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Personal OKRs for Success

mohitkhare.me

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Re: Personal OKRs for Success

#21

Post by gdubs »

I agree with the other comments that life should have a flow element to it, and that you can accidentally suck the joy out of it with too much structure.

On the other hand, some people have too little structure, and are miserable because of it. I realized this when I had kids: structure didn’t make them miserable; in fact, it gave them a sort of calm, and reassurance, and clear expectations.

There’s a balance. The “key” part of OKR is important — find the most impactful, highest leverage thing to measure, and focus on that. If you’re a student, that could mean getting a good grade in a course that’s very important to you. Too many goals can be as stressful as too few.

When I was younger I was perhaps too far on the unstructured side. There were creative benefits of that, but the detriment was ratholing on things that ultimately weren’t very impactful.

Ultimately, you have to keep yourself in check. It’s important to have open ended, exploratory time with no clear purpose. It can also be helpful to have some clear, key results as an anchor.

Re: Personal OKRs for Success

#22

Post by nkrisc »

Maybe this works for some people, but to me it looks like a great way to make life as soulless as work. It also looks like it falls into the same trap of objectives set to lead to preconceived key results. From the blog's example, it looks like they wanted to read more and create some open source projects so you find an objective that fits those key results, not the other way around. I say this because reading 20 books and creating 2 open source projects are very narrow ways of "boosting knowledge." There are lots of ways to boost knowledge, and there are many different kinds of knowledge. Volunteering in a soup kitchen, as a tired example, is a great way to boost your knowledge of the world outside of your bubble and how other people live. Creating 2 open source projects is a great way to thicken the walls of your bubble. Here's a KR I'd suggest instead to boost knowledge: find a way to do outdoor manual labor twice a week, whatever it is. That will boost your knowledge of something, certainly.

But to each their own, whatever makes you happy. I just know this would make me miserable. These key results look like a way to make your personal life just more training for your work life.

Re: Personal OKRs for Success

#23

Post by rahimnathwani »

harryf wrote: post #8
cseleborg wrote: post #4

At almost 40, I've come to realize that work gives me plenty enough opportunities to track and measure performance as it is. But there's also that part of life that's not work, and I've found that merely being , as opposed to performing, is quite valuable in itself! It's hard to enjoy the moment with my kids, my spouse and my friends when I constantly think of my todos and objectives. I feel by now that the goal is t…

As a 46 year old I second this! Trying to run your personal life with OKRs sounds like a great way to beat yourself up. Also your spouse won’t be impressed when you tell her “My goal was to spend 46 minutes really listening to you this week and I actually achieved 52 minutes!”

You can base your KR on her satisfaction (as reported on an end-of-quarter survey) rather than on your level of activity.

Try to measure the outcomes rather than the activities :)

Re: Personal OKRs for Success

#24

Post by Juliate »

snidane wrote: post #14

I'd posit this quantitative approach is harmful not only to one's personal life - turning yourself into a robot, forgetting that life is more akin to a dance than a project with a budget and a deadline. Something that you do to enjoy even though it has no apparent goal. Analogy taken from Alan Watts - https://youtu.be/rBpaUICxEhk I'd also posit that quantitative approach to business is also harmful. This path is take…

Yes, yes and YES, thank you.

Re: Personal OKRs for Success

#25

Post by coffeefirst »

snidane wrote: post #14

I'd posit this quantitative approach is harmful not only to one's personal life - turning yourself into a robot, forgetting that life is more akin to a dance than a project with a budget and a deadline. Something that you do to enjoy even though it has no apparent goal. Analogy taken from Alan Watts - https://youtu.be/rBpaUICxEhk I'd also posit that quantitative approach to business is also harmful. This path is take…

Ah, yes, the numbers-or-it-doesn’t-count business people are rough. I like to call this strategy “ignoring empirical evidence that’s hard to do math with.”

Re: Personal OKRs for Success

#26

Post by PaulHoule »

snidane wrote: post #14

I'd posit this quantitative approach is harmful not only to one's personal life - turning yourself into a robot, forgetting that life is more akin to a dance than a project with a budget and a deadline. Something that you do to enjoy even though it has no apparent goal. Analogy taken from Alan Watts - https://youtu.be/rBpaUICxEhk I'd also posit that quantitative approach to business is also harmful. This path is take…

Some things work quantitatively, some don't. I like using quantities for athletic training.

