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Setting up personal OKR (objectives and key-results)

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Re: Setting up personal OKR (objectives and key-results)

#21
post #10
post #2

I have a pretty extensive personal system partially based on OKRs but I find the key element is doing the exercise as a group and having accountability partners.

I’d like to see this added to the system. At my company, every goal has a “POC” – point of contact aka “owner” or “partner”. I think you should add a partner to each goal – a person who will rate you on the objective. The objectives are what matter. e.g. if you hit 6 hrs time with gf, but she still thinks you are rubbish , you haven’t made any progress on the “strengthen relationships with gf” objective.

Exactly. Outcome > Output.

Re: Setting up personal OKR (objectives and key-results)

#22
post #7
post #3

What I like about OKRs is that it really focuses on providing ways to clearly specify your goals and measure whether you are achieving them. This is also its biggest weakness, since "Key Results" that cannot be expressed as continuous, clearly measurable values will suffer. This leads to cold-seeming Initiatives like the "Connect to the girlfriend for at least six hour-long sessions." from the blog post. Well meaning…

> Well meaning no doubt, but relationship quality just doesn't lend itself to quantisation like that. Granted, but sometimes you can find proxies and variables that increase the likelihood of success if you hit them consistently. For example, what's "successfully land an aircraft"? It's a sequence of hitting certain parameters within certain time windows that, when you do that, result in a smooth, successful, landing…

What I have found for myself is that I easily fool myself into applying these kind of frameworks for everything in my life, because every problem can be a nail for the OKR-shaped hammer. Some problems are better approached in different ways though. It's a valuable tool to have in the mental toolbox but it is also good to have a variety of approaches to choose from when confronted with a new problem or task.

Re: Setting up personal OKR (objectives and key-results)

#23
With regard to your juggling KR, I learned by a method of breaking it down that I found very helpful and learned from a book that I can't remember the title of, and would like to relate here.

I learned in ~3 hours of low effort while watching TV during a single day, told a friend about it, and they subsequently did the same thing that same day. Afterward we both said things to each other like "wow, I had no idea it was this easy!"

A quick disclaimer: this is for 3-ball juggling. 4-ball is a bit different, and I have heard it is a better foundation for 5,6,7+, but I never learned how to do it well.

First, get your three balls or similar. Hacky sacks, tennis balls, bean bags, rubik's cubes, whatever you've got.

Second, sit somewhere comfy and safe, with your arms down and your hands roughly near your knees if they were crossed. Hold just one ball. Practice tossing that one ball from one hand to the other hand, tossing it to about eye level on each throw. Your goal here is to keep your hands mostly down and apart and to get used to the feel of what power of throw you need and where your hand needs to be to catch the ball, without spending too much attention watching your hands. Practice left to right repeatedly, and right to left repeatedly, and then also practice back and forth. This should take somewhere between 5 minutes and an hour total -- but try to make this easy. If a later step is hard, do this first step more. Make sure the ball gets right to about eye level on each throw, in a neat little arc.

Third, once you feel good about the above, sit in the same position, with one ball in each hand. Throw one and when it hits the peak, around eye level, throw the other, and then catch them both. That's it. Now practice this, again repeating first a left-hand throw and then first a right-hand throw, and then a little back and forth, and try to keep that consistency where each just gets to about eye level in a nice little arc. This teaches the real "trick" of juggling: knowing when to throw. This should also take somewhere between 5 minutes and an hour to get comfortable with.

Fourth, sit now with two balls in one hand and one in the other. Throw with the hand that has 2 first, and just do what you did above, but this time, at the point the second ball thrown is in the air at peak, instead of waiting and just catching both, throw the third ball. You can still just catch them all from here. Practice each direction, another 5 minutes to an hour here, but you might slip into the next step naturally.

Fifth, and finally: rather than just catching at the end there, try to just continue the pattern. You have all of the skills required at this point and you will be "juggling" each time. Once you've thrown all 3 starting from each direction, it likely won't be hard to do a 4th or a 5th throw, which feels amazing to get to, and then it's just smoothing things out and finding consistency.

At that point, try to hit 10 throws, then 30, 100, etc. Getting a string of 30+ might take a day or two to actually get, but it'll likely be addictive and you'll want to just keep trying, and it's easy to do most of these steps while you do other low-hands-use things like watching TV, having a conversation, or listening to a podcast.

