Why I Track My Reading Like a Learning System (Not a List)
n May of 2019, as I was finishing my first master’s degree, I made a small but serious bet with friends.
For the three years prior, my time had been consumed by classes, papers, and deadlines. I knew that once that structure disappeared, something else would rush in to fill the space. I didn’t want that “something” to be TV, endless scrolling, or habits I’d worked hard to avoid.
So I set an intention: I wanted to restart good habits deliberately, not accidentally replace school with distraction.
One of those habits was reading.
I had always been an avid reader. Somewhere along the way, especially during college, that habit thinned out. I still read, but not with the depth or consistency that once felt natural. So I made a goal that felt both ambitious and grounding: to read 1,000 books over the next five years.
It wasn’t about speed. It was about commitment. About choosing reading, again and again, in the time that might otherwise disappear into noise.
At first, I tracked my reading the way most of us do: titles, dates, maybe a genre tag if I was being thorough. But over time, I noticed something else happening. I wasn’t just reading more. I was thinking differently.
Patterns started to surface:
which authors I returned to
which ideas reshaped how I teach and design learning
which voices were consistently shaping my thinking
and where quiet gaps lived in my reading life
That’s when I stopped treating my reading list as a list and started treating it as a learning system.
I built what I now call The Multilingual Mind: an equity-aware knowledge management system that tracks not only what I read, but how my reading evolves across time, context, and voice.
One of the most intentional choices I made was how I handled identity. Author gender and ethnicity are recorded only when authors have publicly self-identified. Categories remain broad. Blank fields are allowed. This isn’t about counting people. It’s about noticing patterns without flattening humanity.
The system also includes a Global Majority lens, not as a metric to perform, but as a mirror. A way to reflect on whose knowledge consistently informs my work and where I might want to be more intentional.
What surprised me most wasn’t the data. It was the clarity.
Rereads told stories of depth rather than stagnation. Gaps became visible without judgment. Reading seasons began to make sense in context rather than feeling inconsistent or scattered.
Today, this system informs how I design curriculum, approach learning and development, and think about inclusion beyond slogans. It reminds me that equity work doesn’t always show up loudly. Often, it lives in the quiet decisions we make repeatedly over time.
Sometimes the most radical thing you can do is build a system that helps you notice.
(I’ve documented this project as a case study in my portfolio for those curious about the design process behind it.)
