It’s a pretty simple calculation.
How much value per dollar does a freelancer produce for you? What’s the psychic reward for the time you put into your favorite hobby? That machine that takes time and money to set up and run… what does it create when it’s operating?
Not everything can or should be evaluated on a return on effort basis, but when we’re comparing two alternatives, it’s a fine place to start.
Instead, we often find ourselves focusing on how easy it is to avoid the issue and choose to focus our effort on more of what we did yesterday, or how painful it might be to walk away from a sunk cost or asset. We think about the effort around the effort, instead of the choices we can make each day about what might be worth our focus.