#52 - The Balance of Committed versus Aspirational Goals (OKRs)
It took until #52 to actually write an entire letter on the thing I've spent countless hours practicing: Objectives & Key Results. Plus: a peek into a slightly neurotic way to track personal goals
As much as you’d expect me to be totally sick of OKRs given that I work in the space, at a company that operates what I think is the best goal-management platform on the market, I still love the methodology. It’s so simple…so powerful, and yet putting it into practice is equal parts art and science. It’s primarily meant for business, but it can be equally useful for your personal goal setting!
For those of you who don’t know what OKRs are, here’s my quick, things-you-must-know primer….
A Super Fast Primer on OKRs
The Objective and Key Results (OKRs) = a goal-setting and strategy execution system
Objectives can be thought of as being “Goals” and Key Results as “metrics” — “What do I want to accomplish?” (Objective) and “How will I know I’ve been successful?” (Metric)
The greatest risk to OKR health is this thing known as setting it and forgetting it. It’s that most familiar phenomenon whereby you set goals in, say, January, and then only check in on them a few times on your way to December.
The power of OKRs is that you are focusing your entire organization on a small (3-5) set of goals, adjusting those goals based on validated learning on a regular basis —> harnessing the power of reflection and the clarity provided by metrics to pivot, pivot, pivot until you’ve achieved your objectives
The superpower of OKRs is that you’re setting stretch goals that force you to embrace discomfort as you try to achieve milestones that might not be easy to achieve
If you want to read more about OKRs, I recommend reading: High-Output Management, OKRs For All (written by our CEO), and checking out this page (scroll about half-way down for a bunch of resources).
But despite the recommendation to set stretch goals, should all of your goals be stretch goals?
Easy answer. No.
… …Why?
Because if all of your goals are stretch goals, you’ll probably burn out. Additionally, if you fail to achieve your goals, your team can feel demoralized at the end of the quarter / review period (some organizations review every quarter…some every six months. I recommend quarterly).
I like to think of the mix of goals like this:
You should be focusing on no more than 3-5 goals. Beyond that, your time is spread too thinly
Within these goals, let’s say there are five, you should balance out your goals between Aspirational and Committed.
What’s the difference between Aspirational and Committed goals, and what’s the ideal ratio to adopt?
Aspirational Goals = stretch goals. Goals that make you slightly uncomfortable / scared when you think about achieving them. If you achieve 70% of your goal, that’s probably GREAT
Personal Example: “Achieve proficiency in French in 2023” — this is hard one for me. It’s on my goal list, but it’s definitely a stretch.
Committed Goals = What I like to call “non-negotiable” goals. These are goals you have to achieve fully
Personal Example: “Eat vegetables with 2 meals every day” — this is something I have to achieve. It’s non-negotiable for me, and it is totally feasible that I can achieve this for the vast majority of meals over a year
In my humble opinion, I think every organization & person should have a mix of both categories of goals
Across the many organizations I’ve worked with on their OKR approach, most land on doing about 50%/50% when it comes to the balancing of Aspirational vs. Committed
Think about this 50/50 balance in your life? You simply cannot set stretch goals everywhere without increasing the risk of burnout, and the risk of burnout is the kind of thing that can completely, utterly undermine the achievement and maintenance of a happy and healthy life
So, what should I do with this now? Potential Actions
Everyone sets goals. We aren’t all as disciplined in keeping them top of mind, checking in on them regularly, and adjusting them. If you’re getting to this point and wondering, “Well, Michael, what exactly should I do with this?”
Some Options for You:
Do absolutely nothing. Continue on with your life (hey, totally viable option)
Take the step of actually writing out 3-5 goals you have on paper
If you’re really serious about it, consider putting your goals into a tool like Notion or Excel and attaching some metrics to help you more effectively check-in
Metrics…numbers are a pathway to truth
Bonus points: you schedule time with yourself to actually check in on your goals!
I do this at least once per month. Go get space by yourself, put some music on, and literally go category by category. I try to spend 5-10 minutes on each, and I use journaling / writing as a way to force me to get deep on each goal
Bonus bonus points if you realize that you have goals that aren’t feasible, and you remove them from your list. Better to focus on three things you actually can accomplish than to lie to yourself about your ability to achieve five, as an example
In closing, an acknowledgement of over-engineering
It’s so easy to over-engineer goals. I’ve had years where I’ve literally set metrics for every category of goals, put a matrix together and then tracked my progress every day. I’m not kidding: here’s a screenshot
(categories = lite breakfast, eating greens, stretching, reviewing my daily operating model for work, lite or big workout, calling family, doing one fun thing within reading, making music, or playing a game, working on another language, reviewing my schedule for the next day)
While I’ve found this degree of tracking to be helpful at certain points in my life where I’m dialing up (trying to seriously upgrade my performance in life across some specific dimension or set of dimensions)…But it can also just be super stressful, especially when you get into periods where life throws you curveballs and you can’t make any progress.
For some people, you probably can say “screw it” to setting 3-5 very specific, written goals, and simply checking in with yourself on a regular basis to see how you’re doing, and to simply ask the question, “Am I doing what I want in and with my life? What’s gone well lately? What would I like to be different?”
Some pressure is healthy, but there’s a thin line between “holding yourself accountable” and “feeling stressed out & disrupted by your goals”
MD
For once, I actually know what the next letter is going to be about! I started writing it last week but saw my dog and wife playing fetch and decided that it was more important than writing #prioritization. The next letter will continue the theme of personal effectiveness, by sharing my experience with health-related technologies — the good and the ugly. I recently hit a point where I actually stopped tracking some health data, because I realized it was excessively influencing my mindset + energy.
For context, i’m slightly neurotic about this and am the (…not-so-) proud of owner of:
An Apple Watch (layer 1 of overall fitness tracking)
An Oura Ring (layer 2 of fitness tracking + sleep insights)
An Eight Sleep mattress (temperature controlled, machine-learning enabled bed + layer 2 of sleep insights)
Sonos speakers (for brown noise and overall mood setting in the haus)
Endel (generative sound platform that helps maximize focus and balance, whenever we have a moment to do deep work)