When you work from home, be it keeping a blog, creating a podcast, or managing client work – silence can be deafening. Many people find music a great motivational tool. It keeps them on track, and the tempo of the music can even help your work process along too. Headphones will also help drown out any other background noise. You Playlist Can Change Your Life author state that next to the sense of smell, music is the fastest way to change your mood. The effects are evident within minutes too. So that makes it a pretty powerful tool that you should have in your box. Amazon Music vs Spotify is up to you, you might even prefer iTunes – work with what you like best. 

So put the power of music to work, by creating a range of playlists to help you get through your daily tasks. 

Love 

No, not a love song, but rather songs that you love. You might be tempted to just listen to your streaming services curated playlist, but if there are songs on there, you don’t enjoy then that is a wasted 3-5 minutes of your time. So think about the songs you love, most people have a mix of genres, everything from jazz to mumble rap. When you have written them down, see if there are groups of songs that will work together. 

Try to go with songs that make you feel inspired, give you chills, or that you can’t help bopping your head along to. 

Take your time when you start this list, think about your old favorite movies, current TV series even adverts – for the golden oldies, and things you thought you forgot. 

Tests

Once you have your songs all in order, it is time to test them out. If you know that you need to get some content written but have limited time, look for the most uptempo playlist and start with that. You know the moment you get into that sweet spot, the work is flowing the ideas are coming thick and fast make a note of the song that kicks it off. You can then replicate this day after day. It might sound like you’d get bored of a particular playlist, but actually, you’re training your brain to kick into work mode when it hears these songs. Which is why having a few for different tasks is really helpful. 

Comfort Zone

Like most things in life, we tend to stick with what we are comfortable with. But it can be better to get outside of your comfort zone when it comes to the music that you listen to. For example, if you tend to stick to pop tunes, you might like to change it up and go for something classical, if that is a bit too much for you, then you might want to opt for chillout tunes. They don’t tend to have vocals, so you don’t have to try and not sing along if you find it distracts you. 

Chronotype

The type of work times that you work best in will help you choose the music. If you are a lark aka a morning person, then chances are you have a lot of get up and go. So upbeat music is probably up your street. There are also ‘slumps’ during the working day, and while some people try to push through them, you’d do better to tackle a different task and change the music to match. 

Inspiration

Here are a few suggestions for the titles and types of playlists that are great:

• Daily commute: Big, bold, bouncy tunes are usually the ticket. Thing Rhianna, David Zowie, and Zedd
• Coffee time: These are traditionally break times, aid for a podcast or some daily calm from the Calm app
• Focus time: Try music without vocals. This allows your brain to focus totally on what you are creating
• Research tasks: Naturescapes work really well here. They are relaxing and require no effort for you. 
• Power: If you have a presentation or something big you have to tackle, have a playlist dedicated to those tunes, and make it a habit to listen to it before everything big. Those songs will give you an extra dose of confidence. 

Spend some time curating your working day music, for a more productive day.

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