Product Manage Your Life: Why Should You Do It, and How Do You Do It?

Product Manage Your Life: Why Should You Do It, and How Do You Do It?

This is the first in a series of articles about applying product management principles to your life. As a consultant, I work with a lot of people who are so proficient at using these principles in their work, but their lives are a hot mess. Sometimes my life is a hot mess, too! But by incorporating principles that product managers use, we can reduce the amount of mess and increase our peace, joy, and satisfaction!

This first article will give you an introduction to the concept of using these product management principles in your life. We’ll run through a lightweight four-step process that can help you make any change you want in life. Then in subsequent articles we’ll dive deeper into each of the four steps, along with other relevant subjects. I will craft all the articles in this series to be about a five-minute read. I know you’re busy! I hope you'll read a few, take away what you need, and leave the rest!

As always, reach out to me over social media or email if you’d like to chat or have topic suggestions!

What Does it Mean to Product Manage Your Life?

In software development, a product manager focuses on the problem that software is aiming solve. Then the product manager focuses on the right way to solve it, measuring whether it's working, and making sure it's continuing to evolve to meet new problems that arise. Daily a product manager does a bunch of other things too. Product management is actually a really hard job that few people do very well. But the problem and the customer should be at the center of it all.

When it comes to product managing your life, you are your customer. And you know your problems better than anyone else. Unhappy with your job? Unhappy with a relationship? Want to develop a skill? You can make a change. Product management can help you craft a plan, take small steps, measure your improvement, and pivot if what you're trying isn't working.

The Key Components of Product Managing Your Life

Getting started with this process is lightweight and you can do it right now. There are four basic steps, you can take a pass at them and then continue to do them over time, revising them as you go.

Understand Your Problem Space

What is going on in your life that you'd like to change? Start with one thing. What's bothering you the most? What's the thing that you can't stop thinking about, the thing that keeps you up at night? Let's start with that. It may not be the thing that everyone else thinks you should focus on, and that's perfectly fine. It should be the thing that you want to focus on. You are your customer in this scenario, not everyone else. This is the time you get to be completely selfish and focus on solving your own problems, not the problems of everyone else in your world. So, pick your problem and get really clear on it.

We call this writing our problem statement, but it is only for you, so write it in a way that works for you. The one thing it needs to be is specific. A problem statement such as "Be less cluttered" isn't going to help you much. A better version of that problem statement would be "Hold on to less stuff so that I create more space". Be specific.

Know Your Why

Why does your problem matter to you? Why do you want to make a change? How will your life improve if you make this change? If you can’t articulate why you want to make a change, it’s going to be very hard to make the change stick.

Measure What Matters

How can you measure your change? This can be so hard! We struggle with this in the business world constantly. But pick something that you can measure. For our clutter example, a potential measure may be empty cabinets or drawers – can you get to just one empty drawer? Try to get creative and pick just one thing to start measuring. If you don't have a measure you won't know if your changes are working, so identify at least one measure.

Test and Iterate

This is my favorite part - try something and if it doesn't work try something else. This entire process is meant to be lightweight and low investment. If something doesn't work, it's ok! Try something else! Keep trying until you find something that works. Find an easy way to keep track of what you've tried so you don't repeat it. Write a list, make a spreadsheet, whatever is natural for you.

So often we get paralyzed by the fear of trying because we’re worried about failing. This happens both in the business world and in our personal life. Please give yourself permission to try, and to try again if the first try doesn’t work!

Next Time

I promised I’d keep these articles short! Next time we’ll dive deeper into understanding your problem space. How can you keep from getting overwhelmed when you have a bunch of things you’d like to change? How can you decide what to work on first? I definitely have some ideas for you on that topic!

This article was original published on 1/13/2020.

Product Manage Your Life: Tracking Your Opportunities and Prioritizing Them

This is the second article in a series about applying product management principles to your life. My goal with this series is to help you incorporate principles that product managers use to reduce the amount of chaos you experience in your day to day while increasing your peace, joy, and satisfaction along the way!

The first article gave you an introduction to the concept of using product management principles in your life. This second article will focus on how to avoid overwhelm when you realize how many opportunities you have in your problem space, along with quick tips for tracking and prioritizing those opportunities. As I mentioned in the first article, I'll craft all the articles in this series to take only about five minutes to read. I know you’re busy! I hope you'll read a few, take away what you need, and leave the rest.

As always, reach out to me over social media or email if you’d like to chat or have topic suggestions!

How to Minimize Overwhelm

I have the benefit of talking to many different people over a month. I talk to people at my company, at different clients, sometimes I speak at colleges or industry groups. Occasionally I even get the opportunity to socialize with friends. One thing that is consistent among all these groups is a feeling of overwhelm. It's so easy to get overwhelmed with life, no matter what stage of life we're at. It's natural, and there's nothing to be ashamed or embarrassed about there. But one consequence of overwhelm is that it can sometimes cause people to become stuck. The overwhelm becomes so strong and scary that sometimes we become scared to make any change at all.

If you feel stuck, or you just feel plain overwhelmed, know that you can work your way through it. I've felt that way more times than I can even recall. The first step I suggest is a brain dump. Make a list of all the things on your mind. In this article, we're assuming you've already worked through your problem space (if not, please see the first article in this series). For this exercise focus on your opportunities to address that problem. Don't worry about how many opportunities you have, because we'll prioritize them later.

Ways to Track Your Opportunities

There are many ways you can track your list once you've made it. Are you a pen and paper person, or do you like to keep your lists digitally? I'm a fan of Trello, because it syncs across all my devices and I get satisfaction from moving my opportunity cards to a new column when I'm done with them. It's a lot like crossing them off a paper list. The important thing is to find a way to track them that works for you and stick with it.

