A no-bullshit guide to living a high ROI life
Investing your time, energy and presence on things that actually give back
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I’ve noticed a lot of people start frothing at the mouth when they hear business terms like ROI or KPI, especially in the personal development space, but I haven’t found a better way to describe what I’m talking about here. If you can't name what you're getting back from how you spend your days, you're not building, you're just busy.
Return on investment is exactly what this is. I’m not talking about money though, I’m talking about how you spend your time, energy, attention—and what you get back when you do. Sometimes it’s immediate, sometimes it takes months or years, but at a certain point, you can feel it. You’re more grounded, you have more clarity, and your life starts to stabilize in ways that are quiet but undeniable. That’s the payoff.
Just like you can track interest in a savings account, you can track what’s paying off in your day-to-day life. Not everything will, and that’s fine, but once you start noticing what gives something back (vs what drains you) it gets easier to shift your efforts towards the things that actually help. And once those things start compounding, everything else downstream starts to get lighter.
Before I share the list, I have to ask the real question:
What are you actually investing?
Not just what you spend money on, but what you give your bandwidth to.
What you allow into your space. What you tolerate. What you reinforce with repetition.
What’s compounding quietly in the background—good or bad?
Because the truth is, every decision, every single thing we do, is a kind of investment.
Some choices compound.
Most quietly deplete you.
Some pull you into feedback loops you don’t even realize you’re funding.
These are the behaviors, practices, and choices I keep coming back to because they pay me back in clarity, sovereignty, and fewer dumb decisions. They’re not trendy or impressive, but they’ve made it easier to build a life I actually want to be inside of. They’re high ROI habits, routines and ways I take care of present self—because that’s who’s building my future self.
Unsubscribing from weak inputs
Emails, people*, routines, media, food, narratives.
If it makes me foggy, scattered, or performative, it’s out.
If attention is capital, ROI starts here.
*This includes relationships. Some people are drains disguised as connections.
Full-body “no” decisions
Your body knows before your brain starts negotiating.
I’ve never regretted a gut-level no.
I’ve regretted every time I overrode it to be polite.
Cooking at home
This has become one of my favorite rituals—and likely my highest ROI routine.
I know what’s in my food. I respect it more. I waste less.
Teaching myself to cook felt like reclaiming autonomy.
No takeout has ever matched the ROI of a perfectly seared homemade steak after a productive day.
Plus, you burn more calories prancing around the kitchen while cooking a meal than you do driving to Chick-fil-A, just sayin’.
Note on cooking: if you’re not “good” at cooking, don’t let it stop you. Start with basic meals and go from there. When I was first getting started a few years ago, I signed up for Hello Fresh. The meals come prepackaged with exactly the right, pre-measured ingredients, which makes each recipe pretty foolproof. I also read this book, which helped me branch off onto my own. I now cook at home 6-7 nights a week, and have hundreds of recipes under my belt. Experimenting with food is legitimately one of my favorite flow state activities, and the return on this investment has been exponential.
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