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What Is Diminishing Return and How to Prevent It
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What Is Diminishing Return and How to Prevent It

Leon Ho
Lifehack, 2022
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Are you a perfectionist who works endlessly on a task, believing that one more edit, resource or minute will improve it? Leon Ho, founder and CEO of LifeHack, borrows a rule of thumb from the field of economics to help you decide when good enough is good enough. Stop striving for flawlessness, he says, because once you pass the point of diminishing returns, the cost of the work you inject into a project exceeds the return on investment. Learn to apply the law of diminishing returns to your advantage so you don’t needlessly spin your wheels.

Summary

Once you pass the point of diminishing returns, each additional unit of time, money or resources you invest into a project reaps a smaller gain in output.

In the field of economics, the law of diminishing returns states that every production process reaches a juncture whereby “adding an extra production unit while others are constant will lead to a decline in the overall output.”

This rule of thumb applies to your personal productivity, too. The value of the time, energy and resources you inject into your work changes during a project’s lifecycle. At the beginning of a project, every unit you invest brings you a considerable step closer to reaching your goal. As the project progresses and you checked the larger, more important tasks off your to-do list, continuing to invest time and effort ironing out the nitty-gritty details becomes...

About the Author

Leon Ho, founder and CEO of Lifehack, launched the website in 2005 to offer simple productivity tips to readers. The website attracts more than 12 million readers each month and covers a wide range of topics, including work, parenting, relationships, and more.

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