Return or Return on Investment.
The existential question.
I grew up in a middle class family in Bangalore, India. Till the time I was in high school, like for most of us, my parents were a predominant driving force in every decision I made. As I got out of high school and went into college, I started making my own decisions, often shaping my thoughts in ways that felt logical and rational and this is a story of one of them — “Return on Investment” a.k.a “ROI”.
ROI Calculations:
So ROI, mathematically, is defined as the net gain or loss amount per the total invested amount. Now, to translate that to reality and success measurement, my mind defined an event’s ROI as the quantum of success per quantum of effort. It then naturally concluded that success and effort were directly proportional to each other. Again, like most of our minds, growing up, mine was really interested in this particular correlation, and its best use case for this — exams. Every time I prepared for an exam my mind subconsciously plotted a mushy ROI graph (See table below) based on previous data (inclusive of tangibles (grades) and intangibles (interest, passion, sentiment etc.)).
My mind would then identify my sweet spot for that particular exam and then have me stop investing after I hit maximum ROI. And this was nothing new, its human instinct. When we were little boys and girls playing, we traded cards and coins on this instinctive concept and said “if I give you this much, what do I get for it” and traded when we got the most. Return on Investment 101.
The Force and its effect:
Nonetheless, like I said earlier, growing up I had a predominant driving force which challenged these all-so-natural thoughts and drove me to an irrational reality, where “Return” mattered more than ROI. I just didn’t get it. But it was The Force and there was no winning over it. So I complied and worked hard and invested my time, effort and interest as a means to achieve highest return. A few years passed and I graduated from high school in the 99th percentile in my state. So I kind-of succeeded, and I must say it felt really good. Now here’s a graph of the my own unnatural return perspective:
Moving on, I got into college and told The Force to leave me alone and she did. So I went back to the Table-1 perspectives and focused on maximizing ROI. I realized that my mind was quite clever, it had continued to retain the data and ROI calculations from over 15 years of school and found an excellent sweet spot. So using this I studied half as much as some of my peers and managed to get only a meager 10% less than them. I thought I was so much smarter than them. The justification made sense and sounded objective because I failed to understand the principle behind exams. Exams to me were point in time pointlessness and education was just a degree. I had realized that what I regarded as success (high ROI) finally didn’t feel validated as I hadn’t learned anything over the four years. I felt discontent and ready to pursue “Return” again but I had lost four years. Never mind, I hated what I was doing so why bother about either. Fuck ROI!
Return to Return
I was passionate about, excited for, in-love with, wonder-struck by,..you get it..my first job. I had learnt that focusing on maximizing ROI did not get me anywhere so I focused on return again. I worked 80 hour weeks, on weekends, holidays, nonstop. All that because I believed that I was investing towards learning new things, taking on new challenges and meeting interesting people. My investment efforts were being paid off by the innate sense of accomplishment which was not a success factor I had ever really considered. It made me ecstatic.
This continued for the first couple years of my career, until the learning plateaued and experience stagnated. The plateau made me think about what I was really gaining out of the experience. I began whining about not getting rewarded for all the hard work I had put in. Now this didn’t make sense. I had worked a whole lot, I had certainly focused on just the return and yet I was not getting what I wanted. Well, again I was back to thinking about ROI and going — What the heck, I’m so screwed. Fuck return!
So I started thinking and came up with the following few observations.
My Few Final Observations
Observation 1: Return doesn’t put food on the table, ROI does. And your brain is going to tell you how to survive. Its programmed to do that using those mushy graphs its been plotting.
Observation 2: Logic and mathematics are binary. Life is not. Life is not formulaic. Period. Life is about balance. Most times our fight is not for our passions but for achieving balance between those two graphs in our minds. Find your sweet spot between the graphs and not on the graphs.
Observation 3: If you see yourself doing too many ROI calculations, especially where intangibles are at play, ask yourself — do I really want to do continue doing what I’m doing. This can be with college, work, relationships, whatever. Once you’ve answered the question, embrace it. By embracing it you’re embracing balance.
Observation 4: When you’re young, focus on returns because your mind’s mushy graph is based on too little data. Return will give you a better ROI than ROI itself.
Passion is over-hyped and ROI is over-calculated, there’s no point choosing one or the other. Choose neither. Choose both.
Choose balance.
