Practical Planning: Making Time for Your Goals
Having a brilliant set of personal OKRs is one thing; finding the time and energy to execute them is another. Your goals must have a home in your schedule, or they will always be pushed aside by the urgent but unimportant tasks of daily life. This is where practical planning techniques come into play.
Time Blocking: Give Your Goals a Home on Your Calendar
The single most effective way to ensure you work on your goals is to schedule them. Time blocking is the practice of dedicating specific blocks of time in your calendar to specific tasks. Instead of a to-do list that just floats in the ether, you are making a concrete appointment with your priorities.
At the beginning of each week, during your weekly check-in, look at the priorities you’ve set. Then, open your calendar and block out the time to do them. If one of your weekly goals is “Write 1,000 words for my book,” you might block out 7-8 AM on Tuesday and Thursday. If another is “Complete 3 running sessions,” you schedule them just like you would a doctor’s appointment. This act transforms a vague intention into a committed plan.
Establish Checkpoints and Celebrate Small Wins
A 90-day quarter can feel long. To maintain momentum, it’s helpful to set smaller, intermediate checkpoints. A mid-quarter review is a great idea. At the 6-week mark, do a slightly deeper review of your progress. Are your KRs still the right ones? Do you need to adjust your strategy? This prevents you from going too far down the wrong path.
Equally important is to celebrate progress. When you hit 50% of your practice hours KR, acknowledge it. When you complete that first portfolio piece, take a moment to appreciate the effort and the accomplishment. This isn’t frivolous; it’s a crucial part of the psychological process of goal achievement. As a coach, I’ve seen that positive reinforcement, even when self-administered, builds the resilience needed for long-term pursuits. You can find more on the power of reinforcement in resources from organizations like the American Psychological Association (https://www.apa.org).
Constraint-Aware Planning
One of the most practical pieces of advice I can offer is to be brutally realistic about your constraints. Your personal goals do not exist in a vacuum. You have a job, a family, social commitments, and a finite amount of energy. When you set your personal OKRs, you must do so with a full awareness of your life’s other demands.
If you have a demanding job and two young children, setting a Key Result of “Spend 20 hours a week learning to code” is setting yourself up for failure and burnout. A more realistic, constraint-aware KR might be “Spend 5 focused hours a week learning to code.” It might take you longer to reach the ultimate destination, but a sustainable pace will always beat an explosive start followed by a complete flameout. The best plan is the one you can actually stick to. Your OKRs should stretch you, but they shouldn’t break you.
