Your daily routine is... well, daily, right? You should be a pro at blasting through mornings by now. So why is it so tough to manage your a.m. minutes and get out of the house on time? If you're chronically late to work or school, try this time management tool: A timed playlist.
This life-hacking infographic is full of tons of productivity and life efficiency tips. Our favorite, though, uses your iPod or home music player to keep your mornings on track:
Make your playlist exactly as long as you have to get ready in the morning. Go from chill songs to more energetic. You'll be able to tell how you are doing on time by the currently playing song.
Once you figure out how long you take to get ready in the morning (it's important to be honest with yourself here, and definitely stay away from the snooze button), it's easy to create a morning playlist in iTunes.
Open up iTunes on your machine and click on File > New Smart Playlist. The smart playlist can choose songs for you based on a number of different specs—artist, play frequency, or year released—but we're going to use the Time feature.
By selecting a time range close to three minutes and telling the Smart Playlist wizard to pick ten songs from our library, we can create a playlist that's roughly 30 minutes long. YMMV (that's Your Math May Vary), just adjust the song length window or number of songs on the playlist.
Turn this playlist up at 7:00 and you can be out the door by 7:30, every time. The songs even become benchmarks for you; you'll know you need to be out of the shower before "Rolling in the Deep" fades out.
It's a great tool for kids, too. Your 8-year-old might not know that it's 7:23, but he'll know he needs to be out the door before the end of "Forget You."
Via: Daily Infographic
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I definitely need to work on my daily playlists! Oh the time, the time...
As you tear out of the house, I suggest the great Sam and Dave song, " Hold on, I'm coming."
Reminds me of when I was a kid! I knew that I had to be completely ready to go by the time Sonic was over, or I wouldn't get to watch Exo Squad. When Exo Squad ended, it was time to leave. So, that made me giggle, which made me read this, and now I'm all psyched to try it.
Great idea! Never thought of that! And iTunes gives a lot more possibilities to specify the playlist beside the time aspect. Awesome!! :) Love to have music structuring my day!
This is a much better idea that our current arrangement - the 16 yr old shouts at us every 5 minutes, urging us to hurry (who heard of a 16 yr old so anxious to get to school?)
I sometimes use a similar method to clean the house. I pick a benchmark song on the playlist, and by the time that song starts it is time for me to move on to the next room. I give myself 3-4 songs per room. It keeps me from getting bogged down in one area too long and I can get my house clean in about an hour.
Lazy_Lurker, that was me when I was a teenager! I was surly, I was entirely too melodramatic, I slacked on my homework and smarted off to teachers...but I would move heaven and earth to get to school on time!
I do the same thing, but with podcasts! I subscribe to the daily news podcast from the BBC and start it up while I'm brushing my teeth. I almost never reach the end of the podcast, so I know that if I'm hearing some of the last stories for the day, I had better get a move on!!!
Awesome idea!
And PS: what phone is that?
NM... HTC Radar I believe.
@lazylurker: I used to do the same thing because 1) i wanted to preserve my perfect attendance in high school, because there was pizza involved and 2) the time before classes started was the only chance i had at school to hit on a girl who wasn't in any of my honor's classes.
Ha, Zhahira, I'm much the same, though much lower tech. I use my clock radio and NPR. I can snooze/doze through the first ten minutes and the economic news, must leave bed once it switches to national news. Gotta be out of the house by the time the local stuff is finished, or I'll miss the bus. It's weird how the change in broadcaster voices motivates me.
Guess that only works if you're waking up at the same time every weekday morning...
THEWAVELIFE: nice phone identification; it is indeed the HTC Radar.
Oh I love this idea! I can snooze for hours. And a playlist would really spare my husband from hearing the snooze alarm over, and over and over...
What a great idea! I definitely have a tendency to dawdle and would very much like a more subtle way of knowing* I'm on-track in the morning.