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jimrandomh comments on A "Failure to Evaluate Return-on-Time" Fallacy - Less Wrong
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I agree, I don't think these kind of 'easy' wins are all that common in real life, certainly not those offering 300x improvements. I would like to see some better examples.
Entrepreneurship / business seems likely to be relatively fertile ground for finding good examples since short term financial gain can often be used as a relatively good proxy for 'success' and is relatively easy to measure. Too much focus on short term financial gain isn't always an optimal strategy even in business however since it may result in getting stuck in local maxima or directly compromising longer term success.
I think these types of wins are common, but not easy.
That is, working a little more on your primary project (the one that offers greatest ROI), or figuring out how to become more productive on your primary project, will usually be > 10x ROI of commenting on blog and web forums. But the latter is fun, immediately rewarding, doesn't require willpower, etc. We sometimes do it b/c we haven't explicitly recognized this difference (an easy win), but more often it is due to a limited ability to direct our attention to our most valuable project, not a limited ability to identify our most valuable project.
So the solution requires the hard work of greater willpower, increasing self-discipline and the ability to direct your attention. You know, what I'm failing at right now :). More generally, what almost anyone commenting on a web forum (instead of writing a great top-level post or book or starting a local LW chapter) is doing. At least, if you agree w/ me that commenting on web forums is a very low-valued activity.