Rewarding music

I love music. I was challenged in my twenties to start listening to self-improvement cassette tapes (kind of like MP3s but physical). I was torn because listening to these self-improvement audios was taking away from my music listening. 

Over the years I listened to more and more self-development audios on different platforms (cassette tapes, CDs, MP3s, apps, etc). I've heard that listening to two to three personal improvement audios a day was the minimum to have a positive impact on your performance. If you wanted to have a dramatic impact, I've heard you should listen to five to ten a day. 

That got me to thinking. I wondered how many days it would take me to listen to 100 audios. I set up a tracking sheet (scoreboard) and started tracking how many I was listening to. Over a four year period I was able to reduce how long it took me to listen to 100 audios from three weeks down to 8 days. It was a time of intense learning and growth. 

Since then I've found Rascal Radio, which I now recommend in my coaching. I'm back down to about two to three weeks to listen to 100 audios, but the biggest thing was the habit I developed. One of the tricks I used to keep myself accountable and reward myself for listening to personal development audios was to set a daily minimum of audios and then reward myself with listening to music.

So I would listen to audios while getting ready in the morning. I would listen to audios on my commute to work. I would put one earphone in at work and listen while I was working. I would be listening all the time. If I reached my listening goal for the day, I would reward myself by listening to music on the commute home. If I didn't reach my goal, I would listen to personal development on my drive home. Let's just say that I was often listening to music on the drive home.

Often people say they couldn't imagine removing certain things from their life (tasty food, TV shows, theater movies, etc). Instead of looking at it as something you are removing from your life, turn it around and make it a reward for something you know you should do. This can be a powerful way to increase your motivation for actions you know you should take and decrease how often you participate in those rewards (which in some cases can be good in and of themselves). Not only that, as you participate in those rewards less often and only after reaching a goal, it tends to increase the value of those rewards in your life.

 

 using music as a reward for listening to self development audios

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