Hey friends,

Last week: We explored the idea of 'balance' (in particular the nonsense concept 'work-life balance). Read this here.

This week: How to design a successful relationship by using OKRs (stay with me here).

This week is Valentine's Day. Ahhh. Personally, I couldn't give a damn about any of these made up holidays, but it always holds a dear place in my heart as the day I officially became an entrepreneur.

On February 14, 2013, like any hopeless romantic single man does, I registered my first 'startup'.

It failed, but I grew so much and wouldn't change the experience. It was also the period of my life where I met my wife, and this week, we're going to focus on something quite different.

Objectives and Key Results (OKRs)…for relationships (PS We've co-designed a free visual template at the bottom for you to download and try with your partner).

Before you ask yourself — who the hell is Dan to lecture me on this… Well, according to the internet, I think you'll find I am currently 50% of the world's leading experts, my wife being the other 50%…so before we get into it, I'll explain.

BTW if you can't be bothered with words this week, scroll down for the epic visual template I designed just for you, to make it simple.

Successful Marriages…in Lockdown

We married in 2018, honeymooned in Japan in 2019, and everything was great, until lockdown of 2020. Months of living in a flat in Camden Town tested our patience, as I'm sure it did with many. In August, when lockdown lifted, we went to Portugal for a month, but we were still being quite ratty.

One day, instead of bickering, I suggested we go for a long walk and instead of complaining about yesterday's issue/behaviour/problem, we focused the conversation on where we wanted our marriage to go. Focusing entirely on the future, not the past. I have no shame in divorce, and would not stay married to someone I argue regularly with, fortunately, we both intend on having a very successful marriage, and think that can be designed intentionally. So, we discussed frameworks we had both come across in business that provided clarity, and great results, and this is where OKRs came in.

OKRs 101

Too much detail here feels pointless, go to what matters to learn in detail, but the high level is — you state an Objective (which should be broad and aspirational) and then your Key Results (which should be specific, measurable and time bound), tasks that, if completed, mean you achieve the objective. Then your key results can themselves turn into objectives you cascade down further. Instead of a bunch of analogies to teach you, I'll share the exact example of how we applied this, below. So here we go….

Relationship OKRs

We defined a process that we've been practising together every single day, week, month and now 4 years on — regularly updating and improving it. At the time, we created some templates and processes for ourselves that I tweeted about, and none other than John Doerr, the person who created OKRs, wrote the handbook 'Measure What Matters' and implemented them in some of the world's most successful companies (Intel, Amazon, Google, etc), got in touch to ask if we would develop these principles officially for 'What Matters Org' — the official OKR non-profit company. The geek in us was very excited — if you google' relationship OKRs' — we're up top on their official site.

Designing A Successful Relationship

So, that's the backstory, the credibility flex — I'm coming to you as the world's pre-eminent (maybe only) man on the topic, so listen up. It all begins with a dream, like any great entrepreneur will tell you — it's all about vision, baby.

In professional OKR business world we call this a 'North Star Metric' but, whatever, same.

So, what's your vision for your marriage? Well, it's probably pretty similar to ours, to be honest;

Objective: “To have a healthy and long-lasting marriage,” we crafted this accompanying summary statement: “To have a fulfilling partnership that results in the longevity of our marriage, supporting our minds, bodies, and souls.

We added 'summary statements next to all our sections, to remind us the purpose of what we're aiming for — and because as you can see in this example — defining 'healthy' into 'mind, body and soul' — gives us a steer for the next level down; the Key Results (or 'KRs').

Our OKRs:

KR1: Mind — Become the most engaged communicators with one another — ever

KR2: Body — Have the healthiest relationship with each other’s bodies possible

KR3: Soul — Have deeply nourished souls

As you can see — this still sounds very fluffy — but we defined these broadly so we could then turn these Key Results into Objectives, and more specific key results like these:

KR 1 MIND: Achieving at least 36 weekly engaged meaningful communications with one another.
​Summary: These relate to activities that we could do together or separately, that add value to the relationship from a mental perspective. It could be journaling, reading, sharing knowledge, meditating, or just having independent space to re-energise to better contribute to the relationship.

