Using OKRs to get intentional

Borrowing a concept from industry to help get the most out of your summer break

Photo by Dan DeAlmeida on Unsplash

I hope the semester is winding down for you all in a way that's satisfying, happy, and calm. Ours ended a couple of weeks ago (we start earlier in January than most places) and now I am at the entrance to the promised land: Summer break.

One of the worst feelings an academic person can experience is some point in July, when you look at your calendar and see August on the horizon, and you realize: Summer is more than half over, and I've neither enjoyed my "break" as much as I could have nor gotten as much work done as I should have. If only we could go back in time to May and do things differently! The good news is that this hasn't happened yet, and if you're reading this in May, you can be intentional about the summer so that all phases of the game -- both "work" and "life" -- are equally satisfying, and avoid the existential FOMO that July always seems to bring. Today, I want to show you one possible framework for doing this: OKRs.

What is an OKR?

The phrase "OKR" is an acronym that stands for Objective and Key Results. I know, it sounds suspiciously corporate, and it's possible you've heard your university's senior leadership team throw this term around in strategic planning (which might make it even more suspicious). It's from the corporate world, yes. But like many concepts from that world, it's pretty useful for academia and everyday life.

OKRs are simply a particular way of framing goals, and tracking progress toward them. To get the most enjoyment out of my summers, as well as the rest of the year, I need to impose structure on what I am doing. I need to have a sense of where I am headed and how I will know if I'm moving in that direction, or whether I am getting stuck. This means I need aspirational goals; but I also need concrete ways of knowing how I'm doing relative to those goals.

In an OKR, the Objective (the "O") is an aspirational goal you want to achieve over a particular time span. That time span is typically on the long side, like 3 months, sometimes a year. For our purposes, think "May through August". It's a stretch goal and is concrete without being terribly prescriptive, more like a desired future than a to-do list. For example, if you're hoping to catch up on research paper reading this summer, a possible objective for you might be Clear out the entire backlog of research papers I've accumulated or Become fluent in the major peer-reviewed results in my discipline. If you're wanting to be in better physical shape, an objective might be Finish a half-marathon in under 3 hours or simply Have a healthy body and lots of energy.

If the objective is what you want to accomplish, the key results (“KRs”) on the other hand are how you will accomplish that objective. These are more like SMART goals: specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and time-bound. Unlike objectives which are aspirational, key results need to be street-level and verifiable. The KRs answer the question, How will I know whether I am making progress toward the objective and how much progress; or whether I am getting stuck? A common formulation for an OKR is:

I will [objective] as measured by [key result].

Note "as measured by". Key results need to be not merely observable, but measurable using an objective, quantitative metric. For example:

I will become fluent in the major peer-reviewed results in my discipline, by making a list of these results, reading at least 15 of them, and writing a blog post summarizing each one I read, before August 15.

Or, on the personal side:

I will have a healthy body and lots of energy by walking 3 miles per day, going to bed no later than 10pm five nights a week, and drinking 2 liters of water each day from now through August 15.

The same overarching goal (being healthier, mastering the research literature of your field, etc.) will be phrased differently by different people and realized through different key results. And both an objective and the key results for a particular goal can evolve over time and be renegotiated as things progress. The point is to frame your goal as an aspirational desired future and then lay out concrete, measurable ways to get to that future in a way that works for you.

How to set, and track OKRs

This is the perfect time of the year to experiment with OKRs in your work and personal life. I personally set OKRs once per quarter, at my Quarterly Review (which I will write about next time) in January, April, July, and October. But, trimesterly (January, May, August) works just as well. Here's a rough outline of how I do it.

First: Pick an aspirational goal for the summer (or quarter, etc.). This should be concrete but not so specific that it's boring; and neither too easy nor too hard. What is it you want to accomplish? What kind of person do you want to be? The objective should inspire and challenge you, and not demoralize or bore you.

