Choosing v. Deciding

There is a difference between making a choice and making a decision. Decision-making is a process. If you don’t follow the process, the choice you’ve made was most likely an unconscious choice, driven by default behaviors.

Shane Parrish talks about these concepts in his book, Clear Thinking, and Shane’s perspective has helped me to solidify my own thoughts in this area. When you choose without intent, choosing ≠ decisiveness. Part of being decisive is being quick, but you also have to be effective. Similarly, to the outside observer, the decision-making process may look like someone is waffling, when in reality they are deliberating the options and making judgements to ensure they execute the best possible solution. Shane points out, that inaction is a choice.

When making decisions, I have also thought it’s useful to think about the different types of decisions. Not all decisions have to take a long time, and you should prioritize spending time on high stakes decisions, especially if they are not easily reversed! At a minimum, it is valuable to stop, define the problem and assign a level to that problem. Breaking away from unconscious choice compounds over time and moves us closer to the people we actually want to be.