“Plant seeds for January’s curiosity.”
Why This Ritual Matters
There is a quiet moment in late December when the year exhales. The rush slows. The noise settles. And into that stillness, something emerges — not a resolution, not a promise, but something gentler and more powerful: an intention.
Reading intentions are different from reading goals. A goal says what you’ll do. An intention says how you want to be while doing it. “Read twenty books” is a goal. “Approach every page with genuine curiosity” is an intention. Goals can be checked off; intentions shape who you become. Both matter — but intentions come first, because they determine which goals you’ll actually care about when February’s energy fades.
This ritual asks you to plant seeds now, in December’s stillness, so that January’s curiosity has somewhere to grow. The future grows from present intention. What you decide to care about today — the quality of attention you commit to, the kind of reader you choose to be — becomes the invisible architecture of the year ahead. Without intention, even the best reading plan is just a list. With it, every book becomes part of something larger.
Today’s Practice
Find a quiet ten to fifteen minutes. You’ll need a pen and paper — something physical, something that slows you down. Digital tools are fine for planning, but intentions deserve the intimacy of handwriting.
You’re going to write three to five reading intentions for the coming year. Not “what to read” — that comes later. Instead, you’re writing about how you want to read, what qualities you want to bring to your practice, and what kind of reader you want to become. Think of intentions as the soil. The books you eventually choose are the seeds. Without good soil, even the best seeds won’t root.
How to Practice
- Reflect on this year’s reading. Before looking forward, look back. What reading moments brought you the most joy? When did reading feel like a chore? What patterns do you notice? These reflections contain the raw material for next year’s intentions.
- Ask yourself: “What kind of reader do I want to be?” Not what to read — who to be while reading. Patient? Curious? Adventurous? Critical? Consistent? Choose the qualities that feel most alive for you right now.
- Write three to five “I will” statements. Each one should describe an approach, not an outcome. For example: “I will read with patience, giving difficult passages a second chance before moving on.” Or: “I will follow my curiosity even when it leads outside my comfort zone.”
- Anchor each intention to a daily cue. Intentions without anchors float away. Pair each one with a small, specific action: “When I sit down to read, I will take three slow breaths first” or “I will read one page from an unfamiliar genre every Sunday.”
- Read them aloud once. Hearing your own intentions spoken gives them weight. It transforms them from words on paper into a quiet commitment — a promise you’re making not to an audience but to the reader you’re becoming.
Consider a musician preparing for a new year of practice. She doesn’t start with a list of songs to learn — she starts with intentions about how she wants to practice. “I will practice slowly and deliberately, prioritizing tone over speed. I will spend the first five minutes of every session just listening. I will play one piece that scares me each month.” These intentions shape every choice she makes: what to play, how long to practice, and what “progress” even means. A year later, she’s not just more skilled — she’s a different kind of musician. Your reading intentions work identically. They don’t tell you what to read. They shape the reader who reads it.
What to Notice
Notice the difference between intentions that come from desire and those that come from obligation. “I will read more literary fiction” might sound like an intention, but ask yourself — does it come from genuine curiosity or from a feeling that you should? True reading intentions carry energy. They make you lean forward slightly. Obligation-based intentions make your shoulders tighten.
Notice also whether your intentions are specific enough to act on. “I will be a better reader” is a wish, not an intention. “I will sit with confusion for at least two minutes before reaching for my phone to look up an answer” is an intention you can practice tomorrow. The best intentions are concrete enough to be uncomfortable — they ask something specific of you, and that specificity is what makes them real.
The Science Behind It
Implementation intentions — the practice of pairing an intention with a specific situational cue — are among the most robustly supported behavior-change strategies in psychology. Research by Peter Gollwitzer demonstrates that people who form “if-then” plans (e.g., “When I finish dinner, I will read for twenty minutes”) are significantly more likely to follow through than those who rely on motivation alone.
The mechanism is automaticity. When you link an intention to a cue, the cue begins to trigger the behavior without requiring conscious deliberation. Over time, reading stops being something you decide to do and becomes something that happens naturally in response to the rhythms of your day. This is why anchoring each intention to a daily action — as in Step 4 above — is not optional. It’s the difference between a wish written in a journal and a habit woven into your life. Gollwitzer’s meta-analysis found that implementation intentions had a medium-to-large effect on goal attainment across dozens of studies and behavioral domains.
Connection to Your Reading Journey
This is the first day of the Renewal & Vision sub-segment — the turning point where December’s mastery theme pivots from looking backward to looking forward. Yesterday you honored the reader you’ve become. Today you’re planting the seeds that will grow into next year’s practice.
Over 355 days, you’ve built something extraordinary: a daily relationship with reading that is attentive, curious, and resilient. These intentions aren’t starting from scratch — they’re building on a foundation you’ve spent nearly a year constructing. Think of today’s ritual as handing a letter to your future self. The you who opens a book on January 1st will carry these intentions. Make them worthy of the reader you’ve become.
“Next year, I intend to read with _____. The daily action that will keep this intention alive is _____. The reader I am becoming is someone who _____.”
If your reading intentions for next year were a single sentence — a mantra you carried into every reading session — what would it say?
Frequently Asked Questions
Go Deeper Than Daily Rituals
6 courses. 1,098 practice questions. 365 articles — each with PDF analysis, RC questions, audio podcast, and video breakdown. Plus a reading community with 1,000+ fresh articles a year. This is the complete reading transformation system.
Start Learning →10 More Rituals Await
Day 355 is done. Your reading transformation has begun. The Ultimate Reading Course takes you further — 6 courses, 1,098 questions, 365 analysed articles, video and audio breakdowns, and a community of readers. One program, complete mastery.
