Nightowl The 40 Piece Challenge has been around for a few years, as a way to improve sight reading skills - here is a link to an article which outlines how the concept began:
https://elissamilne.com/2015/02/04/where-did-the-40-piece-challenge-begin/On a previous thread people discussed their ideas and approaches to tackle this challenge - link attached:
https://forum.pianotell.com/d/1418-new-year-new-approach-40-pieces-challenge-2025I think that the challenge is manageable provided that the pieces are at a level which aligns closely with a player's existing skill set (or one grade lower). The target number of pieces seems feasible for beginners/intermediate players, as it equates to learning one piece every 9 days. However, this target may not be suitable for advanced players who are tackling complex pieces to pass exams or perform in a professional setting, as they may be unwilling or unable to commit further practice time. Those players might like to tweak things slightly so as to make the target less onerous - perhaps a target of 25 pieces would be manageable - one easy piece every 2 weeks could be a welcome distraction from stretch pieces and is still likely to reap benefits. So, set your own target, choose your pieces and plot your path to sight reading success!
This thread is somewhere to post monthly updates about progress with the challenge. I aim to list titles/composers of the pieces I have played each month, along with a running total. I look forward to seeing how everyone gets on with this challenge and I hope that this thread will also provide useful information for other beginners looking for easy pieces to play. Good luck everyone.
I know that for some people this approach is apparently useful and that's fine and they should do it, but as stated in this post I see what I would call several misconceptions.
I assume this idea is mostly geared towards beginners or low intermediates because beyond that I don't think any pianist ever learns anywhere near 40 pieces a year or even 25 pieces a year. I am guessing most of these pieces for people who do this challenge are very short, one to three pages. So starting with these assumptions I don't see this. approach as more than minimally useful for site reading improvement. To improve sight reading, one should be spending at least 5 or 10 minutes each day doing it, so that would be more like 365 pieces per year. It is true that learning one short piece around every 9 days will help with general reading skills which is related to site reading skill but not exactly the same.
The best way to approve sight reading is to do a lot of it. And the best way to do a lot of it is to choose pieces one likes and wants to sight read. Most of the best site readers never thought they were practicing sight reading although they did a lot of it . There is nothing wrong with reading some pieces at one level or even above one's level as long as the piece is not too far above one's level.
Even at what I would call the intermediate level some pieces could be 5 to 10 pages long so there's no way someone practicing an hour a day would usually learn 40 in a year. I don't think choosing pieces below one's present level just so one can get up to 40 pieces per year is a good idea.
(for the record, I'm not doing this challenge either for reasons entirely unrelated to the ones you mentioned, but I'm still very happy it's here for the ones who do enjoy it - I love to read and listen to others submit pieces on a regular basis)
Your description cracked me up. Seriously, though, I liked it. I listened to it a few times. Personally, I didn't find it at all boring. 
