Stupidly Simple Habits I've Discovered to Have the Highest ROI
#1 – Help someone for free to show you’re freaking free
People talk about investing like it’s the holy grail.
Like if you just buy Amazon stocks every day for the rest of your life you’ll become richer than Jeff Bezos. Lol. Nope.
What you consistently do each day is the most important investment.
Because investing money in stocks is nice, but investing time into high-ROI habits that make you valuable will make you more money. And making more money compounds way faster than the S&P 500 Index Fund.
So the goal is to focus on habits, not financial assets, if you want to get wealthy enough to own your time and report to nobody.
Here are the highest ROI habits I’ve found (hat tilt to Sahil Bloom for the headline):
Help someone for free to show you’re freaking free
Transactional relationships piss me off.
Whenever someone needs help 99% of people see it as a financial opportunity for them. They can’t wait to get in your back pocket and swipe your piece of plastic. This is such a scarcity mindset.
I get asked for help all the time. I’ve made it a habit to provide that help for free to a few people who deserve it.
It feels good.
More importantly, a truly free person doesn’t need to clip the ticket of every transaction and bank some cash.
The fact I can help people for free reminds me I AM free. Try it.
Telling my wife this naughty thing each night
Okay, get your mind out of the gutter peeps.
You’ve heard gurus crap on about gratitude practices as if they’re holier than the almighty bible. About a year ago my wife and I discovered we took certain things about each other for granted.
It made us both feel like sh*t.
So my wife came up with this genius idea: every night before bed we tell each other one thing we’re grateful the other person said or did for that day. It takes less than two minutes, but it has improved our marriage!
What it does is shift your focus. Instead of looking for what’s wrong, you start looking for what’s right. You spend the day looking for that one thing you’re grateful for. It’s a gamified challenge.
Stop taking people for granted.
When people feel appreciated they drastically improve your life.
Take a huge dump before bed
Before bed every night I take a big loud dump.
That’s right. I dump all the stuff in my mind into the Notes app on my phone. This lets me go to bed with a clear mind so I’m not daydreaming about all the things I’m going to do tomorrow. As a result, the quality of my sleep has vastly improved.
Empty your mind before bed so you can fill it up again the next day.
Be around animals with furry bums
I love furry bums … specifically dogs.
Next to my gym is a doggy daycare. There are 40-50 dogs in one small room at any time. I make it a habit to walk into the daycare as often as possible to say hi.
I’m like Dog Jesus.
All the puppies run up to me as if I have all the secrets to life and all they have to do is lick them out of me. Dogs make me happy. I go from being so damn serious to soft as butter in seconds.
Animals unlock our sensitive side. Get around them to soften up.
Nuke your calendar for a day (regularly)
The current model of work is f*cked.
Seriously. But not for the reasons you might think. The biggest problem with traditional work is there’s no time to think. You’re always in a meeting or executing on a damn excel spreadsheet so there’s zero time to daydream.
This might sound fine.
The trouble is without time to think deeply it’s impossible to properly solve the problems that you’re in charge of at work.
Right now this is an important habit for me. I need to outsource some work to a virtual assistant. I’m racking my brain on who, how, when. It’s been like that for 4 weeks. I know I have to outsource but it’s not easy.
Then there’s the education model for my online academy. I’m tired of traditional online courses. They suck ass. They’re lifeless. They inspire you to do nothing.
Zilch. Nudda. I want to turn the model upside down.
I’m spending a lot of time in silence just thinking about this problem. If I can solve it, it’s probably worth millions of dollars.
More importantly, it’ll help so many more people use writing as a way to access new opportunities that they could have previously only dreamed of.
Then there’s the global economy. Things look bad right now.
It’s easy to be scared out of investing. It’s easy to start stashing cash under your mattress with the threat of Credit Suisse and Deutsche bank going under in a 2008-style blowup.
There’s also the global tensions in Europe. Things could escalate which wouldn’t be good for humans.
