30 Day Trial – Playing New Age Music During My Day Job

I suddenly realized yesterday that I always put on New Age music when I write for Cielem’el, but never for my day job (I still do supply chain management consulting to pay the bills). I’ve never been in the habit of having background noise while I’m working, and it just doesn’t occur to me to turn on any music or anything.I’ve always been one of those get up and get at it kind of people, and the next thing I know eight or ten hours have gone by and I’ve only stood up maybe once.

But a lot of things transformed for me at the same time in the fall of 2010. I used to get up at 5AM and go straight to work (literally, my office is right next door to my bedroom, after all) because I’m on California time and so many of my clients are on Eastern Time. But then in October, I started doing morning meditations. Instead of missing work really, I just got up earlier (now I’m up at 4:20AM every day.) And after the morning meditation, I usually get to write for a while before starting my day job. And when I write, I put on music. Not distracting music, but for some reason I like having it on when I’m writing.

And, seeing as I’m much happier when I’m writing, perhaps having music on during regular working hours will have an impact on my business day. If nothing else, it will either carry over some of my Cielem’el calm and energy to my day job, or it could have the reverse of bringing my day job stresses into my writing for Cielem’el. I’ll certainly be trying to avoid that reverse psychology.

I just did a piece on Music Therapy (there is also a follow-on piece on Music Therapy for Cancer/Medical Treatment in the Cielem’el Cancer Journal) where I recommended music as a calming mechanism for anxiety. Not that I’m necessarily anxious during business hours, but the stress level is definitely up at least a notch, you know?

I had music on most of today as a little trial to make sure I could catch the mute or pause in time to answer the phone, and it went ok except that I always forget to turn it back on.  I’ll have to make a more concerted effort at that, but otherwise this is a general experiment directly testing stress-reducing concepts of music therapy in the work place. I’ll let you know how it goes as time progresses.  🙂