Why do most of us fail to keep our New Year’s resolutions? Because we fail to create a system that holds us accountable. Motivation gets us started, systems keep us going. I think it’s similar in our work lives. If you set yourself a big hairy ambitious goal and never look at your progress for months, I don’t see you getting anywhere near…
How to create a system to hit your goals 📈
What has worked way better for me is to do two things:
Regularly review your progress
The first tip I would give is to break down that big goal into small steps. If you want something to grow tenfold in a year (10x baby! 🚀), it means you only have to grow it ~5% per week. Now your steps have just become a lot more manageable. Not only that, regular reviews will also make it easier to quickly correct course if your current approach isn’t working.Create accountability
The second tip is to make yourself accountable. Tell people who are important to you, or to your career, about your goals. We people are tribal animals, and we hate to let our tribe down.
Stack for maximum impact
Now what makes these two even more powerful is to stack the two together: Hold yourself accountable on a regular basis. You could for example host a weekly product review, where you review the performance of your product over the past week/
My system
Daily Slackbot with key stats
We have a dedicated metrics channel, where a robot posts our main stats every day. For each stat, the robot includes the % change compared to last week. It’s very easy to set up these Slackbots, especially with ChatGPT-4*. Having daily reporting allows you to quickly spot anomalies (it helped us find multiple bugs and usage patterns).Weekly review - goals and progress
Once a week we spend about 10 minutes discussing all of our main metrics with the team. Take the time to explain the mechanics of the business behind your product. You will be surprised by the quality of the ideas your team will share on how to improve. Just a few weeks ago we made a big improvement in download-to-paid conversion thanks to a smart idea on when to prompt our paywall.
How it works for us
My recent focus has been launching VEED’s mobile app. After getting our first downloads and making sure everything works well, We’re now focussed on making money with it. That’s why our main goal for this year is revenue-related. In turn, that goal is broken down into the factors that influence it. Think acquisition (how many people download the app), and conversion (how many people experience their first success moment).
Note of caution
For this process to work you need a few ingredients:
Good goals
Goals that are ambitious enough to motivate and lead to material impact, but realistic enough to be attainable. If you did not run much last year, it’s unlikely you can run at the Paris Olympics this summer. But it is possible to run a regular marathon.Honesty
This entire process only works if you are completely honest. Don’t allow yourself to make excuses for not hitting goals. Be crystal clear, even when it hurts - especially when it hurts! And try to understand the mechanics of why metrics fluctuate.
Now go and hit your goals!
This is a simple but powerful system to increase your chances of hitting your goals. It has worked for me in multiple products, teams, and companies. I hope it’s helpful for you as well! Good luck with all of your progress in this new year.
*How do I do it?
I debated if I was going to include a step-by-step guide here, I did write it so please send me a message if you want to know more!
What happened in Dutch tech? 🇳🇱
Not so much it seems. Pretty chill during the holiday period. One thing though: we have one last spot for the APC course. It’s starting on the 12th of February, enroll here!
Internet things I enjoyed 🤓
Midjourney art
Ishan envisions beautiful futures on his TwitterProduct - Channel fit
Evergreen article by Brain Balfour on how you should match your product and acquisition channels.
YouTube - the best learning resource in the world
It continues to blow my mind how easy it is to learn anything via YouTube. Last weekend I was trying a new kitesurfing trick, and the tutorials of Kitesurf College have been amazing (although I’m still crashing hard 😅)