Hello. I’m Alex Knepper. I’m your friendly neighborhood writer. Here, I like to talk about the writing process, the things I’m consuming that keep me inspired, and hopefully you get inspired too.
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Spotify has changed my life. That is not an exaggeration. I listen to music for fun, but more now than ever, music and audio have become an increasingly important part of my life.
I use meditation podcasts to balance my energy. I use sleep podcasts and ocean waves playlists to help me sleep at night. I find niche playlists to listen to while I play video games, read books, or clean. I curate my own playlists for books that I am writing.
Most recently, I’ve been using playlists to manage my time.
Here is my problem: If I dedicate myself to completing a project— tidying the house, pulling weeds, walking the dogs, writing, journaling, etc. I never feel like I have spent enough time on that project.
I could spend three hours writing and still feel agitated later because I didn’t “finish” the project. Part of the reason why I feel this way is because I actually have no idea how long I spent working on it.
To fix this, I started setting timers— 20 minutes to tidy up the kitchen. 45 minutes doing yard work. 45 minutes to write. 20 minutes of physical therapy. Etc.
But I got tired of setting all these timers.
This all changed when I discovered Beautiful Chorus. One day I set a timer for 30 minutes to journal and I put on a random “Calming Music” playlist on Spotify. From there I found this song:
I ended up loving this as background journaling music.
I clicked through to find the album and discovered that it was an entire album dedicated to calming meditation music that moved through all of your Chakras. And to my utter delight— the album is about 30 minutes long— about how long I like to journal for.
Then it clicked.
Instead of setting a timer for a certain activity, I could use music that is perfectly suited to that activity, that occupies my preferred timeframe, and use that as a timer.
Mind Blown 🤯
When the album is over, then the activity is over. Knowing it is 30 minutes long, I know concretely that I have journaled for 30 minutes. I don’t have to set a timer, I don’t have a jarring alarm going off— the album simply ends and then I move along with my day.
My preferred routine is to: meditate, journal, and then write. So I would plug in my 5-minute meditation into Spotify, listen to that, then search for the Beautiful Chorus album, journal to that, then put on a random writing playlist and write to that.
Do you see the problem? It’s nearly as finicky as using the timer. And I don’t have a clear dedicated time block for the writing chunk of my routine.
At the front end, I have my 5-minute meditation, the entire Resonance Meditation album by Beautiful Chorus (33 minutes), and after that a 17-minute classical music album for writing.
So all I have to do is fire up my playlist (called Morning Routine) and then move through each phase without having to mess around with my phone. I know exactly what activity I am supposed to do as the music shifts, and I have already decided on my desired time for each activity. I know all together it is 50 minutes long. I know that I can get 3 pages of journaling done in 30 minutes, and about 200 words of prose written in 17. I know that if I complete this activity if I don’t do any more “productive” writing for the rest of the day I have my bases covered. Plus I am sort of creating a Pavlovian response to the audio.
I know that when Resonance Meditations is playing then I must be journaling. I know that when that specific classical album (Titled Rose Garden by Lily Honigberg and Sonia Bize) is playing, I am writing.
The problem is that I cannot listen to these audios if I'm not doing those activities. They are sort of ruined for me on a casual listening level. But that’s sort of the point, isn’t it? To hijack my brain into being hyperproductive and associating a sound with a certain activity— if that activity is the goal then it’s fine by me.
Naturally, I began to make more playlists for other parts of my day:
What if I want to write later in the day but I don’t want the whole 50-minute meditation/journal/writing routine. Easy: now I have a 15-minute “Quick Writing Sesh” playlist to help me do that.
What if I want to optimize how much time I spend getting ready in the morning: no problem. I have a 25-minute GRWM playlist. And the cool thing is: if the playlist has the same music, and you do it every day then I know that if “Bejeweled” by Taylor Swift starts playing, I’m getting to the end of my allotted time and I need to wrap it up. If I was just using a timer I would just be anxiously checking it every couple of minutes to see how much time I have left. This idea works for all of the playlists that I have been utilizing.
I find that this method helps free up my mind a little, and I don’t have to be completely attached to my phone while doing my activity, and goshes does the timer alarm agitate me.
How can you use this timer method in your own life? Let me know in the comments!
Xx
Alex
P.S.— Here’s a list of all the playlists I’ve made for productivity for your convenience xx