Ask HN: what is the highest reward to effort ratio you've ever experienced?

Kids.

cycling, hands down.

http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2796/4223470946_b93ce34f76_z.j...

High effort but little reward, or low effort with high reward?

paleo diet

100 pushup plan

reading The 4-Hour Workweek

Fired a big'n'awfull client once, gained months of happy living.

I developed an educational app in one day. Apple featured it right around Christmas. Best Christmas present ever. I made enough money in that one month to pay off all of my credit cards and student loans. I even paid cash for a late-model car that month. Part of that money also helped my company lease a kick ass office. We went from subleasing a dark attic above a video production studio to leasing our own class A office.

I built a side project on a weekend and made $700 from revenue / selling the site. It also helped land me a job. Not too shabby.

I started an alternative medicine affiliate site back in the summer of 2006. Probably spent 4-5 months full-time on it, and 1 hour since. It made me $1.6 million total for the first 2 years before I sold it. Pretty good ROI.

A long time ago I made some silly music visualizations for Winamp that ended up shipping with the official download. Years later, a picture surfaced showing an astronaut on the ISS using Winamp on his laptop... which means my code made it out into space.

Best reward ever.