If I was training for a marathon I would set numerical goals for how much I would run a week coming into it. If I am recovering from an injury that's even more the case.

Lately my son and I have been learning a martial arts form that has about 80 steps in it. There is a lot new about it for us: I've never done a two-person form or a weapons form before, and he's never trained in a form at all. You learn this kind of thing by breaking it up into pieces: so we have a burndown chart on the wall for it, which I think is a good motivation.

Re: Personal OKRs for Success

#27

Post by duopixel »

imustbeevil wrote: post #17
duopixel wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Our true values (as human beings, not organizational values) are not measurable. I may want to become closer to my family, so I schedule more time with them. Spending time with them makes it more likely, but it may also go in the opposite direction through conflict. In paper you have accomplished your OKR, but in practice you are further away from your true goal.

That, again, is a result of measuring the wrong thing. The measurement should be "relationship strength" or "spouse/child happiness" not "time spent". The problem that most of us seem to have is that we're only tracking easy things to measure. Everything valuable is difficult to measure. Reading a book is worthless . The purpose of reading a book is to gain something (learn something, read faster, practice public spe…

If you try to measure the subjective through objective values, you will only measure what you think about yourself. If I ask myself "how much did I learn today?" it is more judgement about myself rather than an objective value.

I explored this throughly in 2014:

https://medium.com/@duopixel/the-qualified-self-7f69c6b23623

I have not updated this post, but I did this for years without finding satisfaction, because what I had to address was judgement about myself, not the shortcomings that I perceived I had at the time.

But the exercise of trying to measure the subjective is very instructive in itself. I ignore if you counter my point from experience, if not, I encourage you to register subjective judgement. And if you already do it, I encourage you to drop it and sense how it feels.

Many paths of personal growth require you to do opposite things at different times, so you can maximize your surface of experience.

Re: Personal OKRs for Success

#28

Post by throwaway5752 »

Anyone that's done larger scale project management knows that it doesn't fall into agile or waterfall. You may use waterfall for the larger plan, and agile to track individual projects in that plan. Like when people talk about tactics vs strategy.

I think this use of personal OKRs might work for some people and might be a great tool for focus. This feels like a technique to manage individual projects, in that analogy.

However, I think it would be very easy to find yourself over-quantifying your life and find yourself feeling adrift even though you're succeeding on the numbers.

One thing that is very powerful about the regret minimization framework (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YlgkfOr_GLY - Bezos, famously) is that if forcing you to think about what you want to accomplish with your life and what makes you truly satisfied. If you know those, then quantifying your progress towards those goals makes sense. If you don't, then it's probably premature to have OKRs. OKRs measure progress towards a larger goal. Don't forget the lesson of The Hitchhiker's Guide, and make sure that you are working towards good goals first.

Re: Personal OKRs for Success

#29

Post by dnautics »

snidane wrote: post #14

I'd posit this quantitative approach is harmful not only to one's personal life - turning yourself into a robot, forgetting that life is more akin to a dance than a project with a budget and a deadline. Something that you do to enjoy even though it has no apparent goal. Analogy taken from Alan Watts - https://youtu.be/rBpaUICxEhk I'd also posit that quantitative approach to business is also harmful. This path is take…

I don't think that in general (even in organizations) the KRs of OKRs have to be quantitative, they just have to be more-or-less binary. For example "agree upon the spec for feature X" is a perfectly valid KR.

Re: Personal OKRs for Success

#30

Post by closeparen »

cseleborg wrote: post #4

At almost 40, I've come to realize that work gives me plenty enough opportunities to track and measure performance as it is. But there's also that part of life that's not work, and I've found that merely being , as opposed to performing, is quite valuable in itself! It's hard to enjoy the moment with my kids, my spouse and my friends when I constantly think of my todos and objectives. I feel by now that the goal is t…

I won’t have a spouse, kids, or friends unless I force myself to work at cultivating traits that are valued by other people and to participate in social situations. None of those things are going to happen in “just being” mode.
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