Setting up personal OKR (objectives and key-results) • Hacker News Board

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

#41

Post by raverbashing » Sat, Jan 02, 2021, 10:52 PM UTC

tonymet wrote: post #34

noarchy wrote: post #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.

can we ask what you are doing instead?

Not bureaucratize my life plans?

I keep my objectives in my head. No need to write this kind of thing down and keeping scores of myself. And whatever happens happens. I don't need to bog myself down with some corporate invention.

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

#42

Post by wortelefant » Sat, Jan 02, 2021, 10:54 PM UTC

nbzso wrote: post #36

Wow, just wow. Someone contributed to OKR getting a wife. I am blown away. I will never quantize some parts of my life. Work is work. Learning is learning. There are a lot of methodologies for GTD, but in my experience balancing order with improvised chaos is healthy practice :) PS. Joke aside there is a proven correlation between high achievement and habit of tracking and measuring a goal. I am not sure about OKR bu…

the main benefits of OKRs might be transparency and alignment, not having a quantifiable goals. I am dating without much success for more than one and a half years now, and I have yet to meet someone who might be open to build something together. I regularly spend money on platforms like tinder, veggly, okcupid with a hope that despite corona, it might contribute to such a development. Still I did not put much effort in my activities there, as I wantee to keep it playful and not follow up on it as I would with a "real goal". I feel unhappy about my lack of progress in this area and I hope that for this new year, acknowledging it as a committment will help move this forward.

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

#43

Post by dmje » Sat, Jan 02, 2021, 11:13 PM UTC

This may be an unpopular opinion on HN, but I just don't get it. The whole notion of setting personal goals, working out tasks and sub tasks and strategies and charts - like, you deal with all that stuff in your work life.

Give it a rest. Be with your family. Look at a sunset. Read a book or two. Paint or play the piano. Eat well, go for a run. Do things that are good for you and other people. Spend less time on your phone. Be a nicer person.

None of this needs a chart or a strategy or a plan. It's just common sense humanity.

Don't worry if you "fail", it's the journey that counts. You don't need to be grade VIII on the piano or the best artist in your social circle - just enjoy doing whatever it is. Find stuff with flow. Live life. Don't spend your time measuring it.

Just my halfpence.

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

#44

Post by nbzso » Sat, Jan 02, 2021, 11:19 PM UTC

wortelefant wrote: post #42

nbzso wrote: post #36

Wow, just wow. Someone contributed to OKR getting a wife. I am blown away. I will never quantize some parts of my life. Work is work. Learning is learning. There are a lot of methodologies for GTD, but in my experience balancing order with improvised chaos is healthy practice :) PS. Joke aside there is a proven correlation between high achievement and habit of tracking and measuring a goal. I am not sure about OKR bu…

the main benefits of OKRs might be transparency and alignment, not having a quantifiable goals. I am dating without much success for more than one and a half years now, and I have yet to meet someone who might be open to build something together. I regularly spend money on platforms like tinder, veggly, okcupid with a hope that despite corona, it might contribute to such a development. Still I did not put much effort…

On this topic I will share my humble observation. Women are mythical creatures, they come and they go. One big lesson in life that I have learned, the only winning strategy is never to overestimate yourself and move quickly when they give you a signal.:) There is one problem in making this a commitment - the outcome is not in your control. There is a limit in projection when other peoples are involved.

Note: Don’t use dating apps or services. They are really dangerous. Find other ways to connect.

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

#45

Post by bonniemuffin » Sat, Jan 02, 2021, 11:28 PM UTC

dmje wrote: post #43

This may be an unpopular opinion on HN, but I just don't get it. The whole notion of setting personal goals, working out tasks and sub tasks and strategies and charts - like, you deal with all that stuff in your work life. Give it a rest. Be with your family. Look at a sunset. Read a book or two. Paint or play the piano. Eat well, go for a run. Do things that are good for you and other people. Spend less time on your…

My cool-headed long-term-thinking self wants to "eat well, go for a run", but my saturday morning self just wants to sleep in and have a donut. Some of us need some form of accountability structure to help our rational selves prevail over our self-sabotaging hedonist selves.

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

#46

Post by ggm » Sat, Jan 02, 2021, 11:28 PM UTC

dmje wrote: post #43

This may be an unpopular opinion on HN, but I just don't get it. The whole notion of setting personal goals, working out tasks and sub tasks and strategies and charts - like, you deal with all that stuff in your work life. Give it a rest. Be with your family. Look at a sunset. Read a book or two. Paint or play the piano. Eat well, go for a run. Do things that are good for you and other people. Spend less time on your…

This. Have a "me three"

I do shopping lists. If we're entertaining, we do a plan to ensure we get the food and drink ready in time. That's about it.

