Productivity Hack: Pavlov’s Playlist
When do you feel most productive?
I feel most productive after when I’ve been creating art or DIY projects or my magic morning routine, but I can boost my productivity when I’m feeling low energy with a little hack.
ADHD Hack: Themed Playlists
I’ve written before about how good habits compound. For me, that started with a regular morning routine. I created a yoga playlist to keep the vibe right, and then I noticed that as I moved through the same sequence daily, I would do the same poses during the same songs. If one of those songs populated on a suggested playlist outside of this time, it would feel strange hearing the song and not striking a pose.
I realized I was on to something.
First, I made a playlist for painting. I recently wrote about my burnout cure, a cleansing ritual with a playlist to focus my intention on self love and preservation.
One day, I was unmotivated to clean, and I decided to make a themed playlist, full of songs about messes, cleaning, and being house proud.
Who’s Pavlov & What’s he got to do with it?
Ivan Pavlov was a Russian physiologist who used dogs for behavioral experiments.
We can use his findings on classical conditioning to apply to ourselves, too. Sometimes it’s hard to push ourselves to complete tasks, no matter how much we want to do them. One way is though conditioning ourselves to do a task when we hear a certain cue.
Cleaning Playlist
- So Fresh, So Clean – Outkast
- My House Chill Mix – Elderbrook
- Housework – The B-52’s
- Clean Up Your Own Backyard – Elvis Presley
- Doin’ it Right – Daft Punk
- Messy – Quavo, Takeoff
- Clean – Incubus
- Mr. Clean – Yung Gravy
- New Crib – Piff Marti
- Mess- Lil Wayne
- Marie Antoinette – Qveen Herby
- My House – Flo Rida
- Good Life – Kanye West, T-Pain
- Wash – Bob Iver
- Washing Dishes – Jack Johnson
- Wipe Me Down – Boozie Badazz, Webbie, Foxx
- Cleaning Windows – Van Morrison
- House Cleaning – Mavado
- Our House – Madness
- Home – Jack Johnson
- Cleaning Apartment – Clint Mansell, Kronos Quartet
- Home – Edward Sharp & the Magnetic Zeros
- Feels Like Home – Drew Holcombe
- Home – Phillip Phillips
- Back Home – Andy Grammer
- Buy Dirt – Jordan Davis, Luke Bryan
- Fine by Me – Andy Grammer
- Takin’ Care of Business – Bachmann-Turner Overdrive
- Roses – Outkast
- No Scrubs – TLC
- Stay Clean – Motörhead
- Cleanup Time – John Lennon
- Ass Back Home – Gym Class Heroes, Neon Hitch
- Coming Home – Diddy, Skylar Grey
- Dust – Parquet Courts
- What I Got – Sublime
- Dirty Laundry – Bitter:Sweet
- Dirty Laundry-Heavy Load – Laura Silberberg Skratch Bastid, Afiara Quartet
- Dirty Laundry – Eagles
- Clean Up Woman – Betty Wright
- Dirrty – Christina Aguilera, Redman
- Dirty Diana – Michael Jackson
- Dirty Little Secret – The All-American Rejects
- Dirt Off Your Shoulder – JAY-Z
- MY HOUSE – Beyoncé
What do you think?
My teen son thinks this is absurd, and that this “isn’t how playlists are supposed to work” because they don’t have a similar genre, only a similar theme. Months after I began this practice, I found I was not alone: a writer for the New York Times shared a 20-minute cleaning playlist. I liked few of the songs and found many of them to not be uptempo enough for me to keep my energy levels up.
[…] that bring a warmth to my chest like a freshly brewed tea. I’ve turned myself into one of Pavlov’s dogs through intentional playlists for specific activities. I use the power of environment to reduce friction for activities I want to influence myself to do […]
[…] routines in place through magical mornings when I stumbled upon this book about ritual. In my Pavlov’s Playlists post I wrote how my morning routine slowly developed through the playlist I employed. That playlist now […]