Time, energy, attention, discipline, money, love. All of the resources we have are limited. What you are able to do with them is only limited based on the decisions that you make.
Investing is a skill to be able to manage those finite resources and effectively allocate them to create the best possible outcomes.
Time management, exercise, meditation, mutual funds, marriage. These are all activities or institutions we've created to help us best invest what limited resources we have. The goal of all of them is to generate a positive return.
Someone who is obsessed with productivity and efficiency is an investor of time. People who focus on exercise and healthy eating are investors of energy. Spending time identifying businesses, properties, and products to put money behind are investors of capital.
Most people think of investors as exclusively financial investors; people who invest money. Not all investors are focused on investing capital. But even among investors of capital, they are NOT just venture capital and private equity investors.
Someone who has worked their way up the corporate ladder and is now running a profitable carpet business in the midwest that you've never heard of? They're an investor. They have capital (the profits from the carpet business) and they have to make decisions about how to allocate that capital (do they modernize their machines? Increase their marketing? Buy a competitor?) And they'll be judged based on their ability to spend that money to create the optimal outcomes.
Start asking yourself: "how is this person allocating resources?" You'll realize that everyone is an investor. Broaden your horizons to understand the wide range of valuable insights from different investors that can benefit you personally and professionally.
When you're evaluating any investment decision the key questions are around pros and cons. What could go right? And what could go wrong? The phrase "risk-adjusted returns" encompasses the calculation behind (1) How likely is this going to be a good outcome? (2) Just how good could that outcome be (e.g. is this a $1M idea or a $10B idea?), and (3) How likely is this going to be a bad outcome?
Then you ask yourself if the risk justifies the investment:
When we find something we want to invest in, we often find ourselves easily picturing the best outcome, no matter how unlikely it is, and rarely predicting the worst outcome. Likely this comes down to a weakness in "risk literacy."