In January 2015, I set myself the ambitious goal of reading 50 books during the year. In April, I was 11 books behind schedule, and just never really got on track. I knew 50 books was an… aggressive amount of literature to consume in a year—that’s nearly one book per week, and I’m no longer an English Literature major where 75% of my assignments are reading novels. But I thought, Hey, why not go for the challenge?

The answer to that question is ain’t nobody who buys a house, has a full-time marketing job and a husband, travels, and maintains a healthy interest in video games and movies got time to read a book a week. I love reading. I wish I could be paid to read all day long. But I don’t necessarily want to chain myself to books for a whole year to complete some arbitrary reading goal. Yes, I could exchange the dozen or so hours I spend playing Guild Wars 2 per week reading, but why would I do that when I’m having fun gaming? I wouldn’t, and I won’t.

That all being said, the fact that I miserably failed my reading challenge doesn’t exactly feel good. I didn’t even hit 25% of my goal! I read 12/50 books. I read only twelve books in a whole year. That’s averaging one per month, and five of them were re-reading Harry Potter books in the last three months of the year. That is embarrassing. But I’m seizing this opportunity to make a realistic 2016 reading goal and keep it. I’m doubling what I read in 2015 for 2016—24 books. That’s two per month. Totally doable, especially since I stacked the deck:

I didn’t hit my other goal of finishing my Harry Potter re-read before the end of the year, so completing The Half-Blood Prince on Jan. 3 counts as book 1/24. I’ll start The Deathly Hallows this week, so there’s book 2/24 for January. I’m going to force myself to read The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time that’s been sitting on my shelf for six months, I have a half-read Tiffany Reisz novel I found in a moving box in November to finish, and I got a Barnes & Noble gift card for Christmas that I’m going to use to buy The Bell Jar because I’ve been meaning to read that book for longer than I care to admit. Look at that, I’ve got books planned into March!

Goals can be easily accomplished when you set a plan for yourself and give yourself the tools or time needed to succeed. Maybe that’s the underlying theme of 2016 for me: Make a plan. Achieve my goals.