Second: Determine 1-3 key results for that objective. These, again, need to be quantitative, measured with a number of some sort that is an actual measurement: The number of papers read or number of pages you've written, the time it took you to run 5 miles, how many weekend getaways you take, and so on. Each objective should have at least one key result, but no more than three (or else it's too complicated).

Third: Check your progress on a regular basis, at least weekly, and reflect on the process. You might keep a notebook with your OKRs in them and update your progress on the key results at the end or beginning of each day, as well as write a quick paragraph about what helped you succeed or what's blocking you.

Fourth: When the time span is over (for example, just before Fall semester starts), analyze the results. Typically, meeting 70% of the key results for an objective is considered "success" since objectives are aspirational and difficult. We don't expect 100% completion of key results, and in fact if you do manage to accomplish 100% completion, it probably means you didn't set the objective high enough. At the end of your period, then, determine the extent you met your objectives using this "pass/fail" rubric. Write about what worked, what blocked you, and why. And if you “failed” at an objective, be kind to yourself — meeting aspirational goals, even committing to them, is hard.

Another example

One of the objectives I have for this quarter (April-June) is

I have mastered the fundamentals of the bass guitar.

I chose this objective because I am really focusing on improving as a musician in 2023. I've been a bassist for 25 years but only off-and-on, so I know a lot, but my skills are rusty and have holes in them. I am taking this year to patch all of those. So, this is an aspirational goal, not super-specific but more of an end state that matters to me¹.

Without key results, this is closer to a New Year's resolution than an actual attainable goal. So I have these three KR's:

1. I have completed a list of courses at Scott's Bass Lessons. I made up a list of 12 programs at this website to complete by the end of June (basically one per week). Some of these are not just online courses but learning pathways that require mastering the performance of increasingly difficult technical exercises.

2. I have completed a list of courses on music theory. Again, I made a list of courses, this time eight of them, from Scott's Bass Lessons and Udemy, to work through by June.

3. I have created an online presence for my music. This involves learning and recording three bass guitar covers of songs, creating YouTube and SoundCloud channels for those recordings, and building a musician website that hosts it all.

The third key result is different than when I started in April. It used to be I have learned eight moderately difficult songs and can play them without mistakes. For a time, I was working on some songs and it was really improving my skills. But then, out of nowhere, I had invitations to try out for two different local cover bands, passed both auditions, and joined both -- which meant having to learn upwards of 80 songs from the combined setlists. So I figured my original key result was a moot point, and I decided to pivot instead to creating a musician website with audio/video content.

The point is that sometimes you set goals but then things change, and while the overall objective still makes sense, the key results may not, so it's OK to renegotiate.

So far, roughly 1/3 of the way through the quarter, I've finished 2 of the 12 Scott's Bass Lesson courses; I've only made made partial progress on one of the music theory courses; and haven't really done much with the website. This is due to joining those two bands and needing to learn a ton of music, plus dealing with the end of the semester and two straight weeks of travel for speaking engagements. So I'm not worried about slow progress; but I am aware I need to pick up my pace. (This is the great benefit of having measurable key results -- the numbers don't lie.)

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Now you do it

Take 30-60 minutes and do the following:

• Think about the future you might like to have for yourself, when August 1 arrives. What could be true about your work? About your life outside of work? Write down a full list.

• Pick one work-related item and one non-work related item from that list and shape each into an Objective as discussed above. Something inspiring and difficult, not boring or impossible, and specific but not prescriptive.

• For each objective, write down some ways you might measure your progress. Pick 1-3 of those and shape them into Key Results. What metrics are you using? Are they "SMART"?

• Post your examples in the comments.

For further reading: The definitive book on OKRs is Measure What Matters by John Doerr and I highly recommend it.

1. It’s probably impossible to “master the fundamentals of the bass guitar” in three month’s time, so this is definitely aspirational only. A more realistic, but also less bracing and more boring, way to phrase this would be I’ve made major progress toward mastering the fundamentals of the bass.