The concept of Return on Investment (ROI) is a very common and widely used metric in the financial and business world. As an investor, you are trying to determine whether a certain investment will be lucrative or not. Basically, it is the ratio of input to output. The goal or idea, of course, is that if you put 1 unit into something, you should get 1 + X. As we can see, every investor tries to maximize its utility by carefully assessing where the capital should be going.
In your daily life, and for most people, financial investments are rather rare. Nor is it possible or useful for you to quantify the benefits of everything you do. Besides, there are things that have no objective price, or could you tell me the price of privacy, health, knowledge, or beauty? Still, that shouldn't stop us from making basic estimates or assumptions about whether a given investment - be it in the form of energy, money, time, labor, etc. - will be fruitful or not.
This is where Return of Energy (ROE) comes in. As we know from physics, energy can neither be destroyed nor created, but only transformed. Therefore, energy can only be directed and channeled. Wherever energy goes, something is created, something is changed, something is moved. Now, the fact is that we don't have an infinite supply of energy, which means that we have to invest it wisely. The question immediately arises as to how you want to use it. Let's do a thought experiment.
In Scenario A, you stay home feeling exhausted from your day at work, eat something that is on the unhealthy side of the spectrum, watch the news of the day, and then enjoy that new series on Netflix on the couch. Deep down, you know that you've wasted your time and potential on activities that not only drain your energy, but don't really leave you feeling refreshed and recharged. You feel guilty. This will make it harder for you to make good decisions because you will lack the willpower, discipline, and self-confidence you need to succeed. Demoralized and defeated as you are, you end up watching just one more episode of your new Netflix series. It is just after midnight, but you can't fall asleep because of all the blue light emissions that have tricked your circadian rhythm. You wake up late the next day, and you're upset with yourself for arriving late at work. Your whole day is negatively impacted by this initial decision to choose the lazy option.
