I may or may not have let the algorithm convince me of trying out experiments this year rather than setting goals. The video that caught my eye was How To Change Your Life In 2026 *if ur a mess of a human who can't track goals by Mia's Digital Diary.

Why “experiments” over “goals”?

In all of my previous tries of setting the grand goal of having less books in my Physical TBR, I’ve realized it has never actually came to fruition. Time and time again I have the voice in the back of my head saying “Hey, you set that goal of reading more than you buy! So you better stick to that”, only to find myself saying I’ll do better next time.

When I saw the concept of experiments, I thought it would be fun to try different challenges or games to get me interested in my Physical TBR - but in a much shorter time constraint. Rather than hoping I can stick to something for a full year (thank you for the concept of New Years Resolutions for getting that idea stuck in my head), I’m planning on giving different methods a month long trial period.

After giving 12 different challenges/games set up for myself throughout the year, I’m hopeful that I can find some sort of system that works best for me. While I’ve realized that I’m not the type of person who wants absolutely zero books in their Physical TBR, I would like to be much less overwhelmed by the sheer number of unread books I own.

The 12 Reading Challenges/Games For 2026

To help me gather up some ideas, I posed the question on the general discussion forum on Pagebound. Here’s the list of items I’ve settled on for the year:

• Putting my full Physical TBR in a spreadsheet and using a random number generator (RNG) to select my next read

• Wrapping up books and giving short explanations, similar to that of Blind Date With a Book

• Read It or Unhaul It challenge, similar in ruleset to Plant Based Bride

• Reading Games challenge, inspired by Victoria Villaneuva 

• Rolling a combination of dice to pick my next read (whether it be against the spreadsheet or based on shelf)

• Spinning on a random picker wheel to choose my next read

• Creating a book bingo board to complete

• Following a backlist challenge, for example Beat the Backlist

• Pulling a book name from a TBR Jar

• Shelf clean out (where I randomly choose books and need to decide if I want to unhaul it)

• Placing mini versions of the books I finish in a display

• Seeing how much of a punch card I can manage to finish (although I do hope to maintain different ones through the year to act as a reward system!)

The Starting Point

I’m kicking off this year with 270 unread books in my Physical TBR. I know I have a few in progress right now, but I’m not going to count them for these reading challenges. Even though I’m sharing my starting total, I don’t plan on setting a final goal number. I would like to take this year to learn more about my reading habits rather than stress myself out over numbers. I have had plenty of failed book buying bans to learn from in the past.

As far as how I will handle the challenges, the hope is I have the capacity to try a new challenge a month. I plan on using the given challenge to choose one book a week. By the end of the week I should either have finished the book or decided its not for me. Maybe this will all turn into a practice of not forcing myself to finish a book, I rarely label something as DNF. If I find that I finish a book sooner, I may use the challenge more than once a week - but I do have other personal book clubs and year long challenges that I still like to leave room for.

I think I’ll start off the year with letting the RNG pick my next read. I spent some of my days off work moving my list of books I own into a spreadsheet (exciting, I know). I don’t have exact rules or stipulations set out for myself, but I’d hate to force myself to read something that I’m not in the current mindset for. On the other hand, I don’t want to let myself keep picking new numbers and letting books still sit on my TBR indefinitely. In that same mindset of experiments, I’ll learn as I go!

What to expect from me

I’m hoping to keep this updated weekly to share the book that was chosen and my thoughts/takeaways on the challenges themselves. Between those updates, I may find time to do some book reviews!

I hope that you all have been able to find some rest in the turbulent times, known as the holidays. I’m excited to share my new reading journey with all of you.