Applying OKRs to Personal Goals: The 2019 Review
I learned about OKRs while running InsightMedi a few years ago. At the end of 2018, and with a ton of life changes coming my way, I decided to use some of the ideas described in this post to apply the OKRs concept to my personal goals for 2019. After running the 12-month experiment, I thought it might be interesting for other people to see what I’ve learned.
I started by deciding which were the goals (Objectives) that I wanted to work on during 2019. Making this list can be initially daunting, but after some refining I came up with 8 areas I wanted to focus on and improve. Once I was comfortable with those, I just needed to figure out how I was going to make myself accountable for them (Key Results to measure). I made sure I set up ambitious goals, but I was careful not to go overboard and thus sabotage my own experiment with unrealistic objectives or unclear ways to track progress.
When defining your OKRs keep in mind that an Objective helps you answer the question, “Where do I want to go?” while a Key Result helps you answer, “How will I know I’m getting there?”
Setting My Objectives
Thinking about those things we want to improve is probably the easiest part of the whole process. We usually know what it is that we want to get better at. I’d even adventure to say that I can come up with at least 60% of your goals without even knowing you. Perhaps depending on age more than anything else, most of us want to be healthier (diet and exercise), read more, write more, save money, and perhaps learn a new language or skill. I know a lot of people, myself included, who have been dealing with the same goals for years, often failing at really taming them. The OKRs system has definitely helped me change that reality and this is the reason why I’m sharing it with you today.
My objectives for 2019 were defined and redefined until I was happy with the balance between ambition and realism. I decided to defined them as:
- Save for Retirement
- Save Money
- Exercise Consistently
- Eat Healthier
- Read More Books
- Write More Blog Posts
- Learn German
- Help Others
Each one of the objectives is deeply linked to an ancient goal that I have never been able to achieve — like saving money effectively or changing my diet in a meaningful way — or related to new challenges in my life — like learning German since I was moving to Munich for a new job at the end of 2018.
I used Trello to setup my OKRs board just like it was described in the blog post mentioned above. The end result for the Objectives lists is shown below:
The visual aid coming from the charts is really not necessary, but I like the idea of having them and I think it made it all look nicer. I’m a big believer in having fun and taking care of aesthetics in everything you do. In any case, I made sure to put a reminder in my calendar in order to update the progress on those charts every 3 months. I didn’t think it was really needed to do so on monthly basis, but I also didn’t want to set them up to then forget about updating them later.
Setting My Key Results
I set up different elements as Key Results that would make sense for each Objective. Some of the Key Results would be measured on monthly basis and some other every other month. Some required pre-conditions to be setup as their own KR (eg. in order to start saving for retirement I needed to learn some basic concepts on the matter first), and for some other I was ready to tackle them right away.
The most important feature of my KRs definition was measurability. Every single one of the KRs needed to have a clear way to be measured and marked as complete or incomplete. For example, in order to start saving money for retirement, I had to “Setup and put in place a retirement plan by the end of January.” That meant get in touch with Human Resources at my company, find out the process to sign up for the plan, decide on a percentage to commit from my salary every month, follow through with the prerequisites (sign all the paperwork), and make sure it was all ready before the end of January 2019.
In the KRs section below each objective was defined based on that balance I mentioned before between ambition — they should feel a little uncomfortable and if achieved easily then we have probably set them up incorrectly — and realism. They shared a lot of things in common, but I took time to really think about them individually before committing to execution.
I decided to make this my starting template (named OKRs [YYYY]) and then copy it into a new board which would actually contain the tracking information for 2019. I was assuming at this point that I’d want to work on most of these elements every year, and I also left some room to have a flexible learning objective. This is why my 2019 board had the objective “Learn German” right where my template shows the more generic “[Learn/Do Something New]” placeholder.
I made sure to setup a final task (KR) at the end of every objective, forcing me to review the progress on that particular goal and make all the necessary adjustments for the future (if needed at all). If I went too easy on myself I wanted to make sure I’d set up a more demanding KR for the next cycle. If I was too ambitious I’d have to decide if I wanted to keep that as it was — and give it another try next year — or if I needed to adjust down in order to make it more realistic.
Tracking and Updating the Board
The actual work starts after you’ve finished setting up your board. In order to know where I was on each one of my KRs throughout the year, I followed the color scheme proposed by the original blog post, adding a couple of adjustments to suit my taste here and there. The final list of tracking states ended up looking like this:
By default all labels would be set to “Planning” as it can be seen in the template board (all cards showing a blue label). At the beginning of each period I’d update the state to show that I was already working on it and whenever the time to complete the task was over, I’d update it accordingly to showcase if I had completed it or not. I have to say, updating this labels manually is not necessarily a valuable (or fun) process, but building the discipline of working on them, along with the charts, kept me aware at all times of the progress. The visibility and awareness gained from doing this was worth the effort.
