There’s so much we do in a given week, so many decisions we make, and so many things happen passively to us. So often, we don’t notice any of it.

A huge part of my life is music, but it’s something I’m never really tuned into. It’s just become such a mundane part of me, probably from the overexposure I’ve had over the years.

Well this week, I decided to be more in-tune with my music listening habits, to really understand how something as passive as putting on a song can impact me.

So, for seven days, I tracked the exact times I was listening to music, where I was, what I was doing, how I was listening to it, what genre I was listening to and how I felt during.

After tracking the data, I decided to visualize it with music! I made the infographic look like a music composition. Each score is a day, each note an hour. Any rests represent an hour I didn’t listen to any music. Any hour that has a note just means I listened to music at some point within that hour. The notes represent where I was listening, color represents genre, the symbols next to the notes represent my mood, and the place on the staff shows how I was listening. You can see a more complete breakdown in the key below.

What did I find?

• I listen to a lot more music on days I have work. I worked Monday and Friday of the week I tracked, and those are the days I listened the most. That’s because a lot of days, I’ll just put on music while I write scripts. You can see other days, almost the only times I’d listen to music was driving. Speaking of which…
• I primarily listen to music when I’m driving. I do wish I listened more to music at home, especially on my vinyl player– which I was surprised to have not listened to once this whole week. But, I usually reach more for tv or YouTube when I’m at home and have free time.
• I hear a lot of music out and about, like in a restaurant, for example. I think it’s easy to tune out music at stores and restaurants since it’s always there, and you’re usually preoccupied with eating or talking, but this week certainly made me more cognizant of it.
• It’s unclear if music does have an impact on my mood. As you can see, my morning starts unsettled. That’s honestly how a lot of my days start. While my mood did improve as the day went on, it’s unclear if that’s the music or not.

This made for a cool experiment to better understand my music listening habits and how they affect me. Making this visual was also a fun challenge for me– trying to find a unique and interesting but easily comprehensible way to see how I listen took some thought. Hopefully that’ll help with sharing stories for years to come.