The reason why you are not listening to what you want when the mood strikes is because you can’t get to it fast enough. Whether you know it or not, you are drowning in listening choices. Audio options are plentiful. Often times, the time it takes to browse songs, podcasts, or audiobooks is the thing that keeps us from listening when we decided we wanted to listen.
I know I’ve thought about putting on some soft background music for the family dinner, but with just two or three minutes between when I think about it and when the timer goes off, I’ve given up. Creating the perfect playlist isn’t difficult, but it can take a while. The same goes for finding a new podcast episode or audiobook that matches the mood as well as a particular listening duration. It’s not difficult, it just takes time.
Take these few steps now to make sure you can listen faster in the future.
Create playlists for many moods
When it’s time to dance, cook, study, or sleep, you want the music to queue up and ready to go.
Having playlists with a wide variety of moods is key to following those moments quickly, and not just launching the first playlist you find that matches your keyword. The best way to do that is to add songs and albums to different playlists while adding them to your music library at the same time.
If a song doesn’t fit in an existing playlist, consider creating a new song about how the song makes you feel or the time when you’d like to listen to it in the future.
Making dozens of playlists is great for very specific moods, but consider making some very broad ones too. For example, creating playlists called ‘Morning’, ‘Afternoon’ and ‘Evening’ is a way to always have a selection of songs on hand. “Lying Down”, “Up and About” and “Blood Pumping” is another way of broadly grouping songs and covering different listening moments that will come in the future.
While you’re at it, you should also delete unnecessary playlist names. Having five lists all called ‘Good Songs New’ will cause indecision and uncertainty later on. You can also use emoji in playlist titles if this makes them easier to spot.
Backup of podcast episodes
The great thing about listening to podcasts is that there is one for every topic of interest. There are millions, from big budget stories to casual conversations between friends. The volume of content is great, but it can also be a curse.
I personally usually listen to weekly tech news podcasts. The ones I listen to the most are usually between 45 and 90 minutes. This is the perfect length for my daily run and helps me kill two birds with one stone. There have been times when I didn’t have new episodes available, and it actually stopped me from running that day.
To combat this problem, I’ve saved a few episodes of shows that I’ve unsubscribed from. There are just too many good podcasts and not enough time. From time to time if I lose the battle with my listening queue, I opt out. It’s nothing personal, but it helps keep my sanity.
But instead of deleting shows that I’ve opted out of in my podcast player, I keep a few episodes of those shows so I always have one available to listen to even if my normal episodes run out for a week. The ones I keep as backups are evergreen episodes of Revisionist History, Hidden brain, and the TED Radio Hour.
Emergency noises
There are times when you just need sound. Whether it’s an approaching deadline or just unexpected stress moments, sometimes having background noise helps. Honestly, in these cases, it doesn’t matter what the sound is – it just needs to be one tap away.