I Scored My Whole To-Do List Like a Movie for Seven Days and the Pharmacy Line Got an Oscar

I have a note in my phone that just says: make the boring stuff weird. It has been sitting there since roughly 2022, back when I thought I'd become a person who journals. I didn't. But last week I finally cashed in that note, put on my good headphones, and turned seven days of errands into a full-blown film score. No irony. No half-commitment. Just me, a shared notes app, and an increasingly concerned pharmacist named Denise.

Here's the deal: every mundane task got its own theme music. Groceries. The post office. CVS. The DMV. Laundry. A Target run that was supposed to be "just for paper towels." I assigned each one a vibe, pressed play, and refused to break character. This was not a productivity hack. It was a tiny creative ritual with a body count of mild public embarrassment.

The Rules (Barely)

Rule one: the song had to match the errand's emotional register, not its literal plot. Rule two: no skipping ahead. If a slow piano piece came on and I was supposed to be power-walking into Trader Joe's, I had to live with it. Rule three: I was allowed to look ridiculous, but not to explain myself to strangers. Rule four: I had to write down one observation after every outing. That last one is the only reason this piece exists and isn't just a list of times I cried in a parking lot.

Day One: The Grocery Run

I chose the theme from 2001: A Space Odyssey for the parking lot. Not for the store itself—for the parking lot. There's something about pushing a cart across asphalt while a choir swells that makes you feel like you're crossing a threshold into the unknown. I wasn't. I was about to buy turkey and a candle I didn't need. But the music doesn't know that.

Inside, I switched to a brisk, jazzy heist-adjacent track. I want to be clear: I did not steal anything. I did, however, walk through the produce section like a woman with a plan, which is the closest I'll ever come to being a character in an Ocean's movie. An employee named Marcus asked if I needed help finding anything. I said, "No, thank you," like a woman who definitely had a plan.

The observation I wrote down: The candle was $14 and I bought it because the soundtrack told me to.

Day Three: The Pharmacy Pickup

The pharmacy is where the experiment got real. I had a prescription ready and a three-bean chili recipe I was excited about, so I went with a low, tense string section—the kind of music that plays right before someone opens a door they shouldn't. The line was six people deep. An older man in a fleece was behind me, and I could feel him looking at my headphones like they were a medical device.

When my name was called, I switched—very dramatically, without breaking eye contact with the shelf of vitamins—to a sweeping romantic score. Denise handed me a paper bag and said, "You okay, hon?" And I said, "The antibiotics have a score now." She said, "That's nice." It was not nice. It was unhinged. But it was also the most fun I've had at a pharmacy in years.

Day Five: The DMV

I want to be honest about the DMV because I know people will ask. I went in with a full training-montage track. You know the one—drum machine, synth, a sense of destiny. I got a number. I sat down. I waited. The music did not match the air conditioning, which sounded like a dying refrigerator.

And then something weird happened. I started paying attention. There was a woman at the counter explaining a title transfer with the patience of a saint. There was a clerk named Rosa with a tiny cactus on her desk. There was a guy in a hoodie who was clearly on his lunch break and clearly not thrilled about it. The montage music didn't make the DMV fun. It made me notice that the DMV is a room full of people doing their best in a fluorescent-lit liminal space. That's not a movie. But it's kind of a scene.

I walked out with my sticker and felt weirdly triumphant. The music was lying to me. I let it.

The Weird Part: I Started Casting Strangers

By day six, I was casting people in my head. The man with the fleece? Retired assassin, obviously. The woman reading a cereal box at Target? Informant. The cashier who told me to have a good one? The heart of the film. I didn't talk to them. I didn't need to. The soundtrack gave me permission to be curious about strangers instead of just annoyed by them.

Was that projection? Yes. Was it harmless? Mostly. Did it make a Tuesday Target run feel like a caper movie? Absolutely. I bought paper towels and a candle I already owned. The soundtrack made me linger in the candle aisle for nine minutes. I have notes.

The Tiny Audit (Or: What Actually Changed)

Let's be clear: I was slower. My errands took about 15 percent longer because I kept pausing to "feel the moment." My productivity was not improved. My mood, however, was. I laughed at myself in public at least four times. Two people asked what I was listening to. One woman in the post office line said, "That good?" and I said, "It's a heist score," and she said, "Nice," which is the most American exchange I've ever had.

Public embarrassment: moderate. Creative satisfaction: high. Cringe level: survivable.

The real takeaway is not that music makes chores fun, because it doesn't. The DMV is still the DMV. The takeaway is that a tiny, arbitrary creative rule can change what you notice. It made an ordinary week in 2026 feel bigger than it was. The soundtrack didn't make the errands cinematic. It made me pay attention. That's a different thing, and it's better.

Would I Do It Again?

Yes, but I'm retiring the DMV score. Some rooms deserve silence. Or at least a really good podcast. Next up: scoring my inbox. No. Stop. I'm not ready. I'm barely ready for the pharmacy.