Every chess move is also a move you didn’t make. Strategy is mostly choosing what to skip.

Each decision spends the one slot you had, so the cost of anything is the best thing you could have done instead. That cost is invisible, which is why it gets ignored, since nothing appears on the board to show what you gave up. Planning well is mostly the discipline of comparing what you are about to do against what it displaces.

Before you commit to something this week, name the thing it replaces. The practice you will not go to, the evening you will not have free. If the trade looks bad once it is stated plainly, you have your answer before you are halfway in.