How to Prioritise: Return on Effort (ROE)
Does this sound familiar: There is a well thought out list of things you wants to wrap by the end of the day, and is all geared up after that early morning coffee. As the day goes by, in-between all those meetings and impromptu “jam” sessions, the list just keeps expanding. And by the end of the day, not only is the list longer, you realise that you hardly made any progress on the things you wanted to accomplish that day?
We’ve all been there, done that.
It’s essentially a never-ending list of to-do items. And the advice you would normally hear is to run your own calendar, not let other people define your priorities and/or juggle your priority list like a ninja.
But the question remains — How do you even prioritise from all the different conversations, projects, ad-hoc items that pop-up during the day?
Which one should you invest your time and resources in, and which ones should you discard?
Over time, I have come to build a very simple model to help me evaluate my options — think of yourself like a company, and your time as the most valuable resource (aka $$ for any corporation), and then decide where should you invest this precious resources to get the most bang-for-buck.
Sounds simple? Some people might have even mentioned this before.
But, lets take it a step further and really think about this like any consultant would (disclaimer: i have never been one): as a matrix.
The ROE Matrix: All your efforts and time should be invested in doing more of the work that lies in the top 2 squares on this matrix. And you should stay clear of anything that you believe (with sufficient foresight) to be a low impact (or unclear in impact) efforts.
You can think of this another way — Levers. The goal of a lever is the amplify your output for a given amount of input. Then think of your final work (the results) as the output, and invest in projects that provide you the highest lever.
For any work that you do, the output or its material impact on your business (or life) should be more than what you invested in it, i.e. the lever should always be > 1.
Next time you get into a meeting where some crazy new idea is proposed, think about where on the matrix does that lie, or what is your lever. And you will have your answer to whether or not this is something to be prioritised.
