image credit: lifehacker.com

Since reading that Lifehacker article in 2012, I've developed this habit of having a morning playlist to listen to every morning while I prepare for work. It really helped in motivating myself to get out of bed right after hitting the alarm clock (no more snoozes!). Since all things we do are all out of habit, listening to that set of songs automatically sets my mind to just go wake up and start my day.

For almost three  years, I've been regularly refreshing my morning playlist every quarter, which means I was listening to the same set of songs for more or less 60 weekday mornings before reshuffling and creating a new one.


Since I've been doing this already for a long time, I have become more familiar with my own behavior and how I responded to the songs as the days went by. The trend is that I did not have any problem waking up and doing my morning routine for the first half of the quarter (heh that's some Math for you). By the end of the second month, I was getting sloppy and I tended to wake up minutes later and later in the morning. I was getting used to listening to the same set of songs, and the magic of listening to my favorite songs started to wear off.

Because of that pattern, I have decided to entirely scrap off this current process of constructing my morning playlist, and come up with a new set of rules for this routine.

I won't be using my Q1 2016 morning playlist for the rest of the quarter anymore. Instead, I'm constructing an entirely new playlist wherein I can add and remove songs anytime of the year! The playlist will still be composed of 15 songs, no more no less, because that's the typical number of tracks that will have a one-hour duration. That's usually how long it takes for me to prepare for everything in the morning. The playlist will now be more flexible. If I get to listen to a new song that I somehow learned to like, I'll add it up on the playlist. It's basically just maintaining a list of songs that still has the magic powers to boost my mood and power up my mornings so that I won't be late for work. :p

I somehow got this idea from Spotify's Discover Weekly playlist. This is a playlist consisting of fresh new tracks which Spotify refreshes weekly every Monday. This means you will be able to listen to a list of new tracks every week. This gimmick is effective to me because I am now actually looking forward to Mondays to go to this playlist and listen to the new set of songs added to it.