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Return on Effort

September 09, 2026•3 min read

Ever considered your RETURN ON EFFORT?

I was watching Wimbledon recently when a commentator shared an interesting story.

Before the 2008 Olympics, Australian coaches spent time working with Chinese tennis players. They found athletes who were training incredibly hard, often for eight hours a day.

The players had built enormous endurance and work ethic. But a tennis match is usually won over one, two, maybe three hours. Success depends on how much intensity a player can bring to those hours and how effectively they can recover and do it again the next day.

The coaching focus shifted towards shorter periods of higher-intensity practice, supported by recovery.

I was reminded of the same idea this week listening to Australian swimmer Cameron McEvoy talk about his remarkable comeback. After stepping away from swimming and then returning to become Olympic champion, he began questioning some of the traditional assumptions about training. He studied other sports, explored what actually creates elite sprint performance, and redesigned his training around the outcome he cared about most: swimming faster.

He reduced his swimming load from 30km a week to 2kms, focused more on specific sprint training, and is delivering the best performances of his career.

Different sports. Similar lesson.

Return on Effort

Productivity is not ticking more things off the list. Productivity is delivering key outcomes in less time.

Which means productivity is influenced by more than the number of hours available to us. The quality of our attention, our energy levels, and our ability to work with focus all influence the outcomes we produce. We could call this our Return on Effort.

Chris Bailey explored this idea inThe Productivity Project. In one of my favourite experiments, he alternated between 90-hour work weeks and 20-hour work weeks and measured the results.

The 90-hour weeksfeltproductive. He completed more tasks and stayed busy all week. The 20-hour weeks forced a different approach. With far less time available, only the most important work made the cut. His attention became sharper, distractions reduced, and his effort was concentrated on the activities that mattered most.

When he looked at the outcomes produced, he achieved almost the same amount in the 20 hour weeks as the 90 hour weeks. The extra 70 hours delivered minimal Return on Effort!

The additional 70 hours generated far less additional value than most of us would assume.

I think there is a lesson there for modern work. Many of us spend our time trying to fit more into the week, putting in longer hours, when the bigger opportunity might be improving the return we get from the hours we already have.

What do you need to put in place to bring your A-game and improve your Return on Effort for the outcomes that matter most?