The Calculus of Choice
Beauty in the struggle
There's a moment every writer knows intimately—that late night collision between ambition and exhaustion when the cursor blinks mockingly at the end of an unfinished sentence. You've been working on this novel for months, maybe years, and the weight of every unmade choice presses against your chest like accumulated gravity. Finish the chapter? Scroll TikTok? Push through the difficult scene beat or watch Netflix? The decision tree plays out in real-time, each option a variable in an equation whose solution determines what you accomplish tonight and—on a deeper level—who you become.
This arithmetic of agency extends far beyond our desks. It shapes careers, relationships, and the trajectory of entire lives. Yet for all our cultural obsession with personal responsibility and individual achievement, we rarely examine the mathematics underlying our choices—or acknowledge how profoundly the equation changes based on the variables we're given to work with.
The Illusion of Equal Terms
Americans love origin stories. We worship at the altar of the self-made entrepreneur, the author who wrote their breakout novel in coffee shops between shifts, the athlete who rose from poverty to championship glory. These narratives aren't lies, exactly, but they're willfully incomplete—beautiful solutions that obscure the complexities that made them possible.
Consider two aspiring novelists: Sarah, a marketing director in suburban Atlanta with a stable income, health insurance, who works from home and a spare bedroom she's converted into a writing sanctuary; and Devin, a single father working two jobs at opposite ends of Detroit, whose laptop is dying and whose only quiet writing time comes after midnight when his daughter is asleep. Both face the same fundamental choice—write or don't write—but the set up couldn't be more different.
Sarah's equation includes variables Devin doesn't have: a soft financial cushion, healthcare security, dedicated workspace, and the luxury of saying no to extra work. I’ll just call it what it is…freedom. When she chooses to spend Saturday morning writing instead of freelancing, the cost is opportunity, not survival. When Devin makes the same choice, he's calculating rent against passion, groceries against art.
This isn't to diminish Sarah's achievements or excuse Devin’s struggles. Both will face genuine tests of dedication and skill. But understanding choice in this way rather than pure willpower reveals why identical decisions can yield vastly different outcomes—and why celebrating only the winners misses the point entirely.
The Weight of Accumulated Advantage
A little over a decade ago Malcolm Gladwell popularized the 10,000-hour rule, but he also revealed something more subversive: timing matters as much as talent. When you're born, where you grow up, what resources surround you in those crucial early years—these aren't choices, but they determine the range of choices available later.
The novelist who starts writing at twelve has different possibilities than one who discovers their passion at forty. This isn't defeatism; it's recognition that choice operates within systems, and those systems aren't neutral. They're shaped by policies, economics, and inherited structures that can either multiply opportunities or constrain them.
You didn’t make good choices, you only ever had good choices
Take student debt—a choice, we're told, that students make freely. But this ignores how the equation has shifted. In 1980, a year of public university education cost roughly 12% of median family income. By 2020, that figure had risen to nearly 28%. The choice to pursue higher education increasingly requires either extraordinary privilege or the acceptance of crushing debt. When the value of the variables change this dramatically, arguing that outcomes are simply about individual choice becomes mathematically dishonest at best and willfully ignorant at worst.
The Compound Interest of Small Decisions
Yet within these constraints, choice retains immense power. The physics of personal transformation often operates at the quantum level—tiny decisions that seem insignificant in isolation but compound over time into dramatic change.
Writing, particularly, demonstrates this principle quite well. No one writes a novel in a single burst of inspiration. Instead, it emerges from hundreds of micro-choices: opening the document instead of checking email, writing one sentence when you feel blocked, choosing the easier word over the sophisticated one. Each decision seems trivial—until suddenly, they accumulate into something substantial.
The average person makes over 1600 decisions per day. This is where motivation intersects with mathematics. The aspiring novelist doesn't need to solve for X in a single evening. They need to consistently make calculations that favor their long-term goals over immediate gratification. They need to understand that finishing a novel isn't about finding time—it's about repeatedly choosing to create time. Showing up and the ability to do so plays a large part in the completion of goals.
The compound interest of these choices can be extraordinary. Write 250 words a day—roughly a page—and you'll complete a novel in under a year. Miss three days a week, and you'll still finish in eighteen months. The mathematics are forgiving, relentless and most of all, honest. You can't optimize your way out of actually doing the work but you can measure and track the work you do efficiently.
