There is something that makes product management hard and good product managers rare. Jason Knight brilliantly summarized it in this tweet. Context-switching and zoom level.
Product management is a uniquely hard job. Why?
— Jason Knight (@onejasonknight) February 22, 2023
1 – Context-switching
You're bouncing between discussions with devs, marketing, customers & leadership, all day every day
2 – Zoom level
You're zooming between the bluest of blue sky visions & the smallest details constantly
It is unfortunately something that is hard to coach or teach. While neuroscientists generally agree with the notion that you pay a high price for constantly switching context and that the sheer volume of work can drive out any creativity that you need for high-level thinking, I’ve found a few handy tools in their toolbox.
Ruthlessly triage all daily issues with the help of heuristics
Paradoxically, the first advice about context switching and deep-diving is actually checking if this is something you should dive into.
Especially in high-growth companies you need to get used to the fact that a lot of things are constantly breaking. If you try to solve or even understand all issues to the fullest extent you will run out of mental capacity in no time. The solution for this is triaging.
The word „Triage“ goes back to the Napoleonic wars, where field doctors had to make decisions on the spot about which wounded soldiers to patch and treat, and which soldiers to leave to their fatal destiny. While the comparison to life and death decisions seems overly dramatic, it makes my point that less significant decisions can be made through triaging as well.
To triage issues, I quickly check three things:
- Does it move the needle?
This can be both ways. Does a bug impact my product to the extent that it will stop working? Or will it be only a minor annoyance? For an opportunity: Will this significantly impact goal achievement or is this mere cosmetics? - Am I the best and/or only person who can take care of this?
Especially as I occasionally tend to the random act of heroism, am I honestly the best or only person to handle this? It is absolutely fair to ask colleagues to take over or step up if possible. - Is this urgent?
Urgent is sometimes misrepresented as things that have an immediate impact. But urgency should also include the long-term impact of delaying something right now. From that perspective, technical debt or architectural challenges become urgent before it causes immediate issues, in the moment we realize that postponing that decision will make the solution much more expensive in the future. The same goes for opportunities. Is there only a little time window when the iron is hot?
With an increasing volume of issues crying for my attention the demand to tick every box with „yes“ rises as well.
Take smart notes and dump your brain into tools
In a set of interesting studies, the Lithuanian-Soviet psychologist Bluma Zeigarnik found that interrupted or unfinished tasks continue to take up mental space, even when switching contexts. The good thing is, that this effect helps us to quickly recall the „unfinished“ tasks and the context. The bad thing: It takes up mental space and, similar to software running in the background that slows your computer, also hinders you from bringing your A-game to the next topic. Personally, I noticed that the level of lingering projects and to-dos can snowball into an avalanche of stress.
The tools that help me to avoid a constant build-up are my task manager (Todoist) and my notes system (Evernote & Paper personally, Confluence and Google Docs in the collaborative company setting). The actual software of your choice doesn’t really matter. It is much more important to nurture the habit of getting everything out of your brain into a reliable system where you can retrieve the information on demand.
Two books that helped me very much are the classic „Getting things done“ by David Allen and the rather new „Building a second brain“ by Tiago Forte. Both books stress the importance of gaining clarity and peace of mind simply by writing things down and saving them in a retrievable system.
The simple act of writing itself will simultaneously help you to dive deeper into a topic and to identify the little details and the holes in your current concepts. The resulting good documentation will also help you to zoom back into the topic if it should emerge months later or simply pull up the necessary context info for the next meeting. As a side note: Depending on your preference any type of Miro board or mind map could do the job as well for you. As long as it is permanent and you can retrieve the info on demand.
On a higher level, these systems give me also clarity about the big picture. They force me to define the next steps for each big initiative and make procrastination painfully visible.
Go deep on deep work
Whether you need to get into the details of a PRD or develop your pitch for next quarter’s product strategy: Block some time for uninterrupted deep work. Uninterrupted for me means turning on a little app called freedom to make sure that absolutely no Slack message can lure me to jump on the latest trend in the tech-issues channel. It’s amazing what you can get done in an hour of uninterrupted deep work.
Take care of yourself
I know this sounds surprisingly new-age coming from me, but scientific studies have shown the positive effect of sleep, exercise, and recreational breaks on your mental performance and the severely negative and long-term impact if you lack these.
Use templates and frameworks wherever possible
There is a good reason why the PM community likes templates and cookie-cutter frameworks wherever possible. Even though I am a contrarian and skeptic when it comes to blindly following any framework, especially the small mundane tasks of product management can become much more efficient when using templates. My one on ones are always structured the same way. I have a snippet for product announcements and templates for PRDs, Jira Tickets and Roadmap items. I change them wherever needed but I am much more efficient filling in the gaps than trying to remember my „proven“ structure every time again.