OKRs were invented for companies. Andy Grove built them at Intel in the 1970s because the semiconductor industry was moving too fast for annual goals to survive. John Doerr brought them to Google in 1999 and watched them spread across Silicon Valley. By 2020 every venture-backed startup, most public companies, and a substantial share of corporate functions were running on some version of the framework. The personal-productivity world has been slow to catch up. This is unfortunate, because the framework adapts cleanly to one person, and the one-person version is in some ways sharper than the corporate version.
This post is the adaptation. How to set 90-day goals using the OKR structure as a single individual rather than a team. Why the framework works better than open-ended quarterly planning. The three-objective constraint. The key-result discipline. And — because this is a planning tool, not a wishlist generator — how the resulting objectives connect down through your weekly review and daily focus sheet, all the way to today's three priorities.
What OKRs actually are
OKR stands for Objective and Key Results. The objective is the qualitative outcome you are pursuing: "Ship the new product line." "Get into the best shape of my life." "Stabilise the family finances." Objectives are written in plain language, are time-bound to the quarter, and are designed to be ambitious enough that you might not hit them. The key results are the measurable indicators that tell you whether the objective is being achieved. Three to five key results per objective. Each key result has a number attached.
The structure is deceptively simple. Objective: get into the best shape of my life. Key results: complete twelve strength sessions per month, hit 90kg bodyweight, achieve a 1.5× bodyweight deadlift, sleep 7+ hours on at least 80% of nights. The objective tells you what you're trying to do; the key results tell you whether you're doing it. By the end of the quarter you can score each key result objectively and produce a single percentage for the objective.
This is why OKRs work where vague goals fail. "Get fitter" is unfalsifiable. "Complete twelve strength sessions per month, hit 90kg, deadlift 1.5× bodyweight, sleep 7+ hours on 80% of nights" is testable. The first will drift; the second will land or fail clearly.
The three-objective limit
The single hardest discipline in OKR planning is the limit on how many objectives you set. The Intel and Google versions both used three to five objectives per quarter. For individuals, three is the maximum. Not five. Three.
The reason mirrors the daily priority limit (see the post on three priorities). With three objectives, each one gets meaningful attention in every weekly review. With five, the weekly review becomes triage rather than planning. With seven, the framework collapses into administrative theatre — you're documenting goals rather than advancing them.
The three objectives spread across the four life domains: work, body, capital, relationships. Most quarters you pick three of the four — the fourth is monitored but not actively prioritised. Rotate so no domain goes more than two quarters without explicit attention. This is what defends against the trap where work eats every other domain alive over the course of a year.
The key result test
Each objective needs three to five key results. The key results have to pass four tests, or they aren't real key results — they're just sub-goals dressed up in OKR language.
- Numerical. A key result without a number is not a key result. "Improve my fitness" is not a key result. "Achieve a 1.5× bodyweight deadlift" is. The number is what makes the result testable.
- Achievable but stretching. If you can confidently say at the start of the quarter that you'll hit the key result, it's too easy. If you can confidently say you won't, it's too hard. The Google standard is 70% — hit it 70% of the time and you're calibrated correctly.
- Outcome, not activity. "Read twelve books on negotiation" is an activity. "Successfully close three negotiations on terms I designed" is an outcome. Outcomes are harder to write but produce better OKRs. Activities are easy to write but tend to be theatre.
- Within your control. "Get promoted" depends on other people's decisions. "Submit a documented promotion case that includes three external recommendations" is within your control. Key results that depend on someone else's decision are wishes, not key results.
Most first-time OKRs fail one or two of these tests. That's fine — the first quarter is for learning the framework. By the third quarter your key results will be sharper.
The 90-Day Goal Planner — built around the OKR framework
The 90-Day Goal Planner is a sixteen-page workbook specifically structured for personal OKRs. Three objectives across four domains. Three to five key results per objective with explicit number fields. Weekly check-in pages for the thirteen weeks. End-of-quarter scoring section. Available standalone (£3.99). Inside the Groundwork OS, the OKRs link directly to your Weekly Review — your weekly intentions inherit from the objectives, and your daily priorities inherit from the weekly intentions. The cascade is live. £19.99 for the OS, £54.99 for the complete bundle with every format.
See the Groundwork OS →The weekly check-in
OKRs without weekly check-ins are decorative. The whole point of the framework is that it forces a regular touch-point between your daily work and your quarterly objectives. In the corporate version this happens in a team standup or a weekly leadership meeting. In the individual version it happens in your weekly review.
The check-in takes five minutes inside the weekly review. For each of the three objectives, ask: what did I move forward this week on this objective? If the answer is "nothing," that's important data. Either the objective isn't actually a priority (in which case formally drop it), or the week was hijacked by something else (in which case identify what and protect against it next week). The honesty of the weekly check-in is what makes the quarterly framework work — without it, the objectives drift out of focus and reappear three weeks before the deadline as panic.
Scoring at the end of the quarter
At the end of the thirteen weeks, you score each key result. The Google convention is a 0.0 to 1.0 scale — 1.0 means you hit the number exactly, 0.0 means no progress at all. Most key results land between 0.6 and 0.8. The objective's score is the average of its key results.
Three things matter about the scoring:
- Be honest. The point of scoring isn't to make yourself feel good; it's to produce data that improves next quarter's planning. A key result you scored 0.4 needs investigation, not papering over.
- Score before reflecting. Get the numbers down first. Then write the qualitative reflection. If you reflect first, the numbers get massaged to match the story.
- Use the scores as input to the next quarter. Objectives that consistently score below 0.5 need rethinking — either the targets are wrong or the approach is wrong. Objectives that consistently score 1.0 need stretching — they aren't ambitious enough.
What goes wrong
The three most common failure modes for personal OKRs:
Too many objectives. The temptation to add a fourth objective is always there. Don't. The framework breaks above three.
Key results that are really activities. "Run three times a week" is an activity. "Reduce 5K time by 90 seconds" is an outcome. Activity-based key results pass without producing the outcome you wanted; outcome-based key results force you to find the activities that actually work.
Skipping the weekly check-in. The check-in is where the framework lives or dies. Without it you have written goals; with it you have a planning system. The difference is the weekly five minutes.
The honest next step
If you're starting today, pick three objectives across three of the four domains. Write them down. For each, draft three to five key results — numerical, achievable but stretching, outcome-not-activity, within your control. Don't worry about getting them perfect the first time; the first quarter is for learning the framework.
The 90-Day Goal Planner is £3.99 standalone in any format. Combined with the 90-Day Debrief for the end of the quarter, that's £8 for the full quarterly framework. The complete Groundwork bundle at £54.99 includes both, plus the weekly review, daily focus sheet, and the entire 28-tool ecosystem. The Groundwork OS at £19.99 holds the OKRs in a connected Notion workspace where each objective links to the weekly review and the daily focus sheet automatically.
OKRs work for one person. The framework was built for companies but it adapts cleanly. Three objectives, twelve key results, thirteen weeks, one debrief. The smallest version of the framework that an industry-defining company would recognise. Now scaled down to one.