Much as we sometimes fear change, some inexplicable part of the human psyche loves unpredictability. Even those among us who crave order in our homes and office spaces sometimes love to throw caution to the wind and lose our organized selves in a whirlwind of spontaneity. While many of us feel that things should have their place, and be in that same place when we go to look for it as we’re running out the door, still we long for the odd surprise to make life just a little more interesting. Perhaps, then, it’s little wonder that our favorite iPod tool is the shuffle key.

In the days of the record and tape cassette, our only listening option was a chronological one. And because even our very favorite album usually has a song or two that doesn’t quite hit the spot, we always ended up listening to it anyway, skipping the needle over (quite often making horrible scratches in the process that invariably cut through the songs we did like), or pushing blindly on fast forward to get to the tune’s other side.

But with the advent of CDs, our options expanded, offering us for the first time a perhaps more playful way of listening. And while CDs undoubtedly offered us greater listening flexibility over their predecessors, portable music had not yet reached its zenith. Now we have the iPod, and the user friendly listening of the CD has been combined with a storage system that allows us carry with us almost as much music as we could ever want.

But with that enormous choice available to us on a daily basis, it can be difficult to know where to begin your listening pleasure. Of course there are always days when you have a hankering for a particular song, but when the music stored comprises all your own personal favorites, how do you choose? Perhaps that’s why the iPod’s shuffle option is one of the device’s best loves features.

So much so that Apple, the company who make the iPod, have produced a version of their digital music player that’s quite descriptively called, yes, you guessed it, the Shuffle. Realizing that the feature was one of the iPod’s most popular, they came up with a music player that assumes this mode by default. You can still store all the music you like on the new iPod version, only now you don’t have to choose which song to play – the Shuffle plays your music randomly, so you are always treated to that element of surprise.

Now the unpredictability that keeps us on our toes can be a part of your life every day. Shuffle to the music!