Basecamp first launched when I was in college, and being completely unfamiliar with any project management workflow I thought: “this would be great for managing myself” so I set milestones and wrote entries for myself and project managed my life for a brief period. It makes life as boring as work.

These methods are meant for teams working towards a common objective, where anything extraneous to the OKRs is considered a distraction. This has its shortcomings (I’ve met way too many project managers who seem to be so absorbed by metrics they fail to see what is right in front of their noses). It’s most definitely useful is this context, but not in life.

Consider: the author has set himself to read 20 books per year. Suppose this is double of his standard. What he will do to fulfill his OKR? He’s not going to choose a difficult read such as Ulysses, or an existential crisis inducing book such as Crime and Punishment, he will go for what is more superficial and easier to read, because his goal is not to be transformed by what he reads, his goal is to read 20 books.

The crucial layer of meaning is lost when we project-manage ourselves. Life is more akin to a poem than it is to a project.