Nothing drags a decision to a halt faster than a list of lousy options. As a matter of fact, many decisions fall between the cracks about then, never to be heard from again. You can see it coming:

• Silence and sighs replace ideas and debate
• Energy levels drop below freezing
• Everyone wants to talk about something else

This almost happened when looking at my healthcare options a few months ago. I didn’t like any of my choices and might have dropped the ball entirely if my husband hadn’t insisted that any health plan was probably better than no health plan.

So here is how to deal with lousy options: 

• Recognize that you’ve hit the lousy-option-wall and label it as such out loud. That will bring some relief and shift your focus to your process of decision making while taking your mind off those lousy options for a bit.
• Ask why the options are so lousy. Re-frame the situation with questions like:
  
  • Why are they so lousy?
  • Are the objectives and constraints we are trying to satisfy reasonable?
  • Are we caving in the face of assumptions? Accepting we have less control than we have?
• Generate more options. There are almost always more possibilities than first come to mind.
• Examine the consequences of doing nothing. Doing nothing often suddenly makes one of your options more palatable.

If none of those do the trick, I guess you’ll just have to pick a lousy option or let the decision disappear between the cracks!