In a contest between specific suggestions and vague suggestions, the specific suggestion wins. This, according to Mike Monteiro, is how to make choices using The Strong Choice Doctrine.

The way we do this in our house is that a strong choice wins. We call this The Strong Choice Doctrine™. For example: if I say that I want to watch a movie, and Erika says “Let’s watch Invasion of the Bee Girls” she wins. I made a vague suggestion. She made a clear and specific one. The conversation is closed and Invasion of the Bee Girls is queued up. No argument. But what if that’s not the type of movie I had in mind? That’s on me. I should’ve made a stronger suggestion.

I love everything about this. It gets you, the suggester, to think clearly about it what it is you want, lest you find yourself in the position of having to, for example, watch something you actually didn’t really want to watch simply because you hadn’t thought through how you were feeling.

He goes on to suggest that it’s even stronger to say, “I’m going to do X, would you like to join me?” It reminds me of how I used to handle the few large-group outings I used to attend in grad school. We could waste a half an hour standing around on the sidewalk trying to figure out where to go for dinner — or even after having decided, we’d just stand around chatting. I started just announcing where I was going and heading in that direction, figuring that people would come if they wanted, and if not, I’d get a little quiet time — which is usually fine with me. Typically once one person started moving, everyone did.