If you’re looking for a great book to read, Measure What Matters by John Doerr is an excellent primer on how to get started with Objectives and Key Results. If you’re short on time, today’s Studio Session will catch you up on how I think about them.
Think of Objectives as the aspirational future state that you would like to live within. These are paired with measurements of success, known as Key Results. A given objective should have multiple key results that all orient you back toward the larger objective. Here’s my own example from this year:
Objective
Become a successful indie dev
as measured by
Key Results:
Release 12 games in 2026
Write a newsletter each week
Generate $1 in profit for the year
There’s really not much else to it, but you would be surprised how easy it is to get wrong. Key Results need to be very thoughtful and not become something to reach at all costs. If you are “100% successful” all of the time, then it’s a sign that you aren’t challenging yourself enough. If you can’t even achieve 70% of the goal, then the challenge was too great. Striving for something just out of reach creates the necessary environment for growth.
If you want to get started today, think of the large long-term goal that you’re working toward. Then think about two or three ways you could measure whether you’re headed in the right direction. Maybe that’s “no 0 days” or maybe it’s a number of commits per week. Once you have them, start living by them and record your results each week. When you look back at the end of the period, you will either have hit those goals or not. No matter the outcome, reflect on what happened and factor that into the next experiment or OKR. If you take away anything, just remember that taking action toward a huge goal is still much better than sitting and doing nothing. What are your OKRs?
Talk soon,
Connor