Setting up personal OKR (objectives and key-results)

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.

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

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 knowing what to do: we all know we need to lose weight and reduce BMI.

The devil is building the habits (eating less, exercising more, avoiding temptation, being more disciplined, being around people with likewise habits) to achieve the OKR.

I’m not saying that the OKRs are a bad idea – just that they are a map of a terrain that leaves out all the devilish hills that really need climbing.

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"

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) simple to log ( a few keystrokes while journalling) and 4) completely under your control to achieve.

At the end of the day, I mark down my progress on all my OKRs. I can quickly plot them, look back at progress, and look back at goals and concerns by seeing the types of objectives I had. It's a 10,000 foot journal that I otherwise wouldn't have.

There's more to this than simply quantifying yourself. We like #'s because they are representations of complex systems. The self and your personal history are absolutely a complex system worth tracking.

Looking back at my OKRs when I was dating my (now) wife, comparing the ways I put effort into our relationship and our changing priorities. Seeing over time my running distances, weight lifting activity, meditation record, and seeing how I consistently attempt to over-achieve by setting KR values too high ... Having those points of reference has made today more enjoyable, and been a constant reminder that progress comes slowly and missing on any particular attempt at something is irrelevant. It's so completely a part of my life now that I can't imagine setting goals or daily priorities without it.

Think of it like quantitative journalling.

That perspective may misunderstand those who are engaged in a multitude of activities that are all extremely worthwhile, which does include relaxation and self-care, but may also include nurturing a marriage and developing oneself, or developing a child.

There is finite time & opportunity in the author's day, and he is perhaps acutely aware he must choose his time expenditures wisely. It is good to step back, admit this, and install structure to support your true and prioritized goals.

Otherwise, we may easily find ourselves neglecting activities that are dearly important to us, like connecting with a spouse.

To those that say: "just do less," I would say: there is a time where that suggestion will become natural law for each of us. Enjoy your abilities while you can.

That said, I'm actually a fan of OKRs for achieving personal goals as long as you can be honest to yourself about what your Objectives actually are. (ie, if you don't really value being fit but put it on the list because you feel it is compulsory then no framework is going to provide enough motivation) In corporate settings, the incentives are typically not aligned at all and that tends to break implementation very badly. But for personal settings where you are both goal-setter and implementer it can work quite well.

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 but may be the choice of which methodology to use is personal or psychology driven.

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

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

And then review your progress at some velocity that makes sense (weekly for some, monthly for others, quarterly or thereabouts for the rest) to see if you're on track, if your objectives have changed, etc.

But the book Switch by Chip and Dan Heath kind of opened my eyes to the danger of "SMART goals" / self-motivation. They talk about the "rider" (your rational, critical inner voice) and the "elephant" (your emotional id-like creature) and how you have to get both working, and OKRs and the like satisfy the rider but don't reach the elephant.

They recommend for example drawing up a "concept poster" or postcard (similar to Amazon's "future newsletter" touting the success of a proposed initiative) to really get alignment on what will get you excited to do the good things you want - health, wealth, family, community, planet, whatever - without having to prescribe it to a chart or metric.

BTW I like your goals, too. They seem quite wholesome and achievable, and reasonable (granted I don't know your BMI now, for example, but waking up before 8:30am is a good one.)

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.