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How I use business strategies to optimize my personal life (nerdy)


Recently I was asked “how do you plan out projects at work? Can any of those methods work for life planning?” That question set off so many thoughts. I’ve been working in tech for 7 years and marketing for 8. I’ve learned so much along the way…so why haven’t I tried to implement what I learned at work into my personal life?

As I’m entering this new stage in my life where I’m doing some major pondering about what I’ve accomplished, where I am currently, and what I’d like to do next, I’m coming to a realization that I’m not applying myself in the right way. I’ve been compartmentalizing all these different areas of my life without ever considering that maybe it’s best to create harmony rather than balance.

So as I’m reading all these business books trying to grow my business, learning as much as I can at my 9-5, and consuming other creators’ content trying to improve my workflows I wanted to start implement some of the strategies into my personal life as well.

Starting with the OKR method. I learned about the OKR method through my CEO at work. OKR stands for Objectives and Key Results and it’s actually a goal-setting framework created by the former CEO of Intel. We’ve been using this method at work to break down all of our high-level objectives into actionable steps and measurable results and I actually created an entire Notion project management dashboard around it.​

Recently I started to use it to optimize my life goals as well. Whether it’s something as small as “rebuilding a workout habit into my routine” or as large as “save up $80,000 for my moving goals”, I’ve found it to be the perfect structure to help me strategize actually accomplishing these goals.

Here’s the basic template:

Objective - Write down your “broad” goal that’s focusing on a specific area of your life

Key Results - Write down 3-5 measurable results that would demonstrate that you’re making progress towards your objective

Tasks - Write down 3-5 tasks under each Key Result which define how you’re planning on accomplishing those key results.

​I wrote a detailed blog post explaining exactly what OKRs are, how it works, and how to apply it to your life goals here.​

I’ve added 5 new business books to my TBR recently so more insights coming soon! Hope this helps to bring some clarity into your goal setting (and accomplishing!) this year.

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