In April, we spent time developing minor efforts of practice that helped us become more productive, while also exploring our opportunities to create micro-interactions with others, move forward despite reservations about direction, and discover a process for clearer decision making. If you’ve forgotten you did indeed do that, or you missed an episode of brilliance, click here.

In May, we’re going to capitalize on those efforts toward productivity, yet we’re also going to take a deeper dive by looking at areas in which we as leaders, and humans in general, tend to sabotage these efforts when we fail to focus on a few critical factors of success. 

Today’s TPF has us looking at the difference between: 


ROE & ROI


I’m guessing that virtually 100% of you know what ROI abbreviates.
However, I wonder what percentage of you know what ROE abbreviates? 
(Admittedly, I know you’re smart; you are a Thought Partner, after all!)

Let me suspend the suspense for some of you: ENERGY

Every day, every one of us attempts to master this unconscious, delicate balance between the activities and commitments that yield us the best: 


 RETURN ON ENERGY vs RETURN ON INVESTMENT

ROI is more commonly used because the return on investment is seen as directly impacting income and revenue; the holy grail measurement of success, of course. 

ROE is less commonly used because the return on energy is more challenging to track and correlate, and forces us to examine how effectively and efficiently we are actually spending our days; a less than desirable task, of course. 

The challenge is that energy really is the life force that creates our long-term success, and if the energy we expound doesn’t align with the highest IMPACT activities we need to execute then the highest INCOME activities won’t follow suit either. Hence the fact that we are often dissuaded from putting our energy into activities that truly propel us forward and create sustainability in exchange for activities that keep us moving, but not necessarily as future-focused, causing us to reuse our energy sources again and again. 

So here’s the challenge for you this Friday:

1. Make a list of the three things you need to accomplish NEXT WEEK that, if accomplished, would yield the highest IMPACT for you in either:

  • moving a project forward
  • creating a process that you’ve been ignoring because it involves slowing down and actually creating it, knowing, in the long run, it will optimize your business or team
  • achieving one of your “wish I could get to” goals

2. Do not worry about the ROI of the three items you chose.

3. Open next week’s calendar and schedule ENERGY blocks for these items. If your calendar doesn’t allow ENERGY for all three, pick ONE and devote your ENERGY blocks to just that one.

4. Commit to NOT MOVING or DELETING these energy blocks on your calendar. 

5. Take note at the end of the week of what you were able to accomplish by focusing your ENERGY on this high IMPACT initiative. 

If you commit to evaluating your ROE, you’ll notice your IMPACT will eventually see an ROI.

If you focus on evaluating the majority of your activities with this ROE mindset, you may notice that you need to reevaluate activities that are not worth the ROE, and ditching some of those could be the best way to stop sabotaging your productivity. 

Email me next Friday and let me know what you discovered. (One email won’t sabotage your productivity, I promise.)