Some objectives are easier to achieve and track than other. It’s a very personal process and this is in reality no different from any other time you’ve set up goals for yourself. I could anticipate that some things were going to be a lot easier to achieve than others — for example, getting money taken from my paycheck automatically is a lot easier for me to handle than putting money aside on my own — but the key aspect of this system is that I was going to be able to see myself succeeding or failing in real time throughout the year.
How did I do in 2019 then? You might be wondering. What did I learn? How will I adjust for 2020?
Results for My 2019 and Key Learnings
If you can’t wait to see the big picture I understand. I hate to wait myself so here it is the summary of my 2019:
There’s a lot more red that I’d have expected initially, but again, based on the core concepts of OKRs, having a fully green board would have been an indication of having setup a very low bar for myself.
Now, if you want to know my own analysis and self-conducted forensic examination read on. This is what I discover about the system and about myself as the subject of the experiment. I’ll briefly describe the results goal by goal.
- Save for Retirement: as mentioned above, this goal was very easy to commit to and complete. It was automatically taken from my paycheck every month. The only issue I had, and the reason why it’s not fully accomplished, was that by mid-October 2019 I was relocating back to Madrid from Munich and the pension plan stayed in Germany. It’s not something that is automatically moved with your payroll to the new country. I didn’t know this and I didn’t prepare for it. By the time I received my first full-term paycheck in Spain (end of November) and realized what was happening, I had to start doing all the initial research all over again. I’m currently working on it (slowed by the holidays) and hopefully it will be all sorted out for early 2020.
- Save Money: this one was a disaster! 😆 Saving money on my own has always been a challenge for a variety of reasons. This year I though I was going to be able to just “wing it” and I didn’t really worry about learning anything on personal finances or the principles/mindset of building financial wealth. It seems so common sense to me. The only thing I have to do is avoid spending more money than I make and put some aside. Well, that doesn’t work for me. Even though the year started well in this department, soon enough (by May) I was already unable to put money aside. Even worse, I ended up spending the money I had initially saved. In order to change this in 2020 I’m taking the topic of saving money and personal finances seriously. I’ll put some effort into learning important principles related with managing money and I’ll make sure I setup a separate bank account to automatically transfer a fixed amount to it every month. I’m confident this year will be different once I make myself responsible for the things I need to learn and put in practice. Some things come easy to you, some other need you to work. I believe this Objective will be source of pride at the end of 2020. I’ll keep you posted.
- Exercise Consistently: Even though I moved countries twice in 2019, I made sure I gave exercising a prominent place in my schedule. I signed up for a gym as soon as I had a permanent address in each city I moved into and I made a real effort to commit to exercising 4 times a week every week. I completely failed to do so (0/4 weeks) in a couple of months (when starting the new life+job in January and then when recently moved back to Madrid), and I partially failed in two other occasions when I exercised 4 times a week only in 2 out of the 4 weeks both in September and October. I believe this goal to be ambitious enough so I’ll keep it as is and my commitment for 2020 will be not to fail at any week. Hopefully not moving out of the country again will help in the continuity department. I have also added a smart watch to my efforts in order to keep accurate track of my exercise. Properly (and honestly) logging your exercise entries is a key element for success of this system. I remember that more than once I had to really think if I had exercised 2, 3 or 4 times in a given week. Leaving it up to memory is not a great idea unless you have a very good memory (which I don’t).
- Eat Healthier: in order to improve my diet, I decided (among other minor changes) that I was going to introduce a meatless day a week every week. This particular goal is bittersweet for me. The fact that I was able to crush this one means two things: 1) I have come a long way regarding fish and vegetables in the last few years, and 2) this goal was not ambitious enough. The reason why this goal is bittersweet is because even though I was happily including a lot more healthy meals into my week, I’m ending my year with high blood pressure and high cholesterol (sigh). Who would’ve thought?! On my healthiest year to date. My doctor thinks there are a few different factors playing a role in this reality, but the message for myself is clear: In 2020 I’m doubling down on this goal. Hopefully the well-known combo of exercise and healthy diet will revert these negative results. I see it as a temporary setback and nothing more. It would also be naive for me to pretend that the results of 35+ years of wild eating will be wiped out in one year of healthier habits. I’m approaching 40 now and the stakes are high. Just as my blood pressure and cholesterol 😆.
- Read More Books: this is probably the goal that brings me more joy. For a long time I’ve been looking to building a reading habit. I’ve never been a heavy reader. I’ve enjoyed reading tech magazines and blog posts, but I’ve never been able to make the time to sit down with a book in a consistent way. There were always a hundred “reasons” why I didn’t have the time and even though my journey as an entrepreneur put me closer to this goal, as soon as I didn’t have to read in order to find answers to help my business I’d abandon the practice. I had never been able to build a habit and enjoy it. This was until 2019 when I finally forced myself to read a book a month and ended up reading 15 or 16 in total. I started struggling a bit the first 6 months of the year. This was the discipline part of it. Then I started to feel more comfortable the following 3 months, and I finally ended up enjoying my reading by the last trimester. I read all kinds of books and because I was working on building the habit I committed to finishing every book I started no matter if I didn’t love it. Next year I’ll take a slightly different approach. Now that I’m confident the habit will stay with me and that I truly want to keep building on it, I’ll avoid wasting time with books once I realize I don’t enjoy them (if it happens at all), and I’ll commit to books that I find entertaining and bring me joy. I have a few topics already selected that I’m interested in learning more (personal finances, AI, electronics, chess) and I’ll always leave room for recommendations and last-minute additions based on how my year progresses.
