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Basecamp first launched when I was in college, and being completely unfamiliar with any project management workflow I thought: "this would be great for managing

Basecamp first launched when I was in college, and being completely unfamiliar with any project management workflow I thought: "this would be great for managing myself" so I set milestones and wrote entries for myself and project managed my life for a brief period. It makes life as boring as work. These methods are meant for teams working towards a common objective, where anything extraneous to the OKRs is considered a distraction. This has its shortcomings (I've met way too many project managers who seem to be so absorbed by metrics they fail to see what is right in front of their noses). It's most definitely useful is this context, but not in life. Consider: the author has set himself to read 20 books per year. Suppose this is double of his standard. What he will do to fulfill his OKR? He's not going to choose a difficult read such as Ulysses, or an existential crisis inducing book such as Crime and Punishment, he will go for what is more superficial and easier to read, because his goal is not to be transformed by what he reads, his goal is to read 20 books. The crucial layer of meaning is lost when we project-manage ourselves. Life is more akin to a poem than it is to a project.

leetrout 6y ago
Our values determine our metrics.
- duopixel 6y ago
  Our true values (as human beings, not organizational values) are not measurable. I may want to become closer to my family, so I schedule more time with them. Spending time with them makes it more likely, but it may also go in the opposite direction through conflict. In paper you have accomplished your OKR, but in practice you are further away from your true goal.
  - imustbeevil 6y ago
    That, again, is a result of measuring the wrong thing. The measurement should be "relationship strength" or "spouse/child happiness" not "time spent". The problem that most of us seem to have is that we're only tracking easy things to measure. Everything valuable is difficult to measure. Reading a book is worthless. The purpose of reading a book is to gain something (learn something, read faster, practice public speaking, etc.). That's what we should be tracking.
    - mkfeuhrer 6y ago
      Agreeing on this! I usually use notes section in KRs to track how I improved after completing this KR. This helps in deciding the way ahead. Also, this doesn't really apply to emotional relationships for me. Personal OKRs are basically for self improvement which helps me in reaching something I aim for future.
    - duopixel 6y ago
      If you try to measure the subjective through objective values, you will only measure what you think about yourself. If I ask myself "how much did I learn today?" it is more judgement about myself rather than an objective value. I explored this throughly in 2014: https://medium.com/@duopixel/the-qualified-self-7f69c6b23623 https://medium.com/@duopixel/the-qualified-self-7f69c6b23623 I have not updated this post, but I did this for years without finding satisfaction, because what I had to address was judgement about myself, not the shortcomings that I perceived I had at the time. But the exercise of trying to measure the subjective is very instructive in itself. I ignore if you counter my point from experience, if not, I encourage you to register subjective judgement. And if you already do it, I encourage you to drop it and sense how it feels. Many paths of personal growth require you to do opposite things at different times, so you can maximize your surface of experience.
  - syntonym3 6y ago
    OKRs don't need to be set in stone. If an easy to measure quantity (time spend with family) does not translate to reaching the aim (being closer to ones family) you can just change the plan and the OKRs. But surely spending time with your family seems like a first good step to try.
- solidist 6y ago
  Indeed. And we do what we value.
mcsonka 6y ago
> Consider: the author has set himself to read 20 books per year. Suppose this is double of his standard. What he will do to fulfill his OKR? He's not going to choose a difficult read such as Ulysses, or an existential crisis inducing book such as Crime and Punishment, he will go for what is more superficial and easier to read, because his goal is not to be transformed by what he reads, his goal is to read 20 books. The problem with this I see is the KR itself, not Objective. In 2019 I choose similar Objective which pushed me towards finishing books I didn't enjoy or valuable, so I decided to set the KR as number of pages read or just 30 minutes a day.
- sukilot 6y ago
  Why would you set an Objective to hurt yourself?
mkfeuhrer 6y ago
The whole concept is to have a defined plan, it is absolutely ok to not achieve KRs, what matters is you have motivation in working towards it. You have the ability to actually track it. If you don't set a goal, you might just procastinate over it. > Consider: the author has set himself to read 20 books per year. Suppose this is double of his standard. What he will do to fulfill his OKR? He's not going to choose a difficult read such as Ulysses, or an existential crisis inducing book such as Crime and Punishment, he will go for what is more superficial and easier to read, because his goal is not to be transformed by what he reads, his goal is to read 20 books. - It is okay to read 10 books or X number of pages. Now, you actually started reading right! One's aim should not be to complete the KR for the sake of completion, but rather pushing yourself to do more, slowly improvements will be visible.
maps7 6y ago
Agreed - life needs a "go with the flow" element to it.
coffeefirst 6y ago
Agreed. The last thing people need is to apply corporate ideology to their real lives. I do keep a list of books I’ve read because I like seeing it grow, but there’s not really a goal besides “read books” and I’m not giving myself an annual performance review.
jldugger 6y ago
> the author has set himself to read 20 books per year. Suppose this is double of his standard. That would be an obvious misstep. Both in terms of objective setting and in measurable key results. This blog post misses part of the value of OKRs: they teach us to set high level objectives and repeatedly decompose them. Here, objectives are instead just categories that provide no focus. It's like that antipattern where managers ask their directs for projects then try to combine them into OKRs. What, pray-tell, does launching an open source project have to do with boosting knowledge? And like, why 20 books instead of 10? And why specify quantity rather than quality or subject? Does reading a book mean you've boosted knowledge if you barely remember anything you read? A better OKR setup would likely be something like (a bit modified to suit my own circumstances): Objective: Boost Knowledge Key result: learn more about statistics etc Which is decomposed into: Objective: Learn more about statistics Key Result: Work through the Freedman, Pisani and Purves Statistics textbook Key Result: Create a hundred Anki cards on statistics Key Result: Make the front page of HN with a stats blog post And even those can be subdivided Objective: Make the front page of HN with a stats blog post Key Result: Generate ten blog post ideas Key Result: Research and analyze five blog post ideas Key Result: Publish and promote all five blog post ideas But you're absolutely right that meaning can be lost. Moving passion projects into a todo list misses the 'passion' part entirely, and is best reserved for the drudge parts of life necessary to enable the sublime. By all means, set OKRs for retirement, taxes, and career development.

