Slides Chris Butler recently used in his discussion w/ mentees of The Product Mentor. Synopsis: All product managers need to link the high-level challenge they are solving with the day-to-day. How do you keep them connected and in sync when there are different disciplines and stakeholders involved on each level? During this talk, we will review the process and method by which you align the three key components of product planning. The Product Mentor is a program designed to pair Product Mentors and Mentees from around the World, across all industries, from start-up to enterprise, guided by the fundamental goals…Better Decisions. Better Products. Better Product People. Throughout the program, each mentor leads a conversation in an area of their expertise that is live streamed and available to both mentee and the broader product community. http://TheProductMentor.com

1. How to stay productive and find time
to do deep work as a PM
Shobhit Chugh

3. Inspired from Prof. Sawhney, Kellogg School of management
Voice of the customer
General Manager
Manage the product as
a business
Orchestrator

4. You need “deep work” time to be successful
Activities performed in a state of distraction-free
concentration that push your cognitive capabilities to their
limits

5. The activities where deep work applies
1. Product strategy: defining and refining. If your strategy is wrong or unclear to
your team then any decision they make has the potential to be wrong.
2. Expressing and clarifying the vision in a way that makes sense
3. Processing and acting on user feedback. This takes time; if you spend time on
user feedback you might notice themes that are not easy apparent, root causes that
might not have been clear before.
4. Thinking deeply about upcoming work (e.g., clarifying and adding meaning to
user stories)
5. Preparing for meetings
https://productcoalition.com/product-managers-lets-embrace-deep-work-fae03061d6d4

6. The three things you MUST do
1. Reduce the time you spend as orchestrator
2. Persuade your organization why the other parts
are crucial
3. Reconfigure your schedule to enable deep work

7. Why do you spend so much time as an
orchestrator?
1. Immediate results
2. Lack of Clarity on actual goals

8. How to reduce this time?
1. Get clear on what your goals are
2. Do a calendar audit

9. Get your goals clear
https://productcoalition.com/how-i-stay-productive-as-a-product-manager-3115ae27d3d0

10. Calendar audit: questions to ask
● Pareto principle: what 20% of activities are causing you to spend 80% of your
time?
● Reduce over-optimization: Do you have a perfectly groomed backlog with 386
activities in perfect priority order?
● Activities which kinda need you but not really most of the time

11. Audit your calendar

12. You can be 40% more productive by dropping
40% of things off your schedule
Constant email checks
Meetings where you show up
just to show up
Netflix episode 7 for the day
Team standup (WHAT!!)
Meetings that are not
meaningful
Company all hands (hey, what
did I miss)......

13. One last thing

14. The three things you MUST do
1. Reduce the time you spend as orchestrator
2. Persuade your organization why the other parts
are crucial
3. Reconfigure your schedule to enable deep work

16. How to persuade?
Show them the win…….
And then tell them how much time and effort it
takes

17. The three things you MUST do
1. Reduce the time you spend as orchestrator
2. Persuade your organization why the other parts
are crucial
3. Reconfigure your schedule to enable deep work

18. Maker’s schedule, Manager’s schedule
http://www.paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html
For someone on the maker's
schedule, having a meeting is
like throwing an exception. It
doesn't merely cause you to
switch from one task to another;
it changes the mode in which
you work.

19. My schedule
T WM R F
Manager
Manager Manager Manager
Manager
Maker
Maker Maker

20. Don’t think what to do next during the day
http://www.calnewport.com/blog/2015/09/29/deep-
habits-three-recent-daily-plans/

21. Two rejuvenation breaks
Photo by Jared Rice
on Unsplash
Photo by João Silas on Unsplash Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

23. Abstract
As product managers, we sometimes tend to do what is easy to do in the moment,
rather than what really matters. But most of our high value work is concentrated in
a few areas: thinking about product vision and strategy, piecing together various
forms of input to figure out priorities, looking at product from different angles,
preparing for major meetings to make sure they are productive. In this talk,
Shobhit talks about how to increase your productivity and find time to do this high
value deep work so that you are contributing as much as possible as a Product
Manager, while moving faster and staying sane