You want a tracking system that you'll use consistently. As you uncover new opportunities, add them to the list in real-time. Don't keep them in your brain! That takes up mental space and part of what we're trying to do by writing them down is to free up your mental space for more important work. The more threads you keep open in your brain, even if you're not actively thinking about them, the less power your brain has available for all the other important work it needs to do for you.

One (Very) Quick Way to Prioritize Your Opportunities

Once you have a list of your opportunities, you should prioritize it so you can start with the highest priority items. Since you're going to be adding to the list regularly, that means that you'll have to re-prioritize regularly too. I like to prioritize my list weekly. I like to do that as part of my Sunday evening prep work for the coming week. It's part of the routine that helps me feel prepared to start the week strong. You should figure out the cadence that makes sense for you based on how often you're adding items to your list.

Because I like to keep this entire Product Manage Your Life process as simple as possible, my favorite prioritization tool is a simple 2x2 matrix. I put effort into the x-axis and value on the y-axis and I plot my opportunities into the four quadrants. I've included an example below. You can see in red my priority order based on plotting my sample opportunities on the effort/value matrix. This is a very quick way to enable value-based decision making. If you spend more than about thirty seconds thinking about each opportunity, you're overthinking it. This is meant to be quick and lightweight! If you did it wrong, adjust it later. The most important thing is to get started.

AN EXAMPLE OF A VERY SIMPLE PRIORITIZATION TOOL.

Next Time

Next time we’ll dive a little deeper into measuring what matters. How do you know if what you're doing is working? How can you put quantitative measures in place for your personal life? Should you even do that, or is that just weird? Those topics in the next edition of Product Manage Your Life!

This article was original published on 1/27/2020.

Product Manage Your Life: Measure What Matters

This is the third article in a series about applying product management principles to your life. My goal with this series is to help you incorporate principles that product managers use to reduce the amount of chaos you experience in your day to day while increasing your peace, joy, and satisfaction along the way!

The first article gave you an introduction to the concept of using product management principles in your life. The second article focused on how to avoid overwhelm when you realize how many opportunities you have in your problem space, along with quick tips for tracking and prioritizing those opportunities. I'm crafting all the articles in this series to take only about five minutes to read. I know you’re busy! I hope you'll read a few, take away what you need, and leave the rest.

As always, reach out to me over social media or email if you’d like to chat or have topic suggestions!

What Does it Mean to Measure What Matters? 

When product managers release software, we are very interested in measuring how users are interacting with it. Are they using it in the ways we expected, do they enjoy using it, are they quitting in the middle of using it, and other things like that. So before we release software we normally know what we'll be measuring. Sometimes the measures change based on what we find out, but we normally have a pretty good idea of what matters most and we start out measuring it. 

In our personal lives, we can take a similar approach. If you've read the first two articles in this series, you already know the basics and have a good idea of what your opportunities look like. So now it's time to figure out how to measure change so you can identify what's working. 

How Do We Know if What We're Doing is Working?

If you want to know if what you're doing is working, you need to figure out how to measure it. A couple points to consider when figuring out your measurement: 

·      Keep it simple. The simplest measurement is often the most effective. I suggest thinking of all the ways you could measure your progress, and then picking the simplest one as your starting measure. If it doesn't work, you can always try one of the others off your list. Measuring your progress shouldn't take any more time or effort than necessary - you want to save that time and effort for work towards your actual goal, not measurement! 

·      Make it easy to measure. There are probably a handful of different ways you could measure your progress, so again - pick the easiest to start. I'll say it again - don't spend any more time or effort on measuring than necessary. 

·      Align it to your goal. If your measurement doesn't align with your goal, does it even matter? Your measurement should provide you confirmation that your work is moving you in the direction you want to go. So align your measurement with your goal to make sure you're moving in the right direction. 

What Kind of Quantitative Measures Can I Use in My Personal Life?

We measure things in our personal lives all the time. We mark days on the calendar, we look at the number of emails in our inbox, we look at our weight on the scale. So marking progress towards our goals is not much different. Your measurement will vary based on what you're working towards, but here are a few suggestions.

· Trying to make more time for personal development or self-care? Count how many of those activities you complete, or how much time you spend on those activities, over a week or a month. 

· Want to spend more quality time with your family? Count how many family meals or family meetings you have in a month. 

· Want to read more books? Count them. 

· Want to hit the gym more? Count the number of consecutive days you stay on your plan (not every day has to be a gym day on your plan and that still counts - just stick with your plan!). 

What About Qualitative Information?

Qualitative information is incredibly important to consider when measuring your progress. Let's say you're working on spending more quality time with your family. Ask your family if they think you're spending more quality time with them! Their feedback is really important qualitative data. Not all data has to have a number put to it. Sometimes the most important data we receive is anecdotal. 

Is Measuring My Personal Life Weird?

When I talk with people in real life about this topic, inevitably this question comes up. For some reason, we think putting numbers around our personal goals feels weird. Like I mentioned earlier in the article, we already to it for all sorts of things. So I don't think it's a stretch to measure our progress, but I understand it might feel uncomfortable to start.

Try it out and see how you like it. See if it helps you. Maybe after you try it for a week or two it won't feel so uncomfortable - you won't know unless you try. The biggest benefit of measuring is knowing that you're headed in the right direction, and being able to make small changes to ensure that eventually, you'll meet your goals. 

Next Time

What can you do when you've tried your hardest and things still just haven't worked out the way you want? You didn't get the job, the software release failed, the marriage failed, you didn't pass the class, pick your disappointment. Next time I'll talk about how to deal with disappointment and recover well. I have plenty of personal examples to pull from, so it should be a fun one! Stay tuned! 

This article was original published on 2/17/2020.