I have over forty playlists on Spotify. Not the auto-generated ones - the ones I built by hand, track by track, over years. There's one for early mornings. One for deep work. One for cooking. One for long drives. One called "2am" that I've never listened to before 2am and never will. Each one is a tiny statement of intent. Each one says something about who I'm, what I value, and how I hear the world. And each one took more thought than most people would consider reasonable for a collection of songs.
I've spent more time agonising over the tracklist of a playlist than I have on some professional presentations. Should this track come before or after that one? Does this transition work? Is the energy arc right - does it build and release in the right places? Is there a moment two-thirds of the way through where the whole thing lifts? These aren't casual decisions. These are curatorial decisions. And they reveal something I've only recently started to articulate: a playlist is a portfolio. Both are acts of curation that express taste, judgment, and identity.
The curation parallel
Think about what goes into a good playlist. You start with a feeling or a context - something you want the music to do. Then you select tracks that serve that purpose. But here's where it gets interesting: you don't just pick good songs. You pick songs that work together. A playlist of the ten best songs of all time would be a terrible playlist because the transitions would be jarring, the energy would be all over the place, and there would be no narrative arc. The individual quality of each track is necessary but not sufficient. What matters is how they relate to each other.
This is exactly how a portfolio works. You don't just put your best work in and call it done. You select work that tells a story together. You think about the order - what does the viewer see first? How does each piece flow into the next? Is there a consistent thread that runs through the whole thing without being monotonous? A portfolio, like a playlist, isn't a collection. It is a composition. The individual pieces are the notes. The arrangement is the music.
Most people get this wrong in both contexts. They create playlists by dumping every song they like into a folder. They create portfolios by showcasing every project they've ever done. Both approaches fail for the same reason: they prioritise breadth over coherence. They say "look how much I like" instead of "look how I think." And the second statement is infinitely more interesting than the first.
What gets left out
The hardest part of making a playlist is deciding what to leave out. There are always tracks that you love - genuinely love, play on repeat, feel in your bones - that don't belong in a particular playlist. Not because they're bad but because they don't serve the purpose of this specific collection. The late-night house track doesn't belong in the Sunday morning playlist no matter how good it is. The ambient piece doesn't belong in the running playlist no matter how beautiful it is. Leaving them out isn't a judgment of their quality. It's a judgment of their fit.
This is the single most transferable skill between playlist-making and portfolio-building. The ability to look at something you're proud of, something you genuinely believe is excellent, and say "not this one, not here." That restraint is what separates a curated selection from a dump. It's what separates taste from accumulation. And it's agonising every single time because you're making a choice about identity. You're saying: this is who I'm in this context. And that means accepting that you aren't everything, everywhere, all at once.
I have projects I'm proud of that aren't in my portfolio. Not because they're bad - some of them are among the best things I have built. But they don't tell the story I want to tell right now. They don't fit the narrative arc. They don't serve the purpose of this particular composition. And having the discipline to leave them out is what makes the portfolio feel considered rather than comprehensive.
Sequencing is everything
The order of a playlist matters as much as the selection. A brilliant playlist opened with the wrong track is dead on arrival. The first thirty seconds set the tone for everything that follows. If you lose someone there, they skip. If you hook them there, they stay for the journey. This is true of portfolios, presentations, pitch decks, blog posts, and every other form of sequential communication that humans engage in. The opening isn't the appetiser. It is the audition.
In a playlist, I think about energy curves. The opening should be inviting but not overwhelming - a warm handshake, not a shout. The middle can go deeper, take risks, introduce unexpected elements. The final third should build to a peak and then resolve. This isn't a formula - different playlists have different shapes. But every good playlist has a shape. It goes somewhere. It has dynamics. It breathes.
My portfolio follows the same principle. The first project a visitor sees is deliberately chosen to represent the widest possible view of what I do - to intrigue without limiting. The projects that follow add depth and range. The final impressions are the ones I want to linger. This isn't manipulation. It is communication. I'm using sequence to tell a story about what I care about and what I'm capable of, the same way a DJ uses sequence to take a dance floor on a journey.
Taste as identity
Here's the deeper point. Your playlists and your portfolio are both saying the same thing: this is who I'm. Not in the sense of a bio or a CV, which tell people what you have done. In the sense of taste - which tells people how you see the world. What you notice. What moves you. What you think belongs together and what doesn't.
When someone shares a playlist with me, I learn more about them in forty-five minutes than I would in a three-hour conversation. Not facts about their life - I learn how they process emotion, what they find beautiful, how they handle transitions, whether they value surprise or comfort, whether they think in layers or in lines. A playlist is a personality test that nobody takes seriously but everybody should.
The next time you make a playlist, pay attention to what you're actually doing. You aren't just picking songs. You're making a hundred micro-decisions about taste, judgment, context, and identity. You're deciding what belongs and what doesn't. You're sequencing for impact. You're creating a coherent whole from disparate parts. You're curating. And that skill - the skill of curation, of knowing what goes together and what doesn't, of understanding that the relationship between things matters more than the things themselves - is the most valuable creative skill there is. Whether you're building a playlist, a portfolio, a brand, or a life, the principle is the same: it isn't about having good taste in individual things. It's about having good taste in combinations.
Press play. The portfolio starts with the first track.
