How to Use Sprint to Achieve your Goals
The important things that I learned during founding my startup are Sprint. This term popularized by Jake Knapp that refers to how to get things done in a strict deadline.
Sprint helps the founder get things done faster on a consistent basis. And the theory is simple. First is set up the sprint's goals. Second, you make up the backlog; a group of the small task to achieve the goals.
Even though Sprint usually uses for working in teams level, but principally it also available in personal use. And base on my experience it works and helps me achieve my personal goals. Here I share to you make the sprint.
#1Setting Goals and key result
Good goals always have these things. Specific goals, time-bound, and success indicators. Hence, when you set a goal you must set a specific purpose first and the deadline when the goal must be achieved. The last is determined the metrics to know whether your success and failure.
This goal method actually adopted from the Objective Key Result (OKR) model that popularized by google. They use OKR to achieve their most ambitious goals. And this method also good to use for personal purposes.
Let’s have to give a simple example of how to set a goal. The scenario seems like this: You want to improve your learning habits by reading personal development books. And here are your goals:
Finishing reading 4 books of personal development at the end of September this year with the key result:
1.Reading whole page of each books.
From the goal stated above, you know that you should read 4 personal books. The end of September this year is your deadline. While reading the whole page of each book you read is the metrics of success rate.
The metrics of success help you to measure the success rate you have. If you are able to finish reading the whole book, it means your success rate is 100%. Meanwhile, if you just finish half of it your success is only 50%.
#2 Setting the Sprints Goals
After setting the next is planning the sprint. But, what sprint is?
Sprint in a working context means how we make a working plan that should finish is a strict deadline. For instance, your goals are reading four books in four months. So your sprint goals look like this:
Sprint goals 1: Finishing reading Atomic Habit book in March
Sprint goals 2: Finishing Grit book in April
Sprint goal 3: Finishing Mindset book in Mei
Sprint goal 4: Finishing Checklist Manifesto in June
It seems simple right? Yes, sprint is actually simple planning. But, the intensity on deadline. You must obey the deadline strictly. When you failed to finish a book in a month, you are forbidden to move reading another book.
#3 Setting the backlogs
The backlog means small tasks or activities to achieve the sprint goals. Here is the time you should think in details. You must be documented each task one by one. The more details you write down the task, it will help you work efficiently and easier to track.
Because the hard things of management are how to measure the activities. The backlogs method helping you track the work. Then, at the end of the work will easy to evaluate or doing retrospectives.
Making backlog is actually simple. Here I will show you how to make it.
OKR: Finishing reading 4 books of personal development at the end of September this year with the key result: Reading the whole page of each book.
Sprint goal 1: Finishing reading Atomic Habit book in March by making time 30 minutes each day.
Backlog: First 30 minutes on Monday, Second 30 minutes on Tuesday, Third 30 minutes on Wednesday and so on.
To make a backlog I recommend you using Wunderlist or Trello apps. These apps are simple to use and help you track your backlog.
