2019-2024: Personal OKRs

I was very impressed and inspired after reading Measure What Matters, a book by the legendary Silicon Valley investor John Doerr (whose portfolio includes Google and Amazon). Its Amazon bookpage did a great job summarizing what “OKR” is:

…Doerr taught them about a proven approach to operating excellence: Objectives and Key Results. He had first discovered OKRs in the 1970s as an engineer at Intel, where the legendary Andy Grove…Wherever the process was faithfully practiced, it worked.

In this goal-setting system, objectives define what we seek to achieve; key results are how those top-priority goals will be attained with specific, measurable actions within a set time frame. Everyone’s goals, from entry level to CEO, are transparent to the entire organization.

The benefits are profound. OKRs surface an organization’s most important work. They focus effort and foster coordination. They keep employees on track. They link objectives across silos to unify and strengthen the entire company. Along the way, OKRs enhance workplace satisfaction and boost retention.

Given how successful the OKR system has been and both my manager at work and I read and liked the work, we decided to try it in planning my work for this half. So far I think it has worked pretty well. Naturally, then, I wanted to extend it and apply to my personal life, given I have a lot of ambitions and dreams and things I wanted to try. So below you will find my attempt at listing down OKRs for my 5-year plan

2019 Fall: Start UW PMP. Look around for new teams. Try Google. Try HRT. 2020: Get married, Get better at snowboarding, become an intern manager at work. Try Google if haven’t. 2021 Fall: Finish UW 2021 Winter: Find jobs in SG, move there.

2022: Think about startups. 2023: Join startups in APAC. 2024: Move back to the States. Join a startup? Try FinTech? Explore different industries?