Don't take this advice from me

If I was a genius, I'd be like Lauryn Hill: Produce a once-in-a-lifetime masterpiece, live off it for the rest of my life, and disappear almost completely; every few years or so you'll catch me being messy or having a mental breakdown in public. But I'm not very good at anything, and I was born into a negative net worth household, so I have to convince myself every morning to get up and participate in society as a functioning citizen.

And it's harder than it should be because I feel like I'm going backwards. In my last post, I wrote about the three big challenges I'm tackling this year, and today I want to share how I turned big goals into actionable items using OKRs. If you've never heard of OKRs, bless your innocent heart. I've been tainted by Silicon Valley hyper-capitalism and have used this method in my professional life for years, so I decided to apply it to my personal life as well. Here’s how it went.

What are OKRs

OKR stands for Objectives and Key Results, a goal-setting and tracking framework popularized by Google and Silicon Valley investor John Doerr (who I've always considered one of the less bad guys, but he’s been messy himself). The Objective basically is the goal you want to achieve, and it can be very specific, like "increase revenue by 10%," or more general, like "become profitable”. For each goal, you'll define key results that will help you achieve the goal. This is where you get more granular and specific: “Improve conversion rate by 10%” or “Increase gross margin to 60%”. Basically, you're trying to break down the goals and make them actionable, but also measurable. OKRs are typically set on a quarterly basis, but within each OKR, the actions will usually be more short-term. A big part of this system is to review OKRs and adapt them regularly. In a perfect world, your project or business will become a hyper-growth machine like Google. Unfortunately, we’re in the real world.

How I’ve applied OKRs to my personal life

I have to preface this by saying that while I work with OKRs on client projects and have used them in the past with previous employers, I am very bad at sticking to them in my own business. In this post, I’m going to focus on how I apply them to my personal projects, because they are very much intertwined with my business, and holding myself accountable to paying attention to my business OKRs is a big part of why I use this framework.

So here’s a breakdown:

1. To figure out what my main goals should be for the year, but more specifically for the first quarter, I did a lot of reflection work, looking for patterns and areas I wanted to improve. I did an abbreviated version of Bill Gates' Think Week at the beginning of the year, with lots of reading, writing, and goal-setting exercises. (Side note: I was bedridden with a fever from my birthday through New Year's, so it felt like an involuntary but much-needed detox before I started my Think Days).

2. I began to define my goals for the first quarter, some of which were:

   1. Get my health in order

   2. Be more visible as a thought leader (I hate that word, sorry)

   3. Get my finances in order

3. In my task manager Todoist, I created a project called "Goal Tracker" and divided it into sections for each objective

4. I then created tasks and subtasks in each of these objective areas. I used both clear to-dos and measurable items as key results here, such as:

   1. Write and publish Linkedin post (I set up a weekly task for this one)

   2. Create a workout and gym routine

   3. Research advanced study programs

   4. Book doctor’s appointment

5. To stay on track with my goals (which is also an objective), I've created weekly, monthly, and quarterly recurring tasks to track and review progress, adding and subtracting key results as I go.

How my OKR journey has been going so far

Before I continue, I have to admit: We're over a month into the second quarter and I haven't set any new OKRs yet, so you should probably stop reading at this point and not take any advice from me. But as Rich Roll said at SXSW this year: "I don't give advice. I share my experience and curiosity.” So I do want to share my learnings and progress with you:

• My objectives have definitely helped me focus and remember what I want to achieve. I always think big but then get overwhelmed and paralyzed, so this framework has helped me take baby steps while also respecting my mission and vision.

• Reflection and just the act of writing the OKRs played a big part in the success. I'm too lazy to manifest anything and "creating a routine for reaching out to potential business partners" is one of those tasks I keep putting off, but I have become more visible. I was invited to do four podcasts (one, two and three are live, one will be released in a few weeks) and was interviewed for an article on my favorite topic, the business of media startups.

• The review process has helped me understand my priorities but also my capacities better. Apparently I don’t have time to study quantum computing – for now – but I did attend two workshops about creating AI workflows.

• Another lesson I've learned is that I can't tackle big projects all at once. While I got my health in order, I put my personal finances on the back burner because, frankly, I didn't have the mental bandwidth.

• My professional OKRs help me find tasks to outsource or assign to my employee, and I realized I could do the same in my personal life. I hired a personal trainer who created the perfect workout routine for me, so it was really satisfying to check off a big item on the OKRs.

• It's frustrating to see areas where I haven't made much progress and keep putting off tasks and projects, but that's also why I didn't create any new OKRs for the second quarter. Instead, I'm working on the goals I neglected in the first quarter.

In general, I felt like I was biting off more than I could chew (which I recommend to anyone, sorrynotsorry), and I was slightly overwhelmed by the tasks in my to-do lists that didn't seem urgent but were still important (my Todoist syncs with my calendar and tasks are visible in my daily to-do lists). That's probably the downside of the framework for me: I was constantly reminded of the many ways I'm failing every day.

But the upside is that I've also been reminded of the progress I've made, and that I'm not actually going backwards. If you've made it this far, you know that I'm no productivity expert, but I do love to nerd out, so I'd love to hear how you're holding yourself accountable! And of course, I can't let you go without this beautiful song. If you like my newsletter, please share it and spread the word ❤️