Depending on the size of your music library, it can be pretty easy to run out of space on your iPod before you run out of songs to load on it. No need to despair, since this is a perfect opportunity to avoid an over-filled iPod and keep your portable music selection fresh with a little help from Smart Playlists.

My 4GB iPod nano doesn’t even come close to holding my entire iTunes Library, but sometimes it’s just the right size for my activities. I overcame the storage limitations by creating a series of Smart Playlists that give me a random selection of music from different genres that I haven’t listened to in the past week.

Here’s how:

• Launch iTunes.
• Choose File > New Smart Playlist.
• Make sure that Match all of the following rules is checked.

Start by making a new Smart Playlist.

• Set the first rule to Genre and contains and enter a genre that you want to include on your iPod. In this example, I entered "Blues."
• Now click the plus symbol that’s off to the right of the rule you just created. This adds a new rule.
• Set this new rule to Last Played and is not in the last.
• Enter 1 in the field next to the days pop-up menu, and then change days to weeks.

Add rules for genre and last played in the Smart Playlist pane.

• Now check Limit to and enter a value in the items field. I changed items to MB since I want to load songs on my iPod based on its overall storage capacity and not based on a specific number of songs.
• Leave selected by set to random.
• Leave Live updating checked.
• Click OK.

I made Smart Playlists with these settings for several different musical genres and sync all of them with my iPod. Now when I go out I have a wide range of music styles to listen to, and the selection is always fresh since I’m not listening to the same music I heard a week ago.