Lately I've been listening to my

portable CD player a lot and I've been

enjoying the music much more than

usual.

Last night, it occurred to me what was

making the experience better: lack of

choice.

The lack of choice I'm talking about

isn't related to the variety of music

available. I have enough CDs to

satisfy my different musical tastes

and, of course, you can still buy more

or burn more.

The great thing about the portable CD

player is that there are no choices to

make while_I'm_listening.

Like a lot of you, I presume, I'm one

of those people who plays around with

the settings on everything. With

computer programs I always root around

in the config files and the menus. My

phone is customized to the nth degree.

The same is true of music apps and mp3

players. The really good ones allow a

lot of customization: there are

equalizer settings and sound effects

with toggles and intensity settings.

And I'm never sure that I've got it

exactly right. So I keep adjusting,

keep doing "A or B" tests, etc., when

I started out intending to actually

listen to music.

Well, all of that is not a problem

with the CD player. It has one tone

adjustment switch (for extra bass).

It's always on, because that usually

sounds best with my particular

headphones. Or at least that's what I

tell myself. I don't want to admit

that I'm a bass-head. I'm too old and

sophisticated for that, right? Back to

the main point: once I've made that

decision I'm done. There's nothing

else to adjust.

But there's another thing that makes

listening to CDs a more peaceful and

immersive experience than listening to

mp3s (or FLACs, AACs, and those

ridiculous WMAs left over from the

days of Zune).

When I use an mp3 player, I'm always

searching through the files for the

next song to listen to. In fact, I'm

so impatient that when I find it I

often don't finish listening to the

song I'm on. I'm never really sure

that I made the right choice with the

next song either. I know that may be

my weird personal psychology, but

given what I'm going to discuss below,

I don't think it is.

In any case, when I put on a CD, I

just listen to the whole thing, and I

actually focus on the music. It's

immersive. It's serene. It's a special

kind of zen.

I accidentally came across a study

years ago in the Harvard Business

Review[1] about marketing and choice.

The author discussed a company that

was trying to sell jam. When they put

24 varieties on display, they got a

lot of attention but made few sales.

When they reduced the selection to six

varieties, they started to sell a lot

more jam.

The author of the article thought that

people became mentally paralyzed by

having too much choice and just walked

away from the decision. When they

choices were reduced to a mentally

manageable number, it became a lot

easier to come to a conclusion.

Equally interesting, the article noted

that even when people made a choice

from among a great number of

possibilities, they were less likely

to be satisfied by it.

I don't know for sure if that analysis

is correct, but it seems tenable to

me. My CD player has a nice sound, but

I think in part I'm happiest when

using it because I have a couple of

simple choices to make: what to listen

to and whether to turn that bass

switch on or off.

On. Always on.

[1] https://hbr.org/2006/06/more-isnt-always-better