6 Simple Steps To Designing Your Goals
A Framework For Designing Your Goals Like A UX Designer
But why should I care?
Have you ever wondered why it’s so hard to set goals?
Is the vision for your professional and personal life fluffy and unclear?
Have you ever struggled to answer the question, “what did you achieve last year”?
If the answer is a resounding “Oh god, YES!”, then this article is for you.
This 6–step (not to be confused with breakdancing) framework will help you translate your thoughts and the things you care about into actionable items you can start working on.
Imagine, your life organised in this spectacular spreadsheet format… BOOM! — keeping scrolling to steal this template.
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Ready to get started? You’ll need…
- Pen — a Sharpie, preferably
- Post-its — works better than paper for organising and grouping items
- Growth OKRs spreadsheet template — duplicate to start editing
- Your computer — it’s easier to fill in a spreadsheet than your mobile device
- Coffee — and lots of it!
The 6-Step Framework
- Step 1: Find your motivators, the reasons or stimulus of why you do what you do.
- Step 2: Find your values, the principles or standards of behaviour; your judgment of what is important.
- Step 3: Brainstorm goals (or objectives), things you want to achieve that are ambitious, qualitative, and actionable.
- Step 4: Categorize these into 4 key areas: Professional, Personal, Health, and Relationships.
- Step 5: Brainstorm key results by breaking down your goals into quantifiable and achievable chunks.
- Step 6: Choose your focus and prioritize what’s going to be worked on in 2022 and setup a method for tracking your progress to keep yourself motivated.
Don’t forget to duplicate the template
Step 1: Find your motivators, the reasons or stimulus of why you do what you do.
A key to finding your motivators is reflection. We need establish 1) what you really care about personally and what makes you happy, and 2) a understanding of your current role and skills.
Write down the answers, one item per Post-it
- Q. What are some key life moments that you’ve felt proud, happy, positive, etc..?
- Q. What are the most rewarding or frustrating aspects of your current role?
- Q. Do you feel challenged or stretched in your current role? What would make it more challenging? What isn’t challenging you?
- Q. What feedback have you received from other people on your strengths and weaknesses?
- Q. What areas are you hoping to improve in?
- Q. What keeps you in your center?
You should have a bunch of Post-its. Now affinity diagram these and turn them into our motivators.
Group your answers into themes and give the themes a name — remember ask yourself, “What are the motivators behind your key life moments, challenges, and rewarding situations?”
Step 2: Find your values, the principles or standards of behaviour; your judgment of what is important.
We’ll use affinity diagram again to make sense to generate core values from your handful of motivators.
Group them into themes and give the themes a name — remember ask yourself, “What are the values behind these motivators, and why is it important?”
Note: Multiple motivators can belong to a single value, you just have to decide which one belongs where. Alternatively, duplicate the motivator.
Below is an example of how I related the items. Try to find at least major 3–4 values.
If you’re struggling with defining the values, read the article below for some inspiration.
Step 3: Brainstorm goals (or objectives), things you want to achieve that are ambitious, qualitative, and actionable.
By defining our values and motivators first, our goals brainstorming is much more contextual and relevant to what we care about.
Spend 5 minutes to review your value and motivators
Spend 15 minutes to brainstorm goals, one goal per Post-it — remember ask yourself, “What do you really want to achieve?”
We are going for quantity NOT quality here, you’ll get a chance to refine them later. Use these prompts to help with brainstorming:
- Where do you see yourself in one, five, and ten years?
- If money or your current skills weren’t an issue, what would be your dream role?
- What are your interests?
Below is an example of how I related the items.
Step 4: Categorize these into 4 key areas: Professional, Personal, Health, and Relationships.
Decide on which goals make the cut and refine them into objectives
Objectives should be ambitious, qualitative, and actionable. You’re answering the question “where do I want to go?”.
Fill in the objectives and associate them with a category using the Growth OKRs spreadsheet template
The recommended categories are Professional, Personal, Health, and Relationships, however, feel free to use your own.
Fill in the values, and motivators to ensure they align with what you care about
Note: You might find that multiple values and motivators belong to more than one objective.
Step 5: Brainstorm key results by breaking down your goals into quantifiable and achievable chunks.
Now we’ve decide where we want to go, it’s time to think about how we’re going to get there.
Using each objective, brainstorm at least 5 ideas for key results for achieving them
Yet again, go for quantity NOT quality.
Key results must be quantifiable, achievable, lead to objective grading and be difficult, but not impossible. Often they are numerical, but they can also show if something is done or undone, so a binary 0 or 1. It answers the question “How do I get there?”.
Refine your key results, no more than 3–5 per objective
Pro-tip: ask yourself, “does this key result align with my value or motivators?”, if the answer is no, throw it out.
Step 6: Choose your focus and prioritize what’s going to be worked on in 2022 and setup a method for tracking your progress to keep yourself motivated.
Well done for making it to the final step. We’re nearly there!
Choose 2–3 top priority objectives that will be your focus in 2022, highlight the cell green on your spreadsheet
Decide on a method for tracking OR just use the spreadsheet
If you’re feeling lazy, use the spreadsheet you’ve been working off. These should be tracked daily, weekly, or monthly, depending on the key results.
Choose a tracking method that works for you. Popular methods include Trello, or something physical like a whiteboard. Here’s mine:
…and BOOM!
Goal setting is just the first step, you still need to add sprinkles of motivation throughout the year and focus on the most important things you want to achieve. Good luck and get working on those 2022 goals!
🔥 Bonus: Step 7: Create a roadmap [Updated]
A bonus step…hooray! You might of noticed another tab named roadmap. Use this simple format to allocate your attention to certain key results in a specific month. Roadmap tells you clearly: what needs doing, and when.
Paste your objectives and key results into the roadmap template
Add colour to the cells depending on your priorities, ask yourself, when should I work on this key results? is this key result dependant on others?
The Origin Story
UX Managers at Wizeline spend a lot of time thinking about our people. Helping them grow, reinforcing positive behaviours, and rethinking how to best work together.
This 6-step framework is born from our experiments with our direct reports. Originally designed to solve two problem :
“Ensure our people reach goals that really mean something to them”
“Provide guidance, direction, and setting goals for individuals without really knowing them”
We needed a simple framework that can be applied with actionable outputs.
Joel Monteon was the mastermind behind the concept. He read Kim Scott’s Radical Candor during a 30+ hour flight from Sydney to Guadalajara and distilled the idea of relating things we care about (life moments, values, and motivators) to goals and key results.
Rodrigo Partida and Christopher Nguyen contributed by adding elements from Google’s GROW framework and our 2019 OKRs planning.
And voilà! The result was an amalgamation of these techniques. Special thanks to the design team for contributions and their openness to experiment.
I would really appreciate any feedback, hacks, what’s worked, what hasn’t, or anything else that can be incorporated into this framework.
Thanks for reading!
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Chris is a self-taught product design leader, facilitator, and creator with a business degree. He’s passionate about org culture, design education, and everything UX. Formerly @ TINYpulse, Wizeline, and Ascend, where he held design leadership positions.
Want to work with Chris? Get in touch via his portfolio.
