The Podcast Habit: I'm Removing My Music Habit to Save Time

By Alifia Afflatus

First published in Homeschooling Teen website

The Concern

Lately, I begin to realize that the reason why my earphone disfunctions once in two months is because I’m addicted to music-listening. As a reminder, this personal essay is not about promoting any antipathism to music. It strictly highlights the habit and not what the habit is. So the thing is, my tremendous music dream ceased about three years ago, when I didn’t want to go to Nashville anymore to be a country singer. But my music-listening habit stayed still.

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Listening to music is never likely abnormal. As from portable devices meddled modern human’s lifestyle, people – in many spots of the town – were listening to music. My habit started from gagging my earhole along the car ride, public events, even when I buried my head on the pillow, Blake Shelton songs lyrics kept jamming in my head. As an online schooler, subsequent to brief reading of academic books, I could also lay down to jam again.

From (my) religious perspective, it becomes sinful. From self-leadership perspective, I poorly optimalize the time management. Afresh, this does not direct to the music for everyone has their own personal need and choice themselves, and if reader is a musician, my purpose is not to criticize your talents, nor to blame this object. I am criticizing how my own self dismisses valuable times in my 24 hours a day, deducting the time into hours sooner. Normal weekdays are becoming hotfoot, as if I concern how time scurries summarily, meanwhile productivity and achievements are below prospect.

I experienced crying for some serious reasons; next year’s varsity enrollment – while I dubiously felt brutally unprepared. I finished the text book materials already, but I never studied math, and I felt like I did too little to deserve a scholarship, or decent university approval letter. After all, an Asia Pacific based youth organization selected me to be a delegate in an international Sustainable Development Goals camp in Phillippines, and to chagrining myself, I realized I couldn’t complete the tuition fee despite the organizer offered a 50% scholarship. So the concern became consecutive.

“You have three months to prepare.” Amongst the long sentences my parents said, that is the point I choose to quote.

Since then, until now, I also choose to quote it to steadily remind myself, that three months can be a longer time than I ever imagined. If I…

Replace My Habit

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What eventually made me feel unmotivated? The list incorporated social media and gadget distraction (including the ‘music habit’) and lack of varied school projects. Periodically, this is inevitable for online schoolers.

As the condemned boredom became inevitable, so did the university enrollment period, also mentioning the long future ahead, I pushed myself to state it is determined by now. I questioned myself, “what would my next step be?”

I never decided a fresh idea until a car ride somewhere – obviously accompanied by music plugged in my ear – began to inspire. I contemplated about what supposed to happen if I’m not listening to music along this car ride. It was approximately an hour, and to transform it into a briefly productive time is not inept at all. Again, I reminded myself when do I usually plug my ear with earphone. Accumulating all of these made such a big number of opportunity to perform more valuable things. There were so much time I apparently wasted, and since then, I refused to do so. Because… “hey, how about replacing the music with podcasts?”

It never had been a such idea before. But today, it is my new habit, which improves productivity and also gaining my knowledge. I never thought listening to podcasts would be fun – as I thought it would be another series of surfeit.

But now, I prove it is. Back to that time, I finally decided to download Google Podcast, and discovered that there were lots of things to entertain me, and fill my time with worthwhile values. I began subscribing to historical and theological lecture series, daily newsstands, and self-development podcasts to hear when I’d like to attain some talk on the topic of leadership, communication, and any other important life skills.

In a laconic period of time, it finally becomes my peer, my new favorite habit that entertains and improves myself in the same time. It’s not that hard, to just replace the songs with speech, talkshows and lectures that make me feel a number of degrees more prepared. In short, it helps launching my optimism. It is simple yet worth it; just by removing an unsustainable habit, I am also removing loads of my concerns. []