Suppose you want to buy an mp3 player. Your local electronics store only has 3 different mp3 players. So the choice is pretty clear, it’s easy to compare the 3 models and find the one that suits you much better than the other 2. But then you learn that abroad they have hundreds of them. So although you’re limited to just the 3, *theoretically* there is much more choice. Would that not detract from your satisfaction of choosing the best one of the 3 you can get?

There is compelling talk from TED by Barry Schwartz about how having a lot of choice ruins your experience, because you have to take your pick out of an enormous set of possible choices, which leaves you agonizing over whether you made the right choice or not. There are so many choices, which means that whichever you pick, there is a chance that some other option would have been a little better still. Whereas if you only had a few options to choose from, you would choose the one best for you and know that none of the others could possibly make you any happier, because they weren’t as close to your preferences as the option you chose.

So that makes me think about people who work in job agencies. I mean these guys must see tens of jobs everyday, thousands of jobs every year. And it’s not so much that they are in a position to choose between all of these, but just *knowing* about them must make you think. Many other jobs may not be as enjoyable, but where else are you constantly confronted with a ton of other jobs out there?