The Importance of Alternatives

I had a harder time than usual writing this week’s essay. Some combination of travel, a tension headache that wouldn’t go away, and a few bad night’s sleep created the perfect cocktail for feeling like a zombie and feeling like this week’s essay would not come together no matter what I did. (Special shoutout to Gatorade hydration packets, Benadryl, and the new book in the Fourth Wing series for getting me through the week). Without getting into the weeds, my original idea was to write a post about pushing through discomfort and owning your individuality, inspired by a video I’d watched of the pop-folk artist, Maggie Rogers, many years prior. The only option I could see was to write that post. After all, I already workshopped it in my head, created a connection with a piece of neuroscience research, and made some social media content to promote it. Even still, I knew it wasn’t quite right, and that fact was bugging me to no end!

Fortunately for me, I’ve been reading Peter Drucker’s book, The Effective Executive, and was reminded of a pertinent piece of wisdom he shares in regards to decision making. That is, the importance of considering alternatives. Drucker argues:

“A decision is a judgment. It is a choice between alternatives.” (p.143)

“Whenever one has to judge, one must have alternatives among which one can choose. A judgment in which one can only say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ is no judgment at all. Only if there are alternatives can one hope to get insight into what is truly at stake.” (p.147)

In my headache induced zombie state, I’d forgotten to consider alternatives. As it turns out, there were, in fact, alternatives! To state the obvious in hindsight: It could skip publishing this week or start from scratch and write something else. Once I let myself really consider multiple options, it quickly dawned on me that the right material for this week’s piece might be to recount my very real lived experience. Maybe the right move was to write about the reality that I’d had trouble writing in the first place! Material, in the end, that flowed out of me in a fraction of the time I’d spent banging my head against the wall trying to make the original idea work.

It’s similar to an exercise I often go through with my clients who are stumped by a decision or are encountering a roadblock in their business. I ask: What are your assumptions? Those assumptions typically pertain to a version of the world they are trying to force in the belief that there is only one right way. Moreover, in the process of doing so, they’ve forgotten that assumptions do not equal facts. It’s my way of getting them to see and consider the alternatives, which can be as easy as turning those assumptions on their head! What once felt insurmountable, unsolvable, and frustrating can turn into something that is easily worked out or, at a minimum, has a more clearly illuminated path in regards to what to do next.

Do yourself a favor: Skip banging your head against the wall, take a step back, and consider the alternatives.