KR 2 BODY: Achieve at least 32 weekly activities that contribute to the growth of our bodies.
​Summary: This relates to a combination of physical movement, sexual connection, intimacy, and health that will collectively help us maintain our bodies in a positive and meaningful way

KR 3 SOUL: Achieve at least 10 weekly activities that nourish our souls.
​Summary: This relates to a combination of activities that fulfil us both emotionally and spiritually. It could be time spent with one another indulging in a shared pastime, having our favourite meals, seeing our favourite people, working on projects, or contributing to our communities or loved ones in a meaningful way.

Once these were established, we turned them into personal OKRs. Here are some examples so you can see how that might work:

O1: MIND = Become the most engaged communicators with one another — ever
​KR3: Each digest at least 1 new fact/story and share it with one another every day

O2: BODY = Have the healthiest relationship with each other’s bodies possible
​KR1: Each complete at least 5 forms of exercise per week

O3: SOUL = Have deeply nourished souls
​KR1: Do 1 dinner every week (at our dining table) with no phones allowed

Tracking and Progress

We started tracking it in a journal every night alongside our gratitude practice so it became a habit tracker of sorts and eventually moved to WhatsApp — where we have a simple template we use.

Every month we tally it up and put it in our OKR tracker, and every year we do a proper discussion and reflection on our relationship using objective facts and data as opposed to emotions because there's no hiding behind facts.

It encourages a much more honest, direct, and real conversation than simply “I feel like you always x”. If one of us is seriously lagging on a metric — it's time to seriously discuss why & it's always led to a great conversation.

We've since had a daughter, which meant we changed around quite a lot, but still maintained the practice overall and right now, years on, it's working for us better than ever.

Common Criticisms/FAQs

1. Q: Are you really intimate if you are just ticking off a metric? ​
   A: Yes and no. But on days we forget intimacy entirely, but now we will fill it in, we make the effort. Is that a bad thing? We don't actually think so.
2. Q: How do you make the time, this sounds like it took forever.​
   A: It did take ages at first. It speeds up over time. Now the daily tracking is 2 minutes before bed on our WhatsApp template and 30 minutes a month putting data into the sheet — and a few hours at the end of the year reflecting — which we split this year over a 2-week period — an hour or 2 a night every few nights, to not make it too intense.
3. Q: What do you do if you've picked the wrong stuff?
   ​A: Just like anything in business, you should discuss it head on and have adult conversations about either the intention of the relationship or the error of judgement/dishonesty in what you picked in the first place.
4. Q: Are you a boring fucking robot who needs this sh*t instead of being normal and just working it out?
   ​Not last time I checked 🤖 but if the intention is that marriage is for life, you should genuinely treat it as more important than your business - most of those only last a few years and get all our attention, it's illogical.
   ​

In Summary: Measure What Matters

And your most important relationship — whatever that may be, matters.

That was a lot of information, right? Well, here are two resources for you.

1. A Google sheet template for you to copy and paste for your OKRs (we use this ourselves)
2. Maybe you're a visual learner, so here's a PDF to download to try at home with your partner.

To Your Success (full relationships)

For what it's worth, my wife and I have done relationship therapy and are about to try relationship coaching (proactively) but to be honest we haven't really come across a more high value, impact framework than this… yet.

If we turned this into a digital product — recorded some videos, provided some worksheets, took you through the process and helped you implement relationship OKRs in your key relationships — is that something you'd pay for? If yes, hit reply, let me know, and how much you'd pay/something like that would be worth to you (context — relationship therapy/coaching is £100 — £150 per hour).

If there's demand, I'll nag my wife to join me in making something brilliant to help you have the most successful relationships ever — but like all successful entrepreneurs, it all starts with demand, so let me know.

Here's to our success,

Dan
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