I was on a run with three friends and the trail that we were on—the aptly called Too Long Trail–ended at the Bergen Peak Trail that we could take either uphill or downhill. We were at a fork in the road. I said to my friends that we had three options (1) continue upwards to Bergen Peak, (2) go downhill on the Bergen Peak Trail, or (3) return on the Too Long Trail. My friend David Wald commented that we had more than three options. This puzzled me and I asked him what other options there were. David commented that we could just sit on a rock, or we could leave the trails altogether and bushwack. He was right, of course, there were other options, and I had limited our choices by assuming that we would continue to run on one of the trails. In fact, it had not even dawned on me that we could do something different.
At times we limit ourselves by restricting our options. My favorite question of former department head Terry Young was “what are our options?” Often, we are faced with a dilemma where we need to choose between options A or B. We can spend a long time agonizing whether we should choose A or B. And when the decision is to be taken with a group, we can spend an enormous amount of time and energy debating that choice. But there might be options C or D that are preferable over the initial choices. The question “what are our options?” opens our thinking to choices that we initially had not thought of.
David pointed out that limiting options can lead to errors in scientific work too. Suppose we have two explanations A and B for a phenomenon. At one point we might reject option A because it contains a logical flaw or because data contradict this explanation. We may then be tempted to conclude that explanation B must be correct. That conclusion assumes that the explanation is either A or B. But there might be other explanations that we had originally not considered. In fact, we might even be unaware of these alternative explanations, one of which might the correct one. The fact that there is a single explanation left, does not mean that that explanation is therefore correct. We don’t know what we don’t know, and we don’t know what explanations we don’t envision.
When faced with a choice or dilemma, it may help to pause and ask yourself “what are my options?” You could, in fact, also ask others what options they see because they may think of options that you had not considered. Or you could meditate on the question what options there are. By doing so you may broaden your view and take advantage of choices that you initially were unaware of. This enlarged field of choices can be liberating. And it may prevent you from trudging down the Too Long Trail again!