Priming

As my ex-roommates will all too readily corroborate, I have a penchant for overplaying music. Perhaps this began in the dog days of dial-up, when downloading a song took a day and a half. Or perhaps this is the fault of radio deejays made me feel that it was okay to play the same song a few dozen times a day.

No matter the reason, I've realized a great benefit to overplaying music as I reacquaint myself with my old enemy iTunes. Since each song represents a day or sometimes (I'm sorry, Fazle) weeks of my life, listening to a song can take me take to a particular time. Much easier than a diary--and all it took was annoying everyone.

Now we can extend this concept to smells too--which I think are far better priming stimuli. Each week light a new scented candle, set a new desktop picture. When you want to relive last Thanksgiving? Break out the candle and open up iTunes. If applicable, burn a turkey. Et voila--laissez les bons temps rouler!