Trying a Different Approach to Learning
After I finished my master’s degree, I felt more disenchanted than inspired. But why? I had the diploma, the debt, and the societal recognition. What was missing?
That was in 2016, and since then education has experienced seismic shifts: rising costs, increased online learning, emerging AI technologies, and an unstable job market.
So I found myself asking: is there a better way to learn?
The modern world offers endless answers. Is online schooling the answer? What about gamified learning?
I tried some of these options. I downloaded apps and was experimental. But in the end, I wanted to go back to the basics.
So I gave myself a challenge to read 52 books in one year.
I wasn’t sure what my goals were at the beginning besides a shrugged “I dunno, self-improvement?” But I knew I needed clarity and change. And I thought I might find answers in books.
This wasn’t a casual pursuit. I treated it like a full-time job or a year of schooling, not a hobby. Below are some of the pros and cons that revealed themselves about learning in this self-directed way.
Benefits of Self-Directed Learning Through a 52-Book Reading Challenge
1. I’m a Deeper Thinker… & I Can Tell
The most obvious benefit of a reading challenge is increased knowledge. My vocabulary expanded, my thinking sharpened, and I was exposed to new cultures and perspectives. This has had tangible benefits to my life.
One of the most striking transformations is that I don’t repeat mistakes as much. Cycles that used to persist for years, I sort of just say “no” to easily now because I recognize the patterns and see better options.
Ignorance can be very costly and knowledge is the greatest defence against it.
Books are like an IV drip, transferring someone else’s hard-earned wisdom into you. You absorb the benefits secondhand, without the same cost of acquiring it.
This renewed appreciation for words also changed the way I write. My writing transformed from tentative to overflowing.
I saw firsthand how much other people’s words have helped me. So I wanted to pass that along.
For example, I talked a lot about painful moments in my life in the hopes that doing so can help someone else. And this also helped me. I got to know myself again- my abilities, values, perspective, and experiences- from my own point of view.
Reading helped clarify the world around me, and writing helped clarify me. This was glorious for a woman who was struggling to find her voice and place in the world.
2. Confidence Through Creation
Learning New Skills
I centered my 2025 around a reading challenge, but it became much more than that. It became a creative and upskilling one; morphing into a writing challenge, a blogging challenge, a SEO challenge, a website design challenge, and a marketing challenge. All of which are topics that I previously had little to no experience in.
As I overcame these hurdles, my self-trust slowly began to regrow.
I even used some of those newly developed skills to land a new job. This was interesting to me since I had somewhat of a traditional mindset that you needed some sort of accreditation attached to your skills in order for them to “count”.
My adherence to this traditional way of thinking had cauterized my own initiative and independent thinking, and this challenge helped me to work past that.
Outrun the Inner Critic
The fast pace of the challenge forced me to circumnavigate my inner critic and produce consistently. There wasn’t time to overthink, which had previously been my tendency. Perfection wasn’t attainable within the timeframe, so “good enough” had to be good enough.
As Jodi Picoult says: “You can’t edit a blank page”. And a blank page is far more daunting than imperfect writing.
What started out as “bad” writing or “bad” ideas were really just first draft writing and ideas.
So, whatever it is you want to pursue, just start; you will learn a lot in the process. Creating a structure can help give shape to something that may feel abstract and (currently) unattainable.
3. Structure During a Tumultuous Time
In 2025, I was experiencing some health issues, so I found myself outside of society’s natural ebb and flow.
I was simultaneously bored and exhausted, burnt-out but seeking a challenge, skeptical of higher education yet wanting to learn. I was in a weird grey zone in so many ways.
And a book reading challenge provided the structure I needed.
I wouldn’t have been able to devote so much time to a passion project in a regular year. And, because of what I did, I will look back on a rough year quite fondly.
When I reflect on the year, I remember time periods by what book I was reading or what post I was writing, and where I was when it happened. My mind is imprinted by this whimsical schedule, not the trauma I was experiencing.
4. Mental & Emotional Stability
The authors, content, and format of the books all became sources of stability for me.