There's a packing list for the beach, but we haven't used it in years and years: life's too short for being driven by an organising principle.

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

#47

Post by mhd » Sat, Jan 02, 2021, 11:34 PM UTC

I'm all for self-improvement (no to self-optimization, though), but I find phrasing this in corporate productivity terms to be somewhat problematic. Six Sigma Your Life?

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

#48

Post by helmholtz » Sat, Jan 02, 2021, 11:37 PM UTC

dmje wrote: post #43

This may be an unpopular opinion on HN, but I just don't get it. The whole notion of setting personal goals, working out tasks and sub tasks and strategies and charts - like, you deal with all that stuff in your work life. Give it a rest. Be with your family. Look at a sunset. Read a book or two. Paint or play the piano. Eat well, go for a run. Do things that are good for you and other people. Spend less time on your…

It's a false dichotomy.

I can't speak for the author (and indeed, from his tone, I'm inclined to agree with you that perhaps he may need to let off the throttle a bit), but taking time to set non-work goals can lead to greater mindfulness about an activity, precisely because you've spent time considering it.

If I decide that "In Q1 2021, I will be biking precisely 3 out of 5 workdays a week to the office", this might not sound 'common sense humanity', but that fact does not then preclude me from enjoying the chill of the morning wind on my face once I'm on the bike. But if it helps me get on the bike in the first place, hey...it takes all sorts right?

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

#49

Post by jvanderbot » Sat, Jan 02, 2021, 11:45 PM UTC

sh_123 wrote: post #33

jvanderbot wrote: post #32

I've used OKR for 7 years, on a quarterly basis. I had simple markdown files at first, then vnl-log files, and now R notebooks ( https://github.com/dkogan/vnlog ) to read / plot. It may seem like overhead, and there's some snark in this thread about how it's project / team management without the project and team. I completely disagree. If you set up your KR's so they are 1) quantitative, 2) daily measurable, 3) simpl…

Can you share more about your process? I'm very interested in learning more. How do you track your daily data points?

I have a text file in a known location. It's backed up on git.

I can open and edit that file quickly using bash. From within VIM I can quickly commit to reduce the # keystrokes. More details: https://github.com/jodavaho/bashlog#git-integration

(Really though, you can just save as an environment variable your file location)

The text file is structured with space-delimited text, like this: https://github.com/dkogan/vnlog

My current structure for tracking a contribution to an OKR item (e.g. "meditate") by date (e.g., 2020-01-15) and amount (e.g., "1") is simply:

"# date item amount"

Easy to open, easy to plop down today's date and the item / amount. Save multiple date/item entries and add them inscripts ... Easy to save. Done.

The work came in building stuff to plot it:

I have other files that link "items" to goals or other metadata like categories, etc. Like a relational database, but easily edited in text.

For example, to make a link from daily items to Key Results

"# item okr"

The OKR categories are usually Fighting (I box), Tech, Mental health, and Social, but YMMV

Another example is "workout-mapping.vnl" with structure: "# item muscle-group factor"

etc etc.

vnlog has nice vnl-join commands that quickly build the table and all linked metadata and output formatted text (one command). Then reading that in R is easy ...

``` data Aggregating by date is easy:

``` data.aggThen plot using ggplot2.

Examples from 2020 Q4 (just ran the numbers yesterday!)

https://josh.vanderhook.info/media/okr.png

https://josh.vanderhook.info/media/workouts.png

https://josh.vanderhook.info/media/mood.png

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

#50

Post by tharkun__ » Sat, Jan 02, 2021, 11:48 PM UTC

raverbashing wrote: post #41

tonymet wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

can we ask what you are doing instead?

Not bureaucratize my life plans? I keep my objectives in my head. No need to write this kind of thing down and keeping scores of myself. And whatever happens happens. I don't need to bog myself down with some corporate invention.

Couldn't agree more with this (and the OP). Life changes. All the time. What about your plan for Q2/Q3 2020 to finally do that world cruise you had been waiting to do all your life? Riiiiight.

Now having some sort of principles you live by and to keep yourself honest maybe write them down somewhere (read The 7 habits of highly successful people), sure. Quarterly goals with OKRs? Sorry that already doesn't work at work as no higher up or HR person ever has used them for good if you ask me. Bringing that to my personal life? Lol? 'Increase happiness of my family by 50% in Q1 2021'? Well duh, I don't need OKRs to know Covid sucks and I should try to make the kids life as normal and happy as I can without trying to even measure happiness. I had no personal OKRs ever and I built a tobogganing hill in the front yard (the slope helps) and I'm working on the skating ring (yes ring, like circles, not hockey rink :)) in the backyard. Yes I was keeping this in my head just fine.