Three Ways to Help You Decide Among Good, Competing Options

You’re ready to move on things. You have a handful of good, competing options, but you’re not sure which one to choose. Any one of them might bring you satisfaction and fulfillment; but then again, you might be wrong.

And the inability to choose has you frozen. What if you pick the wrong thing? What if you end up just wasting your time? Or looking foolish? Weeks, months, and sometimes years pass, and you still feel frozen, unable to decide.

Here are three quick thought exercises and frameworks that may help you in making a decision, and finally moving forward:

1. The “2 year test”: If you knew you only had two good, healthy years left to live, what one thing would you most want to accomplish? What one deep, burning thing within you would you most regret leaving undone? The answer to this may be a strong pointer to what you should focus on next.
2. “5 year bucket” exercise: For this exercise, assume you’ll live to be 90 years old. With advances in medicine, and particularly if you take good care of yourself, this isn’t as unlikely as it used to be. Now, take your current age and calculate how many “5 year buckets” you have left. So if you’re currently 40 years old, you’d have ten “5 year buckets” left. Ten! Now assume that if you were truly able to focus on one thing in each of those chunks of time, you’d be able to accomplish more than you ever thought possible within those five years. The question for you is: What would you put in each of those buckets? Further, what would be in the first bucket (meaning the next five years). The answer may be another strong indicator of what you should focus on next. Remember, Iit’s been said that “most people overestimate what they can accomplish in one year, and underestimate what they can achieve in five years.”
3. The 4L Method: If you have a lot of good, competing options, and are truly having trouble deciding which one to pick, try the 4L Method. Put each of your ideas or paths through this exercise and see if one stands out more than the others. Is there one option in particular that’s particularly low-cost to try, that’s limited in scope (in terms of the specific number of days or weeks it will take to accomplish), where you’ll learn something valuable in the process, and that you’ll be able to leverage into whatever comes next? If one idea stands out to you based on these four factors, that may be a very strong contender. You can read more about this method here.

If you have many ideas, paths, or options before you, it’s a positive sign. It means that you’re engaged in the world, curious, and want to stretch yourself to have an impact. But so often, we become frozen and unable to move or decide for fear of the uncertainty. I hope these three exercises help provide some direction.

Did any of these resonate with you? If so, feel free to message me at gordon@gordonstransky.com. It would be great to hear from you.