My musical workflow

OK, want another example of Brett's Way of Thinking? In the car on the way to work I started to think about how I need to now work on talking slower. I speak more clearly now, but I swear people ask me to repeat myself more often than ever before (no, I don't think it is because I am more aware of it). I believe it just has to do with me being able to stand to talk more slowly since I really have focued on speaking clearly without over-enunciating, not speaking at a good pace.

Anyway, this reminded me that I need to still work on my posture. Problem is that I don't think about it. That led to thinking about how I could remind myself without getting to the point of glossing over the reminders. I use Post-Its frequently so I thought maybe one of those picture holders that is just stiff wires with alligator clips springing up from a block would work well for holding Post-Its reminding of dates and thing I need to be thinking about.

But the staleness of it leading me to gloss over it made me think maybe that wouldn't work. How about leaving a note that I moved every time I read it? That would definitely prevent staleness since it would be in a different place every time. Trick would be making it so that it could be put almost anywhere to remind me.

That led to me thinking about workflow. I sometimes think I don't have much of a workflow and that it could stand to be better. While everyone thinks I am this hyper-organized person, I personally don't think that I am and thus I am always on the lookout for ways to be more productive.

Anyway, I realized I have one workflow that works well; my music playlist workflow. I am, for some unknown reason to me, into making playlists. I really enjoy coming up with some theme, combing my music library for songs that fit that theme, and then ordering them so that the playlist sounds good and has a good pace.

Included in my playlist are lists that are indefinitely under construction. Having a leading asterisk, I add to these playlists constantly because they are meant for random play.

To make sure all music has a chance to get sorted into these random play lists, I have a smart playlist in iTunes that lists all songs added to my collection since a certain date. When I sort, I go through to a certain date and then adjust the smart playlist to list songs past that date. This way no songs are overlooked.

The workflow works out rather well. With the smart playlist keeping track of what I need to sort I don't have to keep track of that. And with a simple prefix notation I don't have to try to remember what playlists I want to sort into and they are kept at the top, making it easy to sort into quickly.

Don't know why I bother to share that with everyone. =)