Where/when do you listen to music?

I used to rarely listen to music. In the car, for sure, and then sometimes while running/exercising. But I never listened to it while walking to work or riding the train, even though I wondered why so many people I would see walking around in Chicago had headphones on. A lot of people do!

I asked for wireless headphones for Christmas, in hopes of avoiding this while running:

I know that doesn’t look like me messing around with the headphones, but it indeed, is me.

I received the Plantronics BackBeat 906 wireless headphones, and decided to experiment with listening to music on the train and while walking to/from work. Surprisingly, listening to music really pepped me up on my walk to work! I found myself arriving in a good mood! Imagine that!

It actually shouldn’t be a surprise. There are countless studies out there about how music energizes us, helps us exercise better (it can reduce your perception of pain and help with your tempo), and helps us get certain tasks done more efficiently when listening to certain music.*

Do you purposefully use music to energize you?

I always feel like I am behind on music, because I read blogs where the authors are really in to music, but I basically just listen to whatever is on the radio and some of my favorite “blast from the past” songs. I don’t research music much, or know what is going on with current trends. I am not interested in new artists. And even though we have whole-house audio, I don’t take very good of advantage of it. Me so lame.

I should mention, in case anyone is ever interested in purchasing the wireless headphones that I have, that the bluetooth adapter is not reliable. At all. It broke within the first day I had it, then I got a new one, and it worked intermittently. So, we went past the bluetooth adapter route and bought a micro SD card for my phone, so I can use the music player and bluetooth from my phone to connect to the headphones (which work to answer calls too). So far it works, but skips (or does something that sounds similar to skipping) when I walk. It should be interesting to see how it works when I am running.

*Studies say that listening to certain types of music help people perform tasks better that they are already good at doing, but that music can distract from tasks we are not good at. I don’t know about you, but I cannot read/work and listen to music at the same time.