- Write More Blog Posts: the reason why I wanted to work on this is because I truly believe that writing is one great skill to cultivate. I want to keep practicing and improving my writing. I don’t have any concrete plans of either becoming a writer or publishing anything more than blog posts, but I think this is an incredible exercise of the mind. To me, especially writing in English, is an enjoyable challenge. This is why I’m not surprised I did well with this goal in 2019. I have detected a problem though and here it is where I should plan my adjustment for 2020. I often don’t have anything fun that I want to write about. In order to be able to check my monthly box, I had to force myself to write about anything. Whether I wanted or not (I often didn’t). The result of this was a series of uninspiring posts on a few different topics. I try to tie two of my KRs together to make this goal more appealing. I often decided to write about projects and entrepreneurs I supported through the Kiva platform. This way I’d be putting some effort into writing and also promoting these projects as part of my other KR: “Promote each Kiva project I back up, individually, once invested.” The reality is that I found myself often at the last day of the month without a post to publish and I forced whatever I could write out of me. Most of them really short, unoriginal and uninspiring. For my 2020 goal I won’t increase the amount of post published by month. Instead I’ll work on finding better topics and making sure I work on them before is too late into the month, in order to avoid simple formulas and empty results that turn my well-intended goal into another vanity metric. I’ll aim to make it about quality and meaning more than quantity. This one will be tough.
- Learn German: I was originally very excited about this goal. Since I moved to Germany at the end of 2018, it made all the sense in the world to learn the language. I believe it’s the only way to fully integrate into any new society and show your appreciation for the culture and the people that are welcoming you to their lives. Obviously, committing to learning a new language is always hard and time-consuming. Add it to the challenges of starting a new job in a new place and then you have a proper goal. I started making modest progress with this goal early in the year. I was not able to deliver to 100% of my challenging goal — consisting of 4 hours of German lessons a week — but I was clearly making progress. I scheduled my classes to be early in the morning so I could finish the lesson before the work day started. I subscribed (and listened) to podcasts on my way to and back from work, and always did my homework no matter what. Then news of my relocation back to Spain hit and in total honesty, my motivation to keep with the classes flew out the window. By the end of May I was not engaged in learning German anymore. I finished my initial cycle (half of A1), got my certificate, and moved on to other things.
- Help Others: to this day I have committed to helping mainly two organizations in a consistent manner: the Spanish Red Cross and Kiva. During 2019 I wanted to make sure I kept donating to the Red Cross on a monthly basis and increase the number of backed projects on Kiva in a significant way. I decided to set up a bi-monthly microloan transaction to Kiva along with a promotional blog post in order to increase awareness of those projects I invested in to my network. Following through with these goals was really simple, and I only failed at producing the December blog post for the Kiva project I invested in. The reason is the one stated above. I didn’t truly see the point to rush and force another empty post, especially when it was obvious that my previous attempts did not make the impact I was hoping. I will be always grateful to Nick Lynn for introducing me to Kiva, to Jordan Lynn for helping me spread the word and support my efforts, and in 2019 especifically to Rebecca Mahnke for being the only person who paid attention and followed through with loans of her own on the platform. Thanks Rebecca for caring and joining the cause. My 2020 goals are not going to change in terms of the financial commitment. I’m not thinking in terms of more money to these institutions or backing up more projects, instead I have set up my goals around pursuing the support of more people, like Rebecca, by targeting my network with specific efforts to bring them on board and following their involvement with Kiva projects. This will require a slightly different recruiting technique, but I’m excited to try it out and keep helping more people directly and indirectly through my network in 2020.
Final Thoughts
Last year was the first time in my entire life that I was able to setup well-thought out (ambitious and realistic) goals and actually follow through with them. Even in circumstances of increased stress due to two international relocations and starting a new job with a lot of traveling involved among other things. I feel accomplished regarding 2019 and excited about my goals in 2020. I hope my experience can infuse some motivation to those of you who, like me for so long, have been looking for a simple system to keep yourselves motivated and follow through on your personal and professional goals.
My board for 2020 is already set. Adjustments and new goals have been added. I don’t want to get into those details in this post, but perhaps I’ll follow up this post early 2021 if anything meaningful happens and interesting lessons are learned. I’m particularly excited about my new learning goal which involves another one of Nick’s discoveries: Khan Academy.