leetrout 6y ago

Our values determine our metrics.

duopixel 6y ago
Our true values (as human beings, not organizational values) are not measurable. I may want to become closer to my family, so I schedule more time with them. Spending time with them makes it more likely, but it may also go in the opposite direction through conflict. In paper you have accomplished your OKR, but in practice you are further away from your true goal.
- imustbeevil 6y ago
  That, again, is a result of measuring the wrong thing. The measurement should be "relationship strength" or "spouse/child happiness" not "time spent". The problem that most of us seem to have is that we're only tracking easy things to measure. Everything valuable is difficult to measure. Reading a book is worthless. The purpose of reading a book is to gain something (learn something, read faster, practice public speaking, etc.). That's what we should be tracking.
  - mkfeuhrer 6y ago
    Agreeing on this! I usually use notes section in KRs to track how I improved after completing this KR. This helps in deciding the way ahead. Also, this doesn't really apply to emotional relationships for me. Personal OKRs are basically for self improvement which helps me in reaching something I aim for future.
  - duopixel 6y ago
    If you try to measure the subjective through objective values, you will only measure what you think about yourself. If I ask myself "how much did I learn today?" it is more judgement about myself rather than an objective value. I explored this throughly in 2014: https://medium.com/@duopixel/the-qualified-self-7f69c6b23623 https://medium.com/@duopixel/the-qualified-self-7f69c6b23623 I have not updated this post, but I did this for years without finding satisfaction, because what I had to address was judgement about myself, not the shortcomings that I perceived I had at the time. But the exercise of trying to measure the subjective is very instructive in itself. I ignore if you counter my point from experience, if not, I encourage you to register subjective judgement. And if you already do it, I encourage you to drop it and sense how it feels. Many paths of personal growth require you to do opposite things at different times, so you can maximize your surface of experience.
- syntonym3 6y ago
  OKRs don't need to be set in stone. If an easy to measure quantity (time spend with family) does not translate to reaching the aim (being closer to ones family) you can just change the plan and the OKRs. But surely spending time with your family seems like a first good step to try.
solidist 6y ago
Indeed. And we do what we value.

mcsonka 6y ago

> Consider: the author has set himself to read 20 books per year. Suppose this is double of his standard. What he will do to fulfill his OKR? He's not going to choose a difficult read such as Ulysses, or an existential crisis inducing book such as Crime and Punishment, he will go for what is more superficial and easier to read, because his goal is not to be transformed by what he reads, his goal is to read 20 books. The problem with this I see is the KR itself, not Objective. In 2019 I choose similar Objective which pushed me towards finishing books I didn't enjoy or valuable, so I decided to set the KR as number of pages read or just 30 minutes a day.

sukilot 6y ago
Why would you set an Objective to hurt yourself?

mkfeuhrer 6y ago

The whole concept is to have a defined plan, it is absolutely ok to not achieve KRs, what matters is you have motivation in working towards it. You have the ability to actually track it. If you don't set a goal, you might just procastinate over it. > Consider: the author has set himself to read 20 books per year. Suppose this is double of his standard. What he will do to fulfill his OKR? He's not going to choose a difficult read such as Ulysses, or an existential crisis inducing book such as Crime and Punishment, he will go for what is more superficial and easier to read, because his goal is not to be transformed by what he reads, his goal is to read 20 books. - It is okay to read 10 books or X number of pages. Now, you actually started reading right! One's aim should not be to complete the KR for the sake of completion, but rather pushing yourself to do more, slowly improvements will be visible.

maps7 6y ago

Agreed - life needs a "go with the flow" element to it.

coffeefirst 6y ago

Agreed. The last thing people need is to apply corporate ideology to their real lives. I do keep a list of books I’ve read because I like seeing it grow, but there’s not really a goal besides “read books” and I’m not giving myself an annual performance review.

jldugger 6y ago

> the author has set himself to read 20 books per year. Suppose this is double of his standard. That would be an obvious misstep. Both in terms of objective setting and in measurable key results. This blog post misses part of the value of OKRs: they teach us to set high level objectives and repeatedly decompose them. Here, objectives are instead just categories that provide no focus. It's like that antipattern where managers ask their directs for projects then try to combine them into OKRs. What, pray-tell, does launching an open source project have to do with boosting knowledge? And like, why 20 books instead of 10? And why specify quantity rather than quality or subject? Does reading a book mean you've boosted knowledge if you barely remember anything you read? A better OKR setup would likely be something like (a bit modified to suit my own circumstances): Objective: Boost Knowledge Key result: learn more about statistics etc Which is decomposed into: Objective: Learn more about statistics Key Result: Work through the Freedman, Pisani and Purves Statistics textbook Key Result: Create a hundred Anki cards on statistics Key Result: Make the front page of HN with a stats blog post And even those can be subdivided Objective: Make the front page of HN with a stats blog post Key Result: Generate ten blog post ideas Key Result: Research and analyze five blog post ideas Key Result: Publish and promote all five blog post ideas But you're absolutely right that meaning can be lost. Moving passion projects into a todo list misses the 'passion' part entirely, and is best reserved for the drudge parts of life necessary to enable the sublime. By all means, set OKRs for retirement, taxes, and career development.