How I Organize My Playlists to Connect Music and Moments in My Life
A few years ago I started to organize my music in a way that allowed me to capture the places in time where the music came to mind. It allows me to better remember moments tied to those songs. That gives each song a greater meaning.
I simply create playlists around times of the year as themes rather than by artist, genre, or any other way.
I began by building playlists for every month of the year but I found that some months the playlists were less populated than others. (For example, one December the playlist consisted of only nine songs.)
I then started to make each playlist bi-monthly, which populated each of them more. But it still didn’t feel quite right. It felt a bit too arbitrary. So I decided to make each playlist a seasonal affair.
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Here’s how my playlists are organized now:
- Winter: Songs from December, January, February
- Spring: Songs from March, April, May
- Summer: Songs from June, July, August
- Fall: Songs from September, October, November
I have done this for the past few years and whenever I play songs from any of those seasonal playlists I’m transported back to why I added that song to the mix in the first place. It’s often associated with hearing a song in a movie trailer, hearing a song in a restaurant or coffee shop, taking about “old” (read: 90s) music with my kids, and so on.
If you’ve been looking for a means to organize your playlists that connects music to moments of your life, I encourage you to give what I do a try. It really does change the whole listening experience in a beautiful way.
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Mike Vardy is a writer, productivity strategist, and the creator of TimeCrafting. He is the author of the upcoming book TimeCrafting: A Better Way to Get The Right Things Done. Mike is also renowned speaker and has taught productivity on CreativeLive, Skillshare, and LinkedIn Learning where his courses are among the most popular in the business category.
