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Friday, a few weeks ago.

We just had a crazy week with lots of workshops with coworkers from outside the city.

Yet I felt very unaccomplished.

I looked at my metrics to know why.

Yes, my metrics.

Because I track things.

⭐ In this post, you’ll learn:

• How to write crisp Objectives.

• How to break them down into measurable milestones you control.

• How to create stretch situations out of your comfort zone.

• What I found after looking at my metrics that Friday.

1. The three opinions about metrics.

🕺 Carpe Diem.

I don’t track or plan anything. Life is to live it.

You are going blind. You don’t even have your hands on the wheel, someone else will direct your life for you.

📈 Numbers, numbers everywhere

I track everything in my life. I got access to the most absurd data.

You are wasting time on things without value.

🧑‍💼Someone who subscribes to Strategize Your Career

I track what I want to make progress on.

You are smart. You strategize only what matters, focusing your efforts on the actions that bring the most results.

2. Metrics and OKRs

A metric is just data. An indication. It’s not good or bad by itself.

We interpret it based on a target value.

I like using OKRs as a structured process of setting these target values:

• The Objective (O) is what sets a direction for your life and career. It’s aggressive, yet realistic.

• The Key Results (KR) are the milestones for completion.

A rule of thumb is to make triads of [metric, target value, date of completion] for KRs.

• Objective: Expand the reach and quality of my newsletter

  • KR1: “Read and take notes on 10 books by the end of the quarter”

  • KR2: “Publish 2 collaborative posts by the end of the quarter”

  • KR3: “Interact with 10 posts every week, for 10 out of 12 weeks”

Notice here:

• The objective starts with a verb with clear intention. It’s not “try to”, “help”, or “participate”.

• Each KR sets a target for a metric. I can know if I completed 100%, 50% or 0%. Never treat your metrics as something binary. 99% and 0% are both “not completed”, but they are not the same.

There are 2 maxims you have to respect to make this work:

• Make sure the completion of all KRs of the objective completes the objective. If it doesn’t, find the proper KRs or adjust the objective.

• Make sure it’s clear when the KR is completed. It shouldn’t be up to opinion.

3. How to find what to track

🔍 Identify what matters.

You don’t have to ask deep life questions (although it could help).

Simply imagine yourself one year from now. In which areas do you imagine yourself better?

There are things you won’t consider improving. If they are fine as they are, don’t try to set objectives

Don’t try to set all objectives for the same quarter. And those in the same quarter, have different deadlines. They aren’t going to complete themselves magically on the last day.

🏆 Define some objectives you’ll commit to complete 100%

It’s realistic to run 20k if last quarter you ran 15k. It’s not if you come from an injury and can’t run at all.

But don’t put it too easy. Define something that needs you to change something in your day-to-day schedule.

The entire purpose of setting objectives is to drive change for the better. If things are fine as they are, don’t track this area.

Treat this as a commitment at work. If you don’t deliver, you’ll run a post-mortem to identify the root cause(s).

🤔 Define some objective you aren’t sure you can meet 100%

Something you may not even know how to achieve, but you have an idea about how to start.

This is an aspiration, something that’s aligned with your life and career direction.

Don’t worry about not completing it. 70% of it will be a success already.

🚀 Define Key Results for each of them, with good metrics.

KRs are a proxy in the end. Make sure each 1% progress in the KR is contributing to the Objective.

For metrics, the ideal is to have what I’m going to call an “output metric under your control”.

For example:

• “Publish 2 collaborative posts” is an output (2 posts published), yet it’s under my control (I am the one doing the action of publishing).

• “Having 10k newsletter followers” is an output outside of my control. I am not following, I am the one followed. Other people do the action.

If you can’t find good output metrics where you control the actions, then make it a combination of input and output metrics

Input metrics are 100% in your control. But they are oriented to your activity, and unclear if they contribute to the goal

• “Spend 7 hours engaging with other creators’ content every week”. I could just grind hours, yet make no progress in the followers I get.

Even if using both balances them, I encourage you to make the effort to find a controlled output metric. OKRs can’t be set in a single day.

“Interact with 10 posts every week” is a much better KR than the hours spent.

4. Get intel on your new data

🧐 Audit the metrics to observe behavior over time.

You’ll get an idea of what causes the metric to go up or down.

You must do it yourself because my insights are different than yours.

I found time-blocking in my calendar that I lost a lot of time in the morning. I was not clear on what to start.
When I put the hardest task first, I procrastinated even more. People say “Eat your frog the first thing in the morning”, but I need some warm-up first.

🚨 Create alarms around your metrics

Besides your OKRs, you can set some thresholds for the metrics you track.

When breaching the theshold, trigger some automated action to realize about it.

At some point, I spent 10 weeks in a row without a single day taking a full-day break. I noticed the weariness and once I saw this metric, I understood.

Another useful alarm is setting a maximum time per day for applications on your phone. It’ll log you out immediately upon reaching that time. I use it for those apps that can glue me in infinite recommendations.

🎯 Conclusion

After that week of workshops, I ran my little script to pull data from the calendar and calculate the time spent per area during the week.

My result was 2 hours of work on the sprint.

I understood why I felt unaccomplished and slow.

An entire week in the outside world went by. But only 2 hours passed for the my tasks.

A metric gave me a better understanding of an emotion.

And I could create some guardrails to maintain the metric healthier. I scheduled a block of work early morning for the next weeks.

🗃️ Resources

• 2024 Guide to Goals for Software Engineers by

  High Growth Engineer

• OKRs at Google

👏 Weekly Applause

• How Canva Supports Real-Time Collaboration for 135 Million Monthly Users by

  System Design Newsletter
  . This post introduced me to RSocket, the main technology that powers real-time collaboration in Canva. The best way to learn something new is to find it’s practical use

• Taking Decisions in Engineering Teams by

  The Hybrid Hacker
  . Same way that you can’t improve what you can’t measure, you can’t improve what you can’t name. This post broadened my vocabulary in decision making and provides great tools to try.

• 7 ways to stand out as an intern by

  The Hustling Engineer
  . These tips apply as an intern, new hire, transferring teams or just starting to work on a new project.

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