Good Mentors Are Out There
The authors were parasocial mentors and coworkers at a time when I lacked real-life ones, and when the world offers a plethora of bad influences.
I sort of tricked myself into feeling like I was co-creating with others. Even though I was reading and writing in a room alone.
Besides, anxiety involves a lot of ego. Whereas books tend to put you into someone else’s mind for a while, decentering your own (anxious) thoughts.
Books (& Audiobooks) Are More Calming Than Short-Form Content
Also, books themselves are highly regulating sources of information, especially compared to other formats like digital short-form content, such as TikTok videos or YouTube shorts.
They inspire more nuanced thought and discussion than short-form content (which usually rewards simple messages and fast engagement, whether it is positive or negative, true or false).
Books aren’t incentivized by this same feedback mechanism, which means they give the reader more time to sit with their own thoughts- instead of quickly soliciting a reaction from them.
As I read more books, I felt my anxiety decrease. I woke up happier and I began to reorient myself in the world. I had direction again, and that was incredibly empowering.
But what did it cost me?
Cons of Self-Directed Learning Through a 52-Book Reading Challenge
1. The Pace
The Quantity
Reading 52 books was a lot.
It seemed reasonable at the time: one book a week for a year, but I failed to anticipate all of the additional labour like writing, editing, conducting additional research, advertising, and the practicalities of website design.
All of this demanded enormous time and energy that would not have been realistic had I been at a different point in my life with greater responsibilities. But luckily for me, I had a lot of free time.
And this pain of excess was self-induced. I could have picked a lower number of books and I could have written fewer posts.
Yet, I told myself early on that if I had something to say, I would say it. So I ended up writing 155+ posts throughout the year when I could have written about 55 and considered that a “success”.
But since I was struggling to find creativity, I didn’t want to waste a drop of it when it did arrive. This led to a lot of late nights.
Yet, the amount of reading and writing wasn’t the only reason I felt the pinch, though.
Some Content Should Not Be Rushed
Many of these books involved difficult topics.
Therapy books, or books about injustice or pain, require digestion and risk being glossed over if they are forced into a strict timeframe.
Reading them in a frenzied way can be a disservice to both reader and writer.
At some points, I had to physically stop reading in order to process the information. I felt dizzy and overwhelmed. And sometimes understanding arrived months after I had finished reading individual books. The ideas needed time to sink in.
When I first started, I had the idea to repeat this type of challenge in the future with themes: Reading 52 books on Feminism, or 52 Books by Black Authors.
In theory, that is a great idea. In practice, it risks turning deep topics and perspectives into a click-baity content framework.
Instead, I would rather do some type of experiment like A Year of Only Reading Books by Women, or Black authors.
That would be great.
But that subtly shifts the emphasis from the number onto the author’s words- which is a good thing.
Obviously though, I didn’t see this nuance when I began a 52-Book Reading Challenge.
In fact, this was an incredibly transformative mind shift for me, as it feels counter-intuitive in our productivity-obsessed world; one that reveres metrics and says more and faster = better.
The topics (and you) deserve more space to breathe than that.
2. The Structure Was Limiting
Not All Books Were Possible
At the beginning of the year, I felt incredible, even overwhelming, freedom. I didn’t have a boss or a teacher, I got to choose the books I read and the content I wanted to create. It was a level of personal autonomy that I was not accustomed to.
But by the end, I felt restricted by the schedule.
I looked wistfully at thick books on the bookshelf, like Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari or Caste by Isabel Wilkerson. Yet, I knew they wouldn’t fit into this year’s fast schedule.
The quick pace even led to hasty book choices.
Looking back, I regret one of my choices: Misbelief by Dan Ariely.
I knew there was controversy surrounding the integrity of his work. And I wish I would have looked into this further; although, as of today, the true nature and extent of it still remains somewhat unclear.
I’m happy to have read the book personally, but I don’t want to promote a book that I am unsure about. I had to rewrite my blog post significantly to acknowledge this ambiguity, and I will continue to update it as new facts come out.