This comment may get lost, but maybe it'll also help someone! Juggling is a wonderful little skill to have, and it sticks around for life. I learned a little over a decade ago while in school and actively played with it for about a year, but can still easily resume it today.

Re: Setting up personal OKR (objectives and key-results)

#24
post #9

First off, I like the exercise. I think it’s healthy as a form of journaling and more people should be introspective in this way. But I’d like to ask what problem is this trying to solve? In a large org, the OKRs are driving alignment and accountability. But for an individual, i think the bigger challenge is motivation, discipline, dedication, commitment. So what I mean is, I don’t think individuals have a problem kn…

It's just a variation on stuff like "making SMART goals". It's a framework for breaking down your goal into identifiable steps and finding ways to check your progress early, instead of saying "this year I'll lose weight" and checking back on December 30.

Not that I'm a particular David Allen GTD fan (and really am not much of a "methodology" person in general) but one of the handful of his ideas I really did like was the idea of breaking down projects into specific actionable tasks. Whether it's losing weight or getting better organized.

Re: Setting up personal OKR (objectives and key-results)

#25
post #23

With regard to your juggling KR, I learned by a method of breaking it down that I found very helpful and learned from a book that I can't remember the title of, and would like to relate here. I learned in ~3 hours of low effort while watching TV during a single day, told a friend about it, and they subsequently did the same thing that same day. Afterward we both said things to each other like "wow, I had no idea it w…

This is how I learned. The most important step here is selection of the right thing to juggle. Nothing adds more difficulty (well, maybe riding a unicycle). The hackysack was made for this. The heft and size are perfect, especially when you move to having two in one hand and one in the other (the juggling starting position). After that, it is all muscle memory. After I got the basics, I would go out in the yard and just do laps while juggling. Before a week or so I was able to juggle fairly well with three identical objects, then figured out doing different sizes and weights together. At some point, I realized girls were not going to be impressed enough by this skill to overcome the other deficiencies I had, and I stopped. :)

Re: Setting up personal OKR (objectives and key-results)

#26
post #5
post #4

I really like this but some of your objectives don't have a timeline attached. For example, "Write 10 reviews on twitter". I would have liked to see a parenthetical "(1 per week for 10 straight weeks)" or "(within 60 days)". Without this its hard to put concrete tasks on a calendar. BTW I like your goals, too. They seem quite wholesome and achievable, and reasonable (granted I don't know your BMI now, for example, bu…

Glad you liked the structure/goals. All of them are for January-February-March 2021. Does that cover the time-bound aspect you're talking about?

Sure does! Okay, so there's a "default time bound" on your list. Makes sense.

Re: Setting up personal OKR (objectives and key-results)

#27
post #15

I cannot imagine structuring my (non-work) life like this. Nothing would suck the joy/play/freedom out of my leisure time faster. Happy for you if it works for you though.

remember, this is the time period in every year where people set up exercise plans and decide to lose weight and save money and ... you know. :)

Re: Setting up personal OKR (objectives and key-results)

#28
Maybe I'm too cynical with regard to today's corporate practices, but what would be next? Maybe weekly tasks can be filed as Jira tickets? Burndown charts for how one's week went?

If it works for you, great, but this seems like something I would never want to import into my personal life.

Re: Setting up personal OKR (objectives and key-results)

#29
post #9

First off, I like the exercise. I think it’s healthy as a form of journaling and more people should be introspective in this way. But I’d like to ask what problem is this trying to solve? In a large org, the OKRs are driving alignment and accountability. But for an individual, i think the bigger challenge is motivation, discipline, dedication, commitment. So what I mean is, I don’t think individuals have a problem kn…

There are usually more obviously good and desirable things than I have the bandwidth to accomplish in one time period; it's useful to pick the subset that will be my current focus.

For example last year I invested a lot in lifestyle habits around exercise and cooking. Now those habits are largely autopilot and I'm looking at mental habits around attention, complaining, and negativity.

Re: Setting up personal OKR (objectives and key-results)

#30
OKR is probably one of the worst fads to happen to project management and software engineering.

Just set normal realistic goals and plans, or even just a general direction. Don't use numbers where it doesn't make sense -- not everything needs to be a piece of data -- not everything has a completion percentage.

Hope it goes away soon, along with "Agile", "Extreme Programming" and "Open Office Layout"

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