to get started….