I think a lot about my daughter who’s about to be born and what sort of world that could be if wrinkle d*ck in the soviet land pushes the big red button.
Then there’s the acquisition of Twitter by Elon Musk. This is a huge deal. It could change the entire social media model and stop the unfair take rate and content moderation creators face.
None of these huge problems that lead to opportunities can go anywhere without deep thinking. A 15-second TikTok video isn’t enough. You have to meditate on them and let the dots join inside your head.
So regularly nuke your calendar for an entire day. Use the time to think.
Phone out of sight
A phone is a great way to ruin your day.
When we do work we enjoy or take part in hobbies we love, progress happens. Progress helps us feel happy.
But you can’t make any progress when your phone is buzzing your brain to death and pinging your ears to borderline deafness.
Put your phone in another room to the one you’re working in.
Walking on days when there’s no time to hit the gym
I love the gym.
Movement equals life. Sometimes life gets too busy though and I can’t make it to the gym no matter how hard I try.
The simple solution is to move anyway by walking.
You can step outside and simply walk anywhere. I use walks to save money. I purposely park the car far away from my destination and then walk the rest of the way.
While everyone else gets ripped new butt holes on parking fees, I park for free because I don’t need to be right outside the entrance.
I also like to connect walking with meetings or podcasts so I can multitask. Those walks are good.
The walks that are great, though, are the ones where I walk and listen to nature. It resets my brain.
Make walking a must.
Visit parents when you can’t be assed
Your parents gave birth to you which means a good chunk of the answers to hard life questions can be found by being near them.
When you know where you come from it’s easier to figure out where you’re going.
The truth is once you move out of home the time spent with parents decreases. I probably get to see my parents again less than 100 times before they pass on. It’s an idea I think a lot about.
So I try to see them even when it feels like there isn’t enough time.
Make seeing parents a habit.
Do self-education before self-entertainment
Most people medicate themselves with mindless entertainment, then whatever time is left in the week goes to self-education.
This reality is upside down.
If you’re not learning your mind is slowly dying. Worse, your skills are becoming out of date and you’re missing great opportunities.
Self-education is simply replacing Netflix tv shows and movies with educational podcasts, books, online courses, and seminars.
Become obsessed with self-education and people will think you’re ten times smarter, even if you only have average intelligence like me.
Be a cheeky host to a tourist
People don’t know I used to be a chauffeur driver.
I loved it. Not because rich people treated me like crap and walked over me as if I was their doormat. No. I loved it because I got to show strangers around my city.
In the process I’d notice nuances I hadn’t seen before.
My friend from India is coming to visit me in Melbourne next year. We haven’t met in real life before. So when we catch up and I show her around like a tourist we’re going to have loads of fun.
That fun will further cement our friendship and we’ll both have stories to tell from the experience. Why does this matter?
Stories are the currency of life.
Without stories it’s hard to attract humans into our lives or persuade people of anything. For example, most writers stuff this one up.
All they do is share facts or whatever is popular and then wonder why no one cares. It’s because they’re not sharing stories so they’re not speaking human.
Make it a habit to be a tourist guide a few times a year.
Raise a storm pooper
I’m about to have a storm pooper baby (like a stormtrooper but cuter) join my family.
I can’t wait to meet her. Even though she’s not born yet, I can’t stop thinking about her. Some people will tell you kids are evil or that you can’t afford them.
I disagree.
One of the highest ROI habits successful people have ever told me to do is to spend each day raising a child. The joy you get from being a parent isn’t to be underestimated.
Wish me luck with Little Miss Pooper.
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Terrific Tim. I love everyone of your actionable suggestions. The parents thing is a big deal. We live near our children and see them at least twice a month. My mother is 87 years old and lives in Oklahoma. I live in Washington State. I get to see her about 2 times a year. If you can figure out a portal to make the drive shorter let me know!
Tim, what a read. As I have been reflecting over the real of ROI and what truly makes it most important I feel gratified to awaken to this tool box of goodies. Bless you and I know you be a #1 Dad.