Stuck Between Two Bad Options? How to Make Better Decisions with Parallel Tracks
Quick question: When you face a major life decision—like a career pivot or a large investment—how many options do you actually consider?
If you are like most people, the answer is usually two. Maybe three, if you feel you are being particularly thorough.
But here is what typically happens in practice: You find one option that looks promising. Immediately, your brain starts validating it. You research why it’s a smart move. You imagine yourself in that scenario. You talk to friends who will confirm it’s a good choice.
Then, weeks or months later, you discover there was a much better option sitting right there that you never even considered.
Why does this happen? It’s not because you aren't smart. It’s because you collapsed to your first answer too quickly.
This phenomenon is the enemy of good decision-making. Today, we are going to fix it with a systematic thinking move called Parallel Tracks. It is a method for holding multiple options open simultaneously without premature commitment, and it will change how you approach every major decision in your life.
The Problem: Premature Convergence
To understand why we make poor decisions, consider Sarah’s situation.
Sarah has been at her company for three years. She’s comfortable but stagnant. Suddenly, she receives a job offer from a competitor. It comes with a 20% raise, a better title, and the promise of exciting projects. She has two weeks to decide.
Sarah does what most responsible professionals do. She researches the new company. She scours Glassdoor reviews. She talks to people in her network. She creates a detailed pros-and-cons list.
After all that research, she accepts the offer.
Six months later, Sarah is miserable. The culture at the new firm is toxic. The "exciting projects" she was promised were oversold. To make matters worse, she learns that her old company would have matched the raise if she had just asked.
Here is the uncomfortable truth: Sarah did think carefully. She researched. She gathered data. She made an informed choice.
So, what went wrong?
The Binary Trap
Sarah failed because she asked the wrong question.
She asked: "Should I take this offer?"
This is a yes/no question. It is binary. It frames the world as having only two states: Stay or Go.
But that question assumes those are the only two options available. By focusing entirely on the offer in front of her, she suffered from Premature Convergence. She narrowed her field of vision before she had even surveyed the landscape.
What if she had asked: "What are all the viable paths available to me right now?"
- Maybe Track C was staying at her current company but negotiating a new role.
- Maybe Track D was taking a different job at a third company with a better culture fit.
- Maybe Track E was an internal transfer to a different department.
Sarah never developed those tracks. She never even saw them. She felt the pressure of the offer, collapsed to a binary choice, and missed the optimal outcome.
Premature convergence is the silent killer of great opportunities. It forces you to choose between the visible options, blinding you to the best ones.
Three Flawed Approaches (And Why They Fail)
Before we look at the systematic solution, we need to dismantle the three common approaches people use to solve problems like Sarah’s. They seem logical, but they are structurally flawed.
Approach #1: The Sequential Approach
What people do: "I’ll explore my options one at a time. If this offer isn't good, then I'll look for something else."
Why it fails: This approach falls victim to Commitment Bias. By the time you finish evaluating the first option, you have already invested significant mental energy in it. You have imagined yourself in the role. You have mentally spent the raise.
Any subsequent option you find gets compared to that first one—which now has an unfair head start. You aren't choosing the best option; you are choosing the one you thought of first.
Approach #2: The Research Trap
What people do: "If I just gather enough information about this offer, the right answer will become clear."
Why it fails: More information about a single option does not tell you if it is the best option. You can have 100% perfect information about Track A and still completely miss the fact that Track C was 10 times better.
Research is valuable, but only after you have identified all the tracks worth researching. Deep-diving too early is just a way to procrastinate making a real choice.
Approach #3: The Gut Feeling
What people do: "I’ll trust my intuition. My gut will tell me if it’s right."
Why it fails: Sometimes your gut is right. But often, your gut is just responding to timing. You got the offer today. It feels new and exciting. Your gut screams "Yes!"
But your gut cannot evaluate an option you haven't discovered yet. It is reacting to the stimulus in front of it, not the full possibility space. Trusting your gut before you've widened your options is just gambling.
