One of the least-utilized tools on my phone is the 'Playlist' feature for my music. I tend to listen to an entire album in one sitting, or, if I'm in the mood to switch between songs, I'm doing it manually.

Problem is, when I'm running, I'm limited to either listening to one album all the way through or an artist on random or something like that because I'm not taking my iPhone out of my pocket to play DJ.

So recently I tried mixing things up a bit.

I added a lot of new songs this year to my iPhone that I really enjoy, but that I haven't been able to listen to while I run because they're the only songs by those artists on my phone.

For example - recently I was going for a run and I was scrolling through my music to figure out what to listen to. Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros' Home looked appealing, as did Jim James' A New Life. But I knew I wasn't going to have the time to switch songs while I was running...and an added complication is I run with my Nike Running app so I'm pretty much committed to whatever music I start a run with - it plays whatever album I'm currently playing, and I'd have to pause the app if I wanted to switch music. (I've toyed with the idea of putting one really good 3-minute song on loop and hearing it 10 times during a run...I wonder if that would work.)

Anyway, a couple of weeks ago I finally took the time before my run to play around with my music. I found the Playlists button, created one (it was ridiculously easy - I can't believe I hadn't done it before - I'd only created one Playlist before, on my computer, which I then downloaded to my phone), and ran to the 10-song creation. It lasted for about 40 minutes. I suppose if I want to increase my distance I can just add some songs on any given day, but I'm thinking I'm probably going to want to switch up some of the music.

The music I used this time around has a definite '365 New Things In 2013' feel to it. Who knows what other new music the rest of the year will bring - I might have another playlist for another run before the end of the year.