Tentative answer: It was presumably more of a collaborative process than a timeline chosen by one person.

Any opinions about Asimov's The End of Eternity? An organization attempts to optimize the timeline. The book might be a good starter for discussion of CEV, terminal values, and such.

Has anyone read Garfinkle's *All of an Instant"? I've never finished it, but the premise is that time travel is a biological capacity, and when many people discover it, all chaos ensues.