Read Part 1 here.
In my last entry, I shared my thoughts on the parallel between self-improvement and product management. This time we will try to use some of these Product Management thinking to help us better define and plan our personal goals.
I’ll be borrowing an example from my own life here, which began with the goal of getting up early to run three days a week. Spoiler alert: I’m no longer under the delusion that I will ever wake up early to run, and I got that clarity thanks to the following process.
3 Steps to Setting a Great Personal Goal
Viewing this as a feature or product design exercise, we can consider ourselves the customer, and design a feature or product that will address our problem. My approach is to divide it into three phases:
- Get to the “Why”
- Brainstorm on how to address the Why
- Plan out how the goal can be achieved
Product Research: Get to the “Why”
The most important part of goal setting isn’t what the goal is, but why I want to do this.
Returning to my running example: every now and then I’ve attempted to run first thing in the morning, but my longest streak is 5 days. Clearly, it’s not working.
If I am honest with myself (and I should be), I don’t like running. I know people who enjoy running, but I am clearly not one of them (sorry, not sorry.)
So why did I set a personal goal year after year to start running? My logic for wanting to run went something like this:
- I want to run 5 days a week because I want to be more active
- I want to be more active because I want to lose some weight
- I want to lose some weight because I want to be healthier
I could dig down through more layers (similar to the “5 Whys” used for discovering Jobs to be Done), but I decided to stop there because I got what I need out of it. I want to be healthier, and losing some weight on the way helps as well.
Notice this reason does not include “I want to run because I enjoy it”.
With that goal in mind (it’s an outcome, not an output!), I can then work on trying to come up with ideas and solutions that would help solve the problem.
Solution Ideation: Brainstorm on how to address the Why
With a clear desired outcome, now to ideate on ways this can be addressed!
My list of options goes something like this:
- Running in the morning
- Running in the evening
- Workout at home
- Join a Gym
- Eat healthier
- Go Keto?
- Rock Climbing
- Go for walks more often (perhaps even hiking?)
I found this goal an interesting one to solve. Because I am not an active person to start with, I’m not intrinsically attracted to most of the solutions that involve exercise anyway. Which is… bad. Especially since I don’t see how I can improve my health without adding more activity to my life. I can improve my diet, sure, but exercise and staying active are also a big part of being healthy. So I need to find ways to incentivise me to be active.
So let’s look at what other positives I would get from each one of these solutions, and why I might be driven to do these things. The ones that jumped out are:
Option 1: Eating Healthier
- Salads are easy to make as a work lunch
- I like to cook – It lets me be creative
- I can save money if we cook and eat in more often
Option 2: Go for more walks
- Low impact exercise, and less intimidating than running
- I can spend more time with my husband, who likes to walk
- The dog needs walking anyway
Option 3: Rock Climbing
- I tried it before, and I enjoyed the puzzle solving aspect of the sport
- I can spend more time with my husband, who also enjoys rock climbing
All of those things sound more appealing than running in the morning (still not sorry.)
So if they’re sounding good, why am I not doing them right now? Now to consider the impediments or pain points that stop me from doing each of these.
Option 1: Eating Healthier
- I need to plan ahead for my lunch
- I need to spend time in the evening to make my lunch
- I need to learn healthier recipes
- I need to plan ahead for my other meals
Option 2: Go for more walks
- Sometimes I’m exhausted when I get home
- … to be honest I’m just lazy. :\
Option 3: Rock Climbing
- I need to plan ahead
- It takes times out of my schedule, something’s got to give.
- It costs money that I wouldn’t have to spend otherwise
Looking at the pros and cons, Option 1 and 2 both have good compelling pros, and the cons are pretty low barriers. Option 3 is an interesting one: Right now it feels like it’s a high commitment, and if I have to pick between walking and rock climbing, I’m more likely to pick walking, because it has the lower barrier and I have less excuse not to go.
That’s not to say that rock climbing isn’t a great workout. Clearly, it’s a more intensive exercise than walking. But I know I am a lot more likely to go for a walk compared to going rock climbing, at least for now.
Roadmap planning: Plan out how the goal can be achieved
Now that you have some idea of what you are trying to achieve, and the ways that will help you towards your goal, we can map out how to get from where we are today to where we want to be.
In the product development world, we understand that we are limited by the availability of resources, how big our team is, inter-dependencies between different components, and how to stage the development to provide value to customers, and also to allow for feedback which helps us know whether we are on the right track.
When it comes to personal development, we also should consider staging these new habits:
- Having a series of smaller achievements can be motivating
- It stops us having an all or nothing mentality, so if we fail to do everything, we don’t automatically give up.
- It gives us a chance to reflect and check if our plan is going to work
- There is usually less stress if we add one small change at a time, especially if we are trying to establish new habits.
In my example, I know that eating healthier and walking more are easier to target first, so I will plan those for now. I want to continuously improve my health, and going on hikes and rock climbing sounds like things I want to include. But I would be foolish to think I can add everything in at once. So I’ll keep those activities in mind as longer-term possibilities, but start with the solutions that are achievable now.
My list for eating healthier looks a bit like this:
- Make salads for work lunches after dinner the night before, so I can make sure my lunch is healthy and contains a lot of vegetables. I chose to make my lunch after dinner because I know I am not a morning person. This minimises the chance of me deciding to skip this and buy lunches instead.
- Every weekend, do a grocery shop to get all my lunch ingredients, so I can make sure I have everything I need when I make my lunch. I chose weekends because I have fewer time constraints, and it won’t take up any time from my weeknight evenings.
- Learn new recipes, so I don’t get bored. I think this will become important since I get bored easily, and I like to try new things and be a bit creative while I cook. But this is not a high priority item at the start: I am unlikely to get bored in the first few weeks, and I have some salad recipes that I already know.
- Start cooking dinner at home more often, and cook healthier recipes, so I can eat healthy at other times too. This one has a few dependencies and impediments: e.g. we are renovating our house at the moment and the kitchen is a construction zone.
There are definitely more things I could do to eat healthier, but by breaking it down and using these planning steps, It’s easier to see how to make progress straight away, and once these first steps become a habit, I can add additional steps in.
This gives me the start of a plan:
- Shopping every weekend and making a salad every night for work.
- After 2 weeks, learn new recipes that I add to the rotation
- After the kitchen renovation is done, plan on cooking dinner more often
I can see step 1 has a relatively low cost (Salad is quick to make, and I’m making lunch in the evening when I have some free time. Shopping is done over the weekend, where I have fewer time constraints). I see that step 2 has no impediment and can be started straight away, I gave myself 2 weeks to review how salad making goes and I can adjust for what I found works and what doesn’t. Step 3 has a dependency on my kitchen renovation and will be planned when that is done.
It’s all about managing our own resources
We have to consider that every time we add something into our lives, we have to give up something else. We only have so much time in a day. You may be giving up sleep, or Netflix binging time, or another hobby you have to fit in.
Besides time, we have other limited resources too. Energy is a common one: we need to balance adding tasks that drain our energy level with ones that help us recharge. Money is another common constraint, and an area where creative solutions can really help.
This is why it is always important to know our why, and to use a process to identify a solution that is within our constraints, rather than sticking to solutions that may or may not be optimal.
Next up
Next up, we will dive deeper into planning, by adapting the Product Canvas for personal goals. Stay tuned!
