Three options is a way of not deciding

I presented three directions for about eight years. Then a client asked me which one I would pick, I told her, and she said: so why did you show me the other two.

I did not have an answer that survived saying out loud.

What three options actually is

It is insurance. If the good one lands badly, there are two more in the room and the meeting does not end in silence. That is a real fear and it is worth naming honestly, because it is the whole reason the format persists.

The cost is that it moves the decision to the person least equipped to make it. Choosing between three directions is a design judgement. Handing it to the client is not collaboration; it is a transfer of risk dressed as respect.

One direction, with the reasoning attached

Now I bring one, and I bring the argument for it: what I heard, what I ruled out, and why this answers it. The rejected work is in the appendix, briefly, so nobody thinks it was not considered.

The conversations are harder and much shorter. When someone disagrees they disagree with a reason, which is a thing you can actually work with. I prefer the second one is not.

When it goes wrong

Occasionally the one direction is wrong and there is nothing to fall back on. That happens. It has cost me about a week each time, which is less than the month I used to spend making two directions I did not believe in.