Outcome to Effort Curves of Different Types of Work
During a discussion on work and what constitutes work, a friend of mine and I outlined five “sliders” of work:
- Stage in a larger goal
- Positive Effect [or broadly this could be called “externalities” - positive and negative e.g. working on a cause you care about, saving lives, harming people, etc.]
- How time is spent at work [your moment-to-moment enjoyment/fulfillment]
- Outcome/Money made to effort
- Time spent
Even though this is just a rough sketch and the categories are slightly fuzzy, it worked really well to help me decide what to spend my time on.
Among others, it helped me realize how different types of work massively differed in outcome to effort. This was especially relevant when considering the size of the outcome required.
Working on my existing company, I could have a massive impact by investing 2-3 hours per week. While the impact of the first 2-3 hours was absurd, the outcome derived by any additional hour was negligible. So spending more time wouldn't actually be that much more helpful (and could actually have a negative impact). This means, outcome to effort tracked on a roughly logarithmic curve.
Starting a new company on the other hand had the opposite return profile. If things worked out, outcome to effort would track on an exponential curve (with a likely plateau somewhere).
When pondering what to do next at the end of last year, I just vaguely aimed at making more money. In the absence of a clear number, starting a new company seemed the obvious thing to consider. After all the outcome of starting a new company was basically uncapped and based on 40 hours a week the outcome-to-effort ratio was much better than working on my existing business.
However, once I got more specific and fixed the number that I was looking to earn – I noticed this number lay comfortably within the possible outcome of working 2-3h on my existing company. This meant if I was okay with the outcome potentially being capped, working 2-3 hours on my existing company offered an absurdly good trade.