For the unitiated, OKRs are a simple, but effective tool to get things done. I first came across it being used by my company, Detroit Labs. To my surprise the concept is not only being used at smaller start-ups, but also industry behemoths like Google, Intuit, and the Gates Foundation.
The concept was created by Andy Grove from intel and popularized by John Doerr in his book Measure What Matters. The simple gist of it is finding a handful of aspirational goals to serve as Objectives. Then, supporting those with another handful of measurable sub goals (Key Results) that help acheive the Objective. All individuals and teams then write their own OKRs and make them transparent across the organization. This transparency allows for easily alignment of effort across the organization.
There's something magical about distilling important things into handfuls of 5-7 things. That handful of things matches nicely to the concept in psychology called chunking. Our brains are better at recalling chunks of things, which are collections of around 7 things.
That magical number 7 comes up a lot in leadership, organization, and a ton of other things. One of my favorite productivity tricks is Marc Andreessen's note card method which divides to-dos in small chunks.
Each night before you go to bed, prepare a 3x5 index card with a short list of 3 to 5 things that you will do the next day.
And then, the next day, do those things.
Out of the countless productivity hacks I've tried, I always come back to this one. As an added bonus, at the end of the day I toss the cards in a bucket to act as a pseudo accomplishment journal.
Personal OKRs
As an extension of OKRs, I publishished my OKRs as my personal goals on the about page of this blog. This may fly in the face of the advice of not telling people your goals since that can makes you less likely to accomplish them. In this case, the pros outweigh the cons. The additional transparency helps communicate my intent for the blog and helps focus my effort. Underneath each goal has something that acts like key results and will serve as roadmap for each objective.
As another counterpoint, sharing your goals with higher-status people can lead to greater commitment and performance. I hold my friends in very high-esteem and that includes my readers!