Identity of Choice

When a decision arises, we’ve already chosen.

I’m not preaching fatalism. Instead, I’m saying we make choices ahead of the moment of choosing.

Let’s make that concrete. You’re taking an exam. You’re in the room hearing pencils scribble, pages turn, and a chronic cough is coming from a far corner. As you examine the multiple-choice or free-form answer, your response is dictated by what you’ve already chosen to do. If you value good grades, you’ve studied the materials and then convey answers you’ve learned. If you stayed out the night before because tests aren’t important, guess ‘C’ like the rest of us. It’s too late to study when taking the test.

Decisions are tests acting out your identity. By that, I mean people decide what they want, then make decisions to achieve that outcome. It’s why aligning incentives and choosing purpose are valuable. We choose our answers to the test ahead of time.

Here’s another example: You’re wearing your favorite musician’s t-shirt, and someone comes up and pushes you because they hate that musician. They clench their fists and are ready to fight. You’re outraged someone would be such a jerk over a shirt, and you have to decide to stand up and fight this person or walk away. At that moment, your adrenaline is raging, and things are happening fast. You’re not in a position to go through a rational analysis of the best decision. Instead, you default to the choices you’ve already made. If you’re willing to fight jerks, hands will fly. If you’ve chosen to remove yourself from antagonists, you’ll walk away. When someone shoves you, it’s too late to contemplate the risks and benefits.

Therefore, our identity is central to who we become. It’s why folks into habits and productivity focus on who they want to be. If you identify as an ‘A’ student, studying rolls into that. If you want to lose weight, it’s better to identify as someone healthy than set a goal to diet. So when it’s time to write these posts, I don’t sit and deliberate if I should write. No, I’ve chosen to tell stories to people, and this is how I do that.

There are too many choices for us to weigh them individually each moment of the day. And for choices of elevated stress, we’re even more likely to play out our pre-chosen paths. That’s because we make choices that lead to the outcomes we want.

Reversing that, sometimes people ask me for financial advice – what should I do with my money? And my first question is, what do you want? If you want to retire in two years, your choices are much different than growing wealth to retire in fifty years. So the purpose of what you’re after should drive your decisions.

This quote is attributed to Will Durant, “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.” I don’t get to wake up and choose to shoot like Stephen Curry, no matter how much I focus when I shoot a basketball. He has many times over chosen to be an elite shooter, and I pick up a basketball sporadically.

When the test comes to make the shot, Steph has already made it, and I am thinking about what story I can tell when I miss.