Choosing and Deciding | Is there a difference?

Lately, I've come across these two words, "choose" and "decide", and I had trouble distinguishing from one another. I've read blogs that try to differentiate between the two, but it gave me more confusion than clarity. It's a topic that my friend, Tracy, brought up when we were chatting about another friend, Jake, that went to college but didn't finish his degree.

Jake didn't have the privilege of focusing on his studies. He took care of his mom because he was the eldest and his other siblings were too young to take on that responsibility. He wanted to finish his course but instead took a full-time job at 18 years old.

Tracy told me that Jake "chose" to drop out. It bothered me that she used "choice" instead of using "decision". I don't believe that he simply "chooses" to drop out of college considering his circumstance.

Why is this relevant?

My goal is to help you understand the difference between deciding and choosing. Is there a difference? Yes, there is. Honestly, it can be difficult to distinguish since one can be dependent on the other.

Knowing the difference between the two helps you create a better life. It's the difference between actively taking control of your life and letting everything else take over your life.

In business, an owner or manager who takes issues lightly is a fool. He who selects options without weighing the cost and benefit creates problems more than what he is capable of solving.

Choose vs Decide

Choosing is the act of selecting an option from a set of options. It ignores the costs and benefits of each choice. Choosing connects to the place of desired intention, values and beliefs. Simply said, choosing is about preferences (Tracy described it as "comfort zone"). It is about freely having the choice to select an option.

Making a decision requires judgment. Deciding connects to a place of behavior, performance, and consequences. It is where you sacrifice to benefit where sometimes it can be impossible to benefit from the choice.

I think that choosing and deciding is the difference between the two systems of how the brain operates: psychologists call them system 1 and system 2.

Veritasium | The Science of Thinking via Youtube

What I find interesting about these two words is that they are interrelated. When you decide, you choose from a set of options, but making a choice requires decision making. The difference starts to unravel itself when we compare "choosing" and "deciding".

Here are some examples that will help us distinguish the two:

(1) A family decides to have dessert after dinner. They have two choices of dessert: ice cream or cake. They decide to have ice cream — even if the cake cafe is 5 minutes closer than the ice cream parlor. The ice cream parlor sells only 3 flavors of ice cream — vanilla, chocolate, and strawberry. Trevor, their son, looks at the ice cream man and chooses his favorite ice cream flavor, vanilla.

(2) Today is payday and you decide to buy clothes at your local department store. You plan to go to your favorite shop and buy a shirt. Walking towards your favorite shop, you passed by a jacket shop. You remember that you promised your younger brother a jacket for winter. Your budget is for a shirt or a jacket. Being the good brother you are, you decide to buy a jacket. All you have to do now is choose between 3 colors: navy blue, black, or brown.

Declaring war is not a choice, but a decision. Stating that war is a choice sounds immoral. If we choose to go to war, then we can also choose not to go to war. If it were that simple, it would be easy to build a better world.

When is choosing better than deciding

As you should've noticed by now, choosing is the "quick-response" brain while deciding is the "thinking" brain. Choosing is your subconscious mind at work while deciding is your conscious mind at work.

It is also possible to make "deciding" seem like "choosing". Your brain is like a muscle. The more you use it, the better you become at whatever you do. That's why experts make it seem so easy, and beginners usually have a hard time keeping up.

Our subconscious mind is like a memory bank. The more mistakes you make, the farther your horizon becomes.

We were born letting our parents decide for us. I think that's why kids can be very unreasonable sometimes. It can be difficult to explain things because they are born with a "choosing" mindset.

Deciding is about taking control of your life and creating choices.

What is the toughest decision you've made?