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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)

#71
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…

If you're serious about dating you need to talk to women, not spend money on dating apps.

Commit to striking up a conversation with 10 new women every day. I'm sure that would push you forward a lot.

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

#72
Pretty interested in whether people are getting more mileage out of specific, SMART-type goals (like the ones in the article), or more open ended ones as described here [0].

Personally I've found that with a good tool to measure and track progress (I'm using the Hacker's diet logging which produces a nice graph [1]), my weight loss is coming along nicely without a set endpoint.

[0] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-12-31/new-years-resolution-...

[1] https://www.fourmilab.ch/hackdiet/#Comptools

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

#73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same for me. I found it difficult to balance energy across work, life, wellness. My over focus on work meant I didn't get as much exercise in, which for me is an important outlet and endorphin booster. So would carry more work stress home. Ultimately built a simple notepad system for balancing which has improved my balance a lot.

Discipline is the only thing that allows my life to not completely fall apart. I believe it’s common in depression, to take an edge case, to lose “routine” either as a preceding or correlated or succeeding event.

Agree. On those mornings when I feel lazy, I've learned those are the game changing opportunities to exercise discipline. It's easy to stick to the plan when motivated. I find it empowering (and uplifting) to stick to the plan when unmotivated.

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

#74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wor…

An alternative “system” that unfortunately works with your criticism while still being a system is simply a value aligned “DIDMB” (did I do my best....to say something nice to my spouse? To start the day with clear goals, etc) question list self served at night. A score of “10” on eating well might mean one thing while on PTO and another on a busy travel day where simply not grabbing the king size snickers at the air…

None taken, err I mean... ;)

Don't get me wrong, where necessary I totally agree that writing things down helps. That helps in a lot of places in life (like the principles mentioned if you choose so might help someone while for others that's not needed). Or writing down what I ate (sorry I really can't keep track of how many grams of carbs are in each of the things I eat and since I no longer do keto, which is easy to keep track of in rour head but only try to minimize carbs I need the written help).

But I don't see value in trying to measure how much better I did with not jumping to conclusions (which I see on the list he has in the article and I also keep an eye on this personally). But I don't think you need an OKR and try to make it measurable. I just need to consciously decide that I will keep a more open mind and inquire a few more times on whether I understood correctly and that the other person probably meant it in a good way. However badly formulated it was and how it came across. Then every time "something happens" and I handle it better than last time I can recognize that and pat myself on the back. Or recognize after that it all fell apart and I "judged back at them" and it spiraled out of control. Try to do better next time. Do I need to graph this and look at it and get myself down because I didn't do as well as I wanted to?

OKRs are meant to set goals that are somewhat unachievable. Like hitting 70% on your target is awesome. Sorry but I don't work that way. I'm not deadline driven. I'm task driven. I know I'm in a minority in that but if you give me an unachievable deadline in order to try to get me to deliver at the date you secretly thought was the real goal post then it's just gonna frustrate me and when I see you not using my results for another month or so because that was the real goal post then I'll definitely not give it my best next time. I can be selective that way.

As a task oriented person I just do whatever needs doing and do it in priority order in the best and fastest fashion I can. If your deadline is in two weeks but I got nothing higher prio I'll deliver early by a week instead of procrastinating and then doing an all nighter to get it to you when the deadline is. I really really detest these deadlines people put. I just recently purposefully didn't push back on a stupid deadline and just gave way subpar results (I had 15 minutes with the team in between two other meetings for something where we should have spent about an hour to discuss properly. And I purposefully kept that time box very very well). You know what? They accepted and loved the results. Had they just put a reasonable deadline that took into account our sprint start and end times as well as the internal hackathon happening that week...

Did I mention I turned in my master thesis a week before the deadline?

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

#75
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 us…

Women are not "mythical creatures" they are humans with their own aspirations, personalities and dreams.

You can't lump them in a single category..so perhaps it's my misunderstanding but I'm not sure what you are trying to convey here?

Also, can you elaborate on "overestimate yourself" ?

I would really appreciate it if you could expand on these points.

As for the commitment, I think the point isn't the control the outcome but more keep an eye on your progress, I see it more of a checks and balances.

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

#76
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…

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

For some folks. All sorts of different people in the world.

My wife needs a plan for every day. Not to the level of checklists and planning it out in software, but if she has an "open ended" day she doesn't do that well mentally and doesn't sleep well unless she has a mental model for the day coming up.

For me, I'm the opposite. I hate scheduled days, but I also know I need a bit of structure for myself otherwise it's easy for a long weekend to devolve into napping on the couch and posting to HN. My entire organization for this is just a simple TO-DO list where I toss a couple objectives of the day down in the AM while drinking my caffeine. It adds a tiny bit of order to an otherwise unordered personality and helps me move along my personal projects and social life.

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

#77
post #46
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.

Agreed.

I think people have begun to fetishize their actual plan. It's an excuse to not do any of the real "hard" work, but rather plan to do it. The planning feels great because it really isn't all that difficult. Look at all these colors and percentages! I'm doing something!

Obviously this isn't true for everyone. But I've found focused plans are much better than trying to juggle 3 million things. It'll lead to burnout.

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

#78
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…

> there is a proven correlation between high achievement and habit of tracking and measuring a goal.

Is there really?

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

#79
I’m amused by the contrary positions a lot of folks seem to be taking here. Either people agree with the author, and think personal goal setting and measurement helps actually accomplish tasks, or people are astonished that someone would live so structurally. On both sides it seems like there’s bewilderment at the other - what kind of monster would live like this?

It reminds me how different people are, and how much we need empathy even with something like how people set personal goals.

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

#80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with parent and I’ll provide my own answer: I live in the moment. A simple but powerful lesson I learned from my pets.

How do you manage or work towards long term goals?

I don’t have any.
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