How can I choose ahead of time where my research should be published?
Format and style should rarely, if ever, be your first concern in writing a paper. Your top objective should be describing good research to your readers. You need not worry about how to cite a paper or if you should use British or American English spellings at first. (Or at least not until you complete Rule 9!)
Instead, what this is rule is advising you to do are tasks such as organizing your thoughts, collect references, write up your methodologies, and think about the graphics you will want to use to help illustrate your points. This is more or less the same advice given by people like George Whitesides in talks and as a &quot;editorial column.&quot;

Knowing where to publish is not that difficult. Look for where the work you're drawing from is currently being published. If many of the papers you are citing are from journals X and Y, one of those will likely be a good home for your paper. Which one to select might be a matter of which audience you're trying to reach: for instance, The Journal of Physical Chemistry and The Journal of Chemical Physics cover very similar sets of areas. However, the former journal is mainly a chemistry journal, and the latter is primarily for physicists. (There is, as you might imagine, a lot of crossover.)