Good question. I wish I had a more sophisticated answer, but everything I do is fairly low-tech. First, memory: this works for nearly everything in my case. Second, a whiteboard for grocery items, which I update as needed. Third, just keeping momentum going for my goals.
For what I might term "loftier" aspirations (diet, fitness, etc), I just make sure I am being consistent. Those things have to be built into your lifestyle, or at least, that is the only way I can get it to work. There was a time, for instance, when I did track my nutrition with a spreadsheet. But after a few months I realized I could manage it all within my head: I had gauged my daily macro needs, and could largely judge by eye, and it has worked for years since.
I have tried todo-style apps, as an example of where I have tried a more explicit approach. I find that they are just procrastination and delay lists for me. If I am not actively doing it already, with exceptions, it probably won't be done at all.
I keep my objectives in my head. No need to write this kind of thing down and keeping scores of myself. And whatever happens happens. I don't need to bog myself down with some corporate invention.
Couldn't agree more with this (and the OP). Life changes. All the time. What about your plan for Q2/Q3 2020 to finally do that world cruise you had been waiting to do all your life? Riiiiight.
Now having some sort of principles you live by and to keep yourself honest maybe write them down somewhere (read The 7 habits of highly successful people), sure. Quarterly goals with OKRs? Sorry that already doesn't work at work as no higher up or HR person ever has used them for good if you ask me. Bringing that to my personal life? Lol? 'Increase happiness of my family by 50% in Q1 2021'? Well duh, I don't need OKRs to know Covid sucks and I should try to make the kids life as normal and happy as I can without trying to even measure happiness. I had no personal OKRs ever and I built a tobogganing hill in the front yard (the slope helps) and I'm working on the skating ring (yes ring, like circles, not hockey rink :)) in the backyard. Yes I was keeping this in my head just fine.
An alternative “system” that unfortunately works with your criticism while still being a system is simply a value aligned “DIDMB” (did I do my best....to say something nice to my spouse? To start the day with clear goals, etc) question list self served at night.
A score of “10” on eating well might mean one thing while on PTO and another on a busy travel day where simply not grabbing the king size snickers at the airport convenience store is a massive win. So it’s relative to your ability and to the environment and to where you are that particular day.
I personally paid a young teen to call/text me daily with the question list for about a year and tremendously enjoyed it (as in benefited from it).
But sorry to agree with you by jamming another system in :)
Don't get me wrong, where necessary I totally agree that writing things down helps. That helps in a lot of places in life (like the principles mentioned if you choose so might help someone while for others that's not needed). Or writing down what I ate (sorry I really can't keep track of how many grams of carbs are in each of the things I eat and since I no longer do keto, which is easy to keep track of in rour head but only try to minimize carbs I need the written help).
But I don't see value in trying to measure how much better I did with not jumping to conclusions (which I see on the list he has in the article and I also keep an eye on this personally). But I don't think you need an OKR and try to make it measurable. I just need to consciously decide that I will keep a more open mind and inquire a few more times on whether I understood correctly and that the other person probably meant it in a good way. However badly formulated it was and how it came across. Then every time "something happens" and I handle it better than last time I can recognize that and pat myself on the back. Or recognize after that it all fell apart and I "judged back at them" and it spiraled out of control. Try to do better next time. Do I need to graph this and look at it and get myself down because I didn't do as well as I wanted to?
OKRs are meant to set goals that are somewhat unachievable. Like hitting 70% on your target is awesome. Sorry but I don't work that way. I'm not deadline driven. I'm task driven. I know I'm in a minority in that but if you give me an unachievable deadline in order to try to get me to deliver at the date you secretly thought was the real goal post then it's just gonna frustrate me and when I see you not using my results for another month or so because that was the real goal post then I'll definitely not give it my best next time. I can be selective that way.
As a task oriented person I just do whatever needs doing and do it in priority order in the best and fastest fashion I can. If your deadline is in two weeks but I got nothing higher prio I'll deliver early by a week instead of procrastinating and then doing an all nighter to get it to you when the deadline is. I really really detest these deadlines people put. I just recently purposefully didn't push back on a stupid deadline and just gave way subpar results (I had 15 minutes with the team in between two other meetings for something where we should have spent about an hour to discuss properly. And I purposefully kept that time box very very well). You know what? They accepted and loved the results. Had they just put a reasonable deadline that took into account our sprint start and end times as well as the internal hackathon happening that week...
Did I mention I turned in my master thesis a week before the deadline?
I keep it simple. Choose a couple things to focus on and write those down in my planner (pen and paper). Lately it’s been:
- read more books, especially biographies and histories
- spend time with my kids
- write a blog post or essay once a month
Outside that, I don’t get much more specific. Work is already busy enough to juggle. I don’t need another thing to juggle. I’m not interested in forcing that much structure on my time outside work. I try to prioritize simple things that make my family or myself happy.
