The premise that choice outweighs effort is your ability to accurately predict the future.

You can only do targeted preparation if you can predict the future, and only then can you invest the effective time and resources of your life into things that yield results.

The saying “choice matters more than effort” has a default prerequisite: spanning across time and space.

When is the real choice made? It’s ten years ago. If you predicted what would happen ten years from now, back then, you determined whether the current you would have access to hidden, correct options. When you’re asking about choices right now, in the moment, you’ve already run out of options.

No choice is ever truly decided in the present.

The act of choosing—picking one among A, B, C, D—is decided in the moment. But the scope of that choice, whether it’s picking from A–D or from A–Z, was determined ten years earlier.

Within A–D, there’s usually no right answer, because the correct answer lies somewhere in the E–Z range. “Choice matters more than effort” comes with a temporal precondition. You had to forecast the endgame ten years ago and tailor your path accordingly. Only then will E–Z appear as options ten years later. These are all hidden options, and the secret to a well-lived life resides entirely within them. If you don’t unlock them ten years in advance, ten years later you’ll still be stuck—you’ll have no real choice, because every option in A–D is wrong.