Notes · · 6 min read
How to choose between two good options
When neither choice is wrong, waiting for certainty is the only losing move. Six small comparisons beat one impossible one.
The stall has a shape
Two good options produce a very particular kind of stuckness: you research, you talk it through, you feel briefly decided, and by the next morning you are back at the start. Nothing is wrong with either path, so nothing eliminates one.
What you are waiting for is a fact that makes the choice obvious. That fact almost never arrives before the deadline does, and the waiting itself has a price that compounds quietly.
Pros and cons lists don't decide anything
A pros and cons list produces two columns of roughly equal length and no verdict, because it treats every point as the same size. Six trivial pros can outweigh one decisive con on paper and never in reality.
The list also lets you keep both options alive, which is the comfortable outcome and the one you were trying to escape.
One dimension at a time
The way through is to stop asking which option is better and start asking which option wins on a single, narrow dimension. Reversibility. Evidence. Regret. Energy. Payback. Outside view.
Each of those is a forced choice between two things on one axis, which is the kind of question people answer quickly and consistently — the same mechanism that makes pairwise comparison beat rating scales for prioritising.
Count, and let the count mean something
Answer all six with A or B. No ties, no 'depends'. Then count. A four-two split or wider is a decision; take it and stop deliberating.
A three-three split is not a failure. It means the options are genuinely close, and when options are close the cost of choosing wrong is low. Pick the one you can test cheapest.
Attach a review date and the fear drops
Most of the weight in these decisions comes from treating them as permanent. They rarely are. Write the decision down with a date — two weeks, a month — at which you will re-run the same six questions with whatever you have learned.
A decision you can revisit is easy to make. A decision you have framed as final is nearly impossible to make, which is why it sat for eleven days.
Do it now, on the thing you've been circling
Write the two options as one sentence each. Answer the six questions. Count. Give it a review date. It takes under ten minutes and the relief is out of proportion to the effort.
The interactive version of this walks you through the six comparisons and hands you the count and the tiebreaker at the end.