What OKRs taught me about setting New Year's resolutions

I love to set and then miserably fail New Year's resolutions. After learning about OKRs and product metrics, I realised that I have often set poorly defined goals. For businesses, it's a matter of life and death to optimise for the right metrics, so it's not surprising that there are many systems and good advice on how to do it. Let's look at some common advice on metrics and OKRs and see how it applies to New Year's resolutions.

Make your goals measurable

"You can't improve what you don't measure" is a known adage, and there is certainly a lot of truth to it. "I want to get fit this year" is a common and admirable resolution, but it doesn't say much. Unless you had a drastic lifestyle change, how would you even know if you achieved it? Instead, you could reframe it into something more measurable:

❌ "I want to get fit this year."

✅ "I want to run a half marathon." / "I want to be able to do 30 pushups."

Now it's something that you could look at periodically and see if you are making progress. Making measurable goals helps to be objective and, more importantly, hold yourself accountable. Our intuitions could be deceiving. I had months where I thought I was walking/running more than usual, but a quick look at my step count would prove otherwise.

Beware of input and output goals

With input goals, you just count the effort you put into something. For example, going to the gym 52 (weeks) * 3 (3 times a week) = 156 times this year could be a great goal to make sure that you develop a regular habit. But if you go to drink a smoothie, the desired output — getting in shape — wouldn't be there.

❌ "I want to spend 3 hours a week on my piano skills."

✅ "I want to learn how to play X and Y on the piano."

It's not necessarily that input metrics are bad. Input is something we can control, and it helps to keep track of whether you are putting in the required effort to improve. But it is important to keep in mind that what we want is some measurable improvement, not just doing things and standing in place. Sometimes I like to set both input and output goals for the same objective to ensure that I'm both putting in the effort and improving.

Vanity metrics

If you set out to improve and optimise on a measurable goal, make sure that it's actually a goal worth pursuing. Companies can struggle with "vanity metrics" — metrics that might look good and impressive, but aren't actually indicative of how the product or the company is doing. A good example here is boasting the number of signups even though those signups never convert into actual users.

I personally had a great example of this with reading. I used to have a goal of reading 50 books a year. It sounds good and is definitely better than not reading at all, but it's worth asking if we are optimising for the right thing. What I'm really after is useful knowledge and wisdom to use in my day-to-day life. Just reading books says nothing about what was learned, so I changed it a bit last year:

❌ "Read 50 books this year."

✅ "Read and make notes on 40 books this year."

Now for every book, I make a Notion page with my learnings and favourite quotes and have something I can consult periodically. I found this much more rewarding than reading books and then not being able to remember what it was really about in a month or two.

But even with this metric, what's the point of finishing a book that's not that interesting or that useful? This year I might ignore the number of books altogether and focus more on writing or acquiring skills.

Set stretch goals

Parkinson's law states that "work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion". There is a similar negative effect with easily achievable goals. You will have a strong incentive to think, "I still have time and can do it later", and postpone them.

It's hard to set stretch goals for binary targets, like "I want to learn how to drive", but when it's something that is more measurable, like how much you can run or how often you meditate, it helps to set an ambitious goal.

This one is definitely more of a personal preference, but I like to set goals where if I get around 70–80% done, I would still be happy with it, but then try to live to get 100%.

Track & review

Why even bother? What would setting a good, measurable goal really help you with? In the end, it's about two things: holding yourself accountable and being able to make actionable interventions. You want to change something in your life and need to be able to tell if that something is actually changing, and if not, then why not? And what can we try to do better?

With reading and making notes on 50 books a year, I realised pretty quickly that it was too much. Which made me think about how I could improve it. I tend to listen to podcasts during commutes, and I decided to switch to audiobooks (I take notes while listening and then organise them in the end). Now around every third book I finish is an audiobook. I still listen to podcasts occasionally but do find that with audiobooks I get more organised and actionable knowledge.

Setting goals is pretty pointless if you don't track and check in on your progress once in a while.

Conclusion

We all want to change something for the better and have a noticeable improvement. But let's also remember that many of the most important things don't need OKR-style planning. Make time for your loved ones, yourself, and the moments of life that can't be measured.

Wishing everyone a happy New Year! May you achieve your goals this year, and may they be goals that are worth pursuing. And however the year goes, just getting through is also enough.