The Productologist

At the end of each calendar year, I spend a bit of time cleaning house (figuratively, and sometimes literally). I look at the things that I have accomplished (or not), the tools that I have used (or not) and formulate a plan for the coming year.

This year, I realized that I was not spending enough time reading. Not reading for pleasure, but for professional and career growth. As a Product Manager, the majority of my time is spent on 3 things:

1. Meetings
2. Customer/Prospect Calls
3. Product Documentation (MRDs, PRDs, Sales training, product evangelization, status reports, etc)

I was in a meeting a few days ago where we were discussing the schedule for the upcoming release of my product. To my knowledge, everyone in the room already knew what the schedule was, but we have an internal wiki that we use to track release dates and that page had TBD in several slots, hence the meeting. What was really driving the meeting was that members of the exec team had different dates in their heads and when this came to light, there was an immediate scramble to get everything reconciled.

On my work calendar, I have the first 30 minutes of each morning blocked off so that I can review the tasks for the day and read any email and listen to voicemails that came in overnight. I do this because I know that it will help me stay focused on what needs my attention most. Unfortunately, this level of organization doesn’t fit well with what my job requires.

Most mornings, I get into the office 20-30 minutes before my scheduled review block. I regularly do the one or more of the following things: