Every month I create a Spotify playlist to track new music that I discover and find interesting.
I’ve been following this monthly ritual since 2012, and I think of it as a sort of music diary.
This is a great way to organize new music, but more importantly, I’ve discovered some unexpected benefits from this sort of regular self-expression.
Sometimes, I’ll make it a week or two into a month with an empty playlist. Once I notice, I can’t help but feel obligated to somehow find time to add some new tracks and inevitably my playlist never ends up empty. Even if I only add a few songs in a month, the fact that it’s not empty means something.
This psychological motivation seems closely related to the Zeigarnik Effect, where researchers have found a natural tendency to finish what we start and experience dissonance otherwise.
The consistency of my monthly playlists tends to correspond very closely with my overall mental health.
For instance, the times when I realize that my monthly playlist is empty always coincides with rough patches in my life. It’s the times when I’m down & out while going through a breakup or a tough transition — when I found myself with more free time than usual — that I empirically seem to let my current playlists wither.
In an unexpected twist, I’ve found that the times when I’m really productive and on top of my game — even though I’m generally super busy — I always seem to find the time to keep my playlist for the month going strong.
I suppose this follows the natural rhythm that’s expected in life, but it’s only when I started looking at my monthly playlists after years of doing this that I started to take them as a more serious reflection of my mental health over time, and ultimately, as a diary in a sense.
Every once in awhile, I’ll throw on a random old playlist, say November 2013, and start reflecting on the time when this was the soundtrack to my life.
I listened to these same songs as I worked at an old job. I listened to them as I went to the gym. As I was preparing for a date with a girl who I would end up dating for the next three years. As I rode the subway back home.