The Privilege of Risk
However, even the mathematical certainty of compound effort operates within broader equations of privilege and security. Taking creative risks requires what economists call "runway"—sufficient resources to absorb potential failure.
The writer who quits their day job to focus on their novel is making a choice, but it's one available primarily to those with savings, family support, or alternative income streams. The single mother working retail can't make the same calculation, even if her talent exceeds that of her more privileged counterpart. Her choice architecture is fundamentally different.
This creates what sociologist Matthew Salganik calls "cumulative advantage"—early benefits compound into larger benefits over time. The writer whose family can support them through unpaid apprenticeship years enters the field with accumulated advantages. They can afford to write literary fiction instead of commercial work, take unpaid internships at prestigious publications, and weather the inevitable rejections without financial catastrophe.
Recognition of this reality isn't meant to discourage achievement, it’s meant to complicate our understanding of it. When we acknowledge that choice operates within systems, we can work to change those systems rather than simply exhorting individuals to choose better or “PiCk ThEmSeLveS Up bY ThE BoOTsTrAps”.
Political Proofs
This brings us to the uncomfortable intersection of personal responsibility and structural inequality. American political discourse (especially now) often treats these as mutually exclusive—you either believe in individual agency or you acknowledge systemic barriers, but never both. This is false math.
Progressive politics, at its best, recognizes that expanding genuine choice requires addressing the structural variables that constrain it. Universal healthcare doesn't eliminate the need for personal health choices—it ensures that economic considerations don't override medical ones. Quality public education doesn't guarantee success—it provides more equal starting conditions for the choices that determine it.
Consider our writer again. Progressive policies might include universal basic income, affordable healthcare, and robust public funding for the arts—not because these eliminate the need for literary talent and dedication, but because they change the equation in which choices operate. They expand the definition of who gets to choose and under what circumstances.
Conservative critics often argue that reducing constraints diminishes motivation, that struggle builds character and achievement requires risk. There's partial truth here—easy satisfaction rarely produces great art, and necessity can inspire innovation. But there's a crucial difference between productive challenge and systemic obstruction. The writer facing the difficulty of finding the right word is engaged in creative struggle. The writer facing the choice between writing and affording insulin is encountering artificial scarcity.
The Courage of Incremental Change
So where does this leave us—sitting at our desks, staring at our unfinished projects, aware that our choices operate within systems both seen and unseen?
First, with humility about our achievements and compassion for others' struggles. The math reveal that success is neither pure merit nor pure luck. It’s a complex mixture of talent and dedication operating within favorable conditions that may or may not be equally distributed.
Second, with renewed appreciation for the power of compound decisions. Even constrained choice can accumulate into transformation. The novelist writing in stolen moments between obligations isn't naive to ignore systemic barriers—they're operating within them while refusing to be defined by them.
Third, with political clarity about the work still to be done. Expanding choice requires addressing the structural inequalities that limit it. This isn't about creating equal outcomes—it's about ensuring more equal access to the starting line.
The Equation We Choose
Albert Camus said “Life is a sum of your choices.” I write this, with the awareness of the choices underlying every sentence paired with the understanding that Camus’ philosophy lacked a nuance mandatory for critical thought in our modern world. The choice to spend Sunday morning on this essay eating a lemon tart instead of working a second job, enabled by financial security and economic flexibility that allow such luxury. The decision to publish on Substack rather than pitch to traditional magazines or journals, made possible by a platform filled with an existing audience and the freedom to risk experimental forms.
None of this diminishes the effort required to finish the piece or negates the creative choices involved in its construction. But it does situate those choices within a larger reality—one where talent and dedication remain necessary but insufficient, where systemic change and individual effort complement rather than compete.
My journey exemplifies this tension perfectly. Finishing a body of work requires countless small choices compounded over time. But having the space and security to make those choices consistently—that's often a function of variables beyond individual control.
Perhaps the most radical choice we can make is to hold both truths simultaneously: that our decisions matter enormously and that they operate within systems that can either support or constrain them. The calculus demands we work with the variables we have while also working to change the equation for those who come after us.
There’s beauty in the struggle. I’ll never forget that. The cursor still blinks, waiting for the next word. The choice remains: write or don't write.