The Systematic Solution: Parallel Tracks
The alternative to these flawed approaches is Parallel Tracks.
The concept is simple: Instead of evaluating options sequentially, you hold multiple options open simultaneously. You develop each track independently—giving them equal time, equal attention, and equal exploration—and you do not compare them until you have developed all of them.
Here is the four-step process.
Step 1: Generate Distinct Tracks
Stop asking "Should I do X?" Instead, force yourself to generate 3 to 4 distinct paths.
In Sarah's case, instead of "Accept or Stay," she generates:
- Track A: Accept the competitor's offer as proposed.
- Track B: Stay at the current company, but negotiate for a better role/raise.
- Track C: Counter the offer (ask for better terms or remote flexibility).
- Track D: Explore a third option (a different company entirely).
Step 2: Develop Each Track Independently
This is the most difficult part. You must give each track focused exploration time. If you have a month, give each track a week. If you have a week, give each track a day.
Sarah gives each track one week:
- Week 1 (Track A - Accept): She digs deep. She talks to three current employees, not just the recruiter. She maps out what her life looks like with a commute.
- Insight: The role is exciting, but the 60-hour workweeks are the norm here. That is a red flag for her work-life balance.
- Week 2 (Track B - Stay): She talks to her current manager about her growth path. She researches internal promotions.
- Insight: She discovers her manager is actually open to creating a new senior role for her. She never asked before because she assumed the answer was "no."
- Week 3 (Track C - Counter): She researches industry norms. She drafts a proposal for a hybrid schedule.
- Insight: The new company is rigid. They deny the request. This tells her about their inflexibility before she signs the contract.
- Week 4 (Track D - Third Option): She reaches out to her network. She identifies companies with better cultural reputations.
- Insight: A company she respects is hiring. It’s a better culture fit with similar pay. She didn't know this job existed four weeks ago.
Step 3: Let Insights Emerge
Notice what happened in the development phase. By forcing herself to explore Track B and Track D, Sarah discovered information she would have never found if she had stayed in the binary trap.
She learned her current job was negotiable. She learned a third, better company was hiring.
Step 4: Compare After Development
Now—and only now—does she compare the options. She compares them based on merit, not timing.
In this scenario, Track D (the third company) ended up being the best fit. But she would have never discovered it without Parallel Tracks.
The "Aha!" Insight
The core revelation of Parallel Tracks is this:
"Most bad decisions aren't because you chose the wrong option. They're because you never saw the better option in the first place."
We often beat ourselves up for making the "wrong choice." We think, "I shouldn't have taken that job." But the failure point wasn't the choice; it was the setup.
Parallel Tracks forces you to see the full landscape before committing.
And here is the hidden benefit: Even if you end up choosing Track A—the very first option you considered—you will choose it with confidence. You won't be lying awake at night wondering "what if?" You will know that you explored the alternatives and Track A was genuinely the winner.
That is the difference between guessing and systematic thinking.
📌 KEY TAKEAWAYS: PARALLEL TRACKS
- Avoid Premature Convergence: Don't collapse to a "yes/no" decision immediately.
- Fight Commitment Bias: Developing options sequentially gives the first idea an unfair advantage. Develop them simultaneously.
- Expand the Field: Aim for 3-4 distinct tracks, even if some feel unlikely at first.
- Explore, Then Compare: Do not compare options while you are researching them. Gather the data first, then decide.
Your Next Move
Parallel Tracks is just one of the four systematic thinking moves. The others—Pattern Extraction, Forward Time Travel, and Backward Time Travel—work together to form a complete operating system for your life.
You likely use some of these moves naturally, while others are complete blind spots.
To find out your unique thinking profile, I’ve created the Systematic Thinking Scorecard.
It’s a free, 5-minute diagnostic that reveals:
- Which moves you use naturally.
- Where your blind spots are causing you to get stuck.
- The one move you should focus on to see immediate results.
The next time you face a high-stakes decision, resist the urge to jump at the first good option. Pause. Open parallel tracks. The discomfort of waiting is worth the clarity of knowing you made the right choice.