You Can't Stop the Beat!

Over the last 12 summers, I have worked on the Leadership Team at a sleep-away camp in the Catskill mountains. There, we follow a daily schedule of activities and events, and it is important for our campers to be on-time. We continued to notice that our campers really struggled to be at our morning line-up by the 8:10am start time despite the infamous bugle sounding at 7:45am. “Should we wake the camp earlier?” “Do we need to put clocks in every bunk?” Instead, we determined that we could use music to help motivate our campers and staff to better manage their time. Now, in the mornings, we play “You Make My Dreams (Come True)” by Daryl Hall & John Oates. Our campers know that when they hear the song start, they need to begin leaving their bunks. They also know that they need to be seated at line-up by the time the song ends. Like magic, our campers were suddenly on-time for line-up… and they were smiling while they sang along to the upbeat tune!

While setting a timer or watching the clock can be effective time management tools, music can be a fun and engaging way to manage your time. Instead of asking Siri to “set a timer for 15 minutes,” consider these musical options:

Create a Playlist: Spend a few minutes developing a playlist for the different parts of your day. For example, your Morning Playlist might be a set of songs that last for 20 minutes. You will start to “tell time” through these tunes, and you might even feel a little bit of the beat in your mood each morning. 

Count the Choruses: Determine that you will listen to X number of songs before you take a break in your HW for the afternoon or that you will brush your teeth each evening to the tune of your favorite song. You will start to associate these tasks with the tune and become much better at “telling time” without a timer or clock!