Most of times ROI is used when talking about money. It’s really simple to see it since all you need to do is make the difference between how much you invested and how much you gained; but there is one factor I consider more important than money and in which ROI is not so easy to see – time.
Time is always both a short and long term investment because each second passed you can never get back and how you decide to spend it is a final decision. You can always get your money and invest them in something else, but the time you invested in your work, family, friends, relationships, acquiring new skills, enjoying, traveling is there for ever.
You can see your time’s ROI as the things you own, but that’s only seeing time as a money investment. While some may consider it like that, the most important are the skills, connections, knowledge and memories you have gained. These are the really important indicators of the ROI of time.
Someone once told me: “Curiosity is one of the things with the highest ROI I ever know”.