But a greater quantity of books or writing should not be prioritized over due diligence.
My Writing Became Constrained by the Challenge, Not Freed By It
Besides my book choices, I also began to feel the limitation in my writing.
Even if I wanted to take things in a new direction I couldn’t because I had to see the challenge through, even the parts of it that I had outgrown. Keeping the posts cohesive and uniform was constricting in both format and content.
I felt many posts would have been better if they could just be what they naturally developed into, instead of needing to fit into the structure of a reading challenge.
Ironically, one of the reasons I didn’t like university was because I felt it stuck too closely to old structures and wasn’t adaptive enough. Now, I was experiencing something similar in my self-directed learning.
3. No Gold Stars in Self-Education
The Value of Credentials
One very meaningful difference between institutional learning and self-education is that the latter offers no diplomas.
There are no grades. No institutional or societal validation. No qualifications earned. Even though I arguably learned as much (maybe more) than I did during any of the years of my formal education.
I felt this mismatch in the reactions of my friends and family.
They were happy that I was motivated by something. But I could see the worry in their eyes.
When I told them I would be spending the year reading 52 books and writing about it, they seemed to say: Okay, but what else? They would not have had that reaction if I went back to school. Even though I learned just as much, for a fraction of the price.
I felt the value of a societally recognized stamp of approval when I didn’t have it- something which I am not denying. In fact, there are entire careers that require certification, like dentistry or medicine. Few people would trust a self-taught surgeon, and rightly so.
Yet, history is scattered with great people who were self-taught, often in creative or emerging fields, like art or technology.
Those trailblazers and outcasts had to generate their own legitimacy; something which is hard to convince both yourself and others of.
When society doesn’t see your value, it can be hard to not internalize this.
But I think this leads to the sense that learning is only meaningful when accompanied by a certificate. How many ideas are left by the wayside because of this? And how narrow is our definition of “success”?
I think a surprising amount of people would admit that they are motivated, yet feel misunderstood by modern education. I am one of them.
4. Motivation Needed to Come From Within
When I first started writing, no one read my posts, which meant no one would judge me if I quit prematurely.
This can make slacking off or quitting entirely tempting.
But my need to change my life was my primary motivation. So I kept going. Still, self-education offers a lot of opportunities to check out or tune out.
No one can be forced into it. They must choose it willingly because they are passionate about it or are seeking something from it.
If a person is pressured to take on such a challenge, they are learning things in order to please another, which will dilute the impact significantly.
Tradeoffs Between Self-Education and Traditional Learning
Self-education certainly won’t be for everyone. And that’s okay.
There are enormous social benefits to traditional schooling, but many of these risk being lost in the age of decentralized learning. Can a student learn teamwork or conflict resolution over zoom? Can they develop the confidence needed for public speaking when they only face their peers through a screen?
These soft skills are often overlooked since they are not easily measured. Their value gets lost when something as tangible as budget cuts are considered.
It is my hope that modern education, in whatever form it takes, allows students to thrive in ways that will prepare them for lifelong success.
This will require adaptability and informed experimentation on behalf of people like me who can afford the time to do so. Modern problems require agile, adaptive solutions. Even if those modern solutions involve something as old-fashioned as books.
So, Was it Worth It?
Yes.
But not in the ways I expected.
I thought I was escaping productivity culture, but I really just privatized it.
I swapped grades for book counts. Same tendency, different arena.
Still, this process clarified what I was missing in life and my growing disquiet about the structure of traditional education.
My definition of educated has certainly changed as a result of this experiment.
For what it’s worth, I ended this challenge much more motivated and empowered to learn than when I completed my master’s degree. Still, I will not be doing a reading challenge in 2026.
I will, however, be expanding on the parts of this process that worked and quietly walking away from the parts that didn’t.
I love books. I love learning. And I love writing. I hope to do much more of these in the near future.
Perhaps I can do this with a more flexible structure. Sometimes, when we don’t focus on numeric values, the result is immeasurable.
Have you ever tried to learn outside of the box?
Messy Bun Book Lover