I love-hate goal setting. Here are 10 steps I often fail at in how I try to breakdown and achieve goals, but hey, this is LinkedIn so I’ll share…
- Objective: Define your “where you are going” and your “why”.
- Principles: Decide what’s worth it in how you pursue your where/why.
- Key Result: Measure the goal numerically 1-3 ways. Too many is too confusing.
- KR-Drivers: Identify the key drivers that affect the goal.
- Hypothesize: Use data/intuition to guess what will drive increases in KR-drivers.
- Experiment: Try 2 approaches, manipulate the drivers in big or minor ways.
- Track: Measure/track/Log what’s needed to measure if your hypothesis was valid or rejected.
- Analyze: make minor tweaks in the drivers and measure statistically significant changes.
- Conclude: Which direction will increase your KR. Consider alternate paths if the experiment didn’t yield good results.
- Periodic Evaluation: At a pre-determined cadence (1 wk, 6 wk, quarter), choose if your KR is helping you achieve your objective.
A few lessons learned as a professional experimenter:
- Tracking is not the key result. Don’t confuse them. Too many people track habits for no reason (I’m guilty of this 100%)
- KR’s have no purpose if you don’t have an objective. You want 100k ffollowers? 100k revenue? They don’t mean anything until you know what you’re going to do with it. More fame/money doesn’t equal more life satisfaction. Lots of unhappy/depressed rich/famous people.
- “Experimentation” early into defining a product should be massive swings. Find the “lowest hanging fruit”, make the biggest changes.
- Have principles to guide your KR’s. If you don’t
- Have Anti-KR’s - things you won’t do. This is the hardest. If you have 10 KR’s, perhaps KR’s 2-10 should be all anti-KR’s. Otherwise, you’ll get distracted on 2 despite you knowing 1 is most important.
- A rising tide lifts all ships: By improving one KR, you may be sacrificing improving another. But more likely you’ll actually improve all KR’s, because they’re usually correlated.
Easy Example: “I want to be healthier”
Objective: I want more energy to be able to devote it to my kids.
Principles:
I will not hurt my body by doing unnecessary XYZ
I’m not going to kill myself. I’m going to keep this simple.
KR: (Write down 10, pick the one that will obviate the rest)
Gain 10 lbs of muscle
Eat 100g of protein a day
Sleep 8 hours a day
Meditate 20 minutes a day
KR-drivers for gaining 10 lbs of muscle:
Lift weights
Focus on quads
Focus on upper body
Hypothesize: If I go to the gym for 10 minutes for 28 days and do 30 exercises a day, I’ll gain muscle.
Experiment: I’ll keep my diet the same - including the popcorn. I’ll focus my mental energy on clearing my calendar and getting out the door to the gym. The “control” experiment is what I’ve done the last 28 days…not worked out 🤣
Track:
- Day 1: I’ll weight myself, write a journal about how I feel. Perhaps ask myself some questions.
- Did I go to the gym for 10 minutes? I’ll keep a piece of paper and a pen taped to my mirror or on my nightstand. Checkbox. Don’t track anything else. This is my one focus right now.
Analyze: on day 28, I’ll weigh myself again.
Conclude: Did this 28-day challenge change how I felt? Be honest: it might not. Perhaps I can get on my bike, or hike, or do pushups every day instead.
Periodic evaluation: every 2 months I’ll investigate how my energy is.
your goal isn’t to gain/lose weight. Your goal is to feel better about your health. Your key result is a number on a scale going up/down.
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Bryan lives somewhere at the intersection of faith, fatherhood, and futurism and writes about tech, books, Christianity, gratitude, and whatever’s on his mind. If you liked reading, perhaps you’ll also like subscribing: