PRODUCTIVE Day in the Life of a Product Manager working in TECH
Summary
TLDRIn this video, Parker, a product manager, takes viewers through his day during the COVID-19 pandemic. He shares his morning routine, discusses the importance of tackling the most challenging task first, and emphasizes the value of communication with his engineering team. Parker also highlights the significance of time management techniques like the Pomodoro and time boxing. He addresses negative reviews by turning critics into brand advocates and showcases his design process using Figma for a potential partnership. The video offers insights into the life of a PM, balancing strategic planning with creative problem-solving.
Takeaways
- 😀 Parker is a product manager who creates apps and websites and shares his daily life during COVID-19.
- 🕒 He starts his day around 7 AM, focusing on the most important tasks first, which he refers to as 'eating the frog'.
- ☕ Parker emphasizes the importance of hydration and taking vitamins before having coffee in the morning.
- 📝 He spends time journaling and brainstorming, which leads to a new video idea about using Rome Research templates.
- 🔗 Parker mentions the value of a quick video to explain features, showing his enthusiasm for sharing knowledge.
- 🤝 He discusses the importance of building strong relationships with his engineering team, including remote engineers.
- 🗓 Parker uses Asana for project management and emphasizes clear communication with different departments about project priorities.
- 📊 He conducts metric analysis using tools like Amplitude, Google Analytics, and Power BI to measure the impact of new features.
- ⏱ Parker advocates for time management techniques like the Pomodoro Technique and time boxing to stay focused and efficient.
- 💬 He addresses negative reviews constructively, aiming to turn critics into brand advocates by being responsive and accommodating.
- 🎨 Parker jumps into design work using Figma when the designer is out, highlighting the versatility required of a product manager.
- 📝 He discusses the process of creating a product requirement document (PRD) and the importance of clear communication with designers.
Q & A
What is the profession of the speaker in the video?
-The speaker is a product manager working in tech, responsible for making apps and websites.
What is the first task the speaker mentions doing after starting their day?
-The first task mentioned by the speaker is 'eating the frog,' which means doing the most important task on their mind first thing in the morning.
What is the significance of having a huge bottle of water before coffee according to the speaker?
-The speaker emphasizes drinking a large bottle of water before coffee because coffee is a diuretic and can lead to dehydration.
What does the speaker do after receiving an email from the founder of Rome Research?
-The speaker decides to make a quick video explaining how they use the new feature mentioned in the email from the founder of Rome Research.
What is the role of the engineering meeting at 10 AM according to the speaker?
-The engineering meeting serves as a kickoff to discuss and prioritize what will be worked on for the remainder of the week.
How does the speaker describe their team size and structure?
-The speaker describes their team as tiny, with three engineers on-site (John, Mark, and Kale) and a few engineers off-site.
What is the speaker's approach to handling negative reviews on their new app?
-The speaker takes a positive approach by responding kindly, agreeing with the feedback, offering credits, and making personal efforts to fix the issues.
What time management technique does the speaker find helpful for their work?
-The speaker finds the Pomodoro technique and time boxing helpful for managing their work effectively.
What is the speaker's strategy for turning negative feedback into positive outcomes?
-The speaker aims to 'kill them with kindness' by empathizing with the users, agreeing with their points, and showing personal effort to resolve their issues.
What design tool does the speaker use for creating mock-ups and specs?
-The speaker uses Figma for creating mock-ups and specs, rather than Photoshop.
How does the speaker approach problem-solving in product management?
-The speaker starts by writing and living in the problem space, then moves on to designing solutions and collaborating with designers and engineers to implement them.
Outlines
😀 Morning Routine and Product Management Tasks
Parker, a product manager in tech, starts his day with a discussion with his friend and engineer Kale. He outlines his daily routine, which includes checking emails, planning, and research tasks. Despite being on Christmas break, Parker finds himself occasionally checking his inbox. He emphasizes the importance of tackling the most challenging task first thing in the morning, a strategy known as 'eating the frog.' After completing this task, he gears up for a meeting with the engineering team, highlighting the importance of staying hydrated and taking vitamins. Parker also shares his excitement about a new feature from Rome Research and his plan to create a video explaining its use. The summary ends with Parker preparing for an engineering meeting, emphasizing the value of personal connections with his team members.
🔍 A Day in the Life of a Product Manager
This paragraph delves into Parker's day-to-day activities as a product manager. He discusses the kickoff meeting with his engineering team, emphasizing the importance of setting clear priorities for the week, especially given the short workweek due to the holidays. Parker also talks about the necessity of communicating effectively with other departments to ensure everyone is aligned on the project's direction. He then moves on to discuss his approach to metric analysis, using various tools to assess the impact of product features on user behavior and revenue. Parker also mentions his use of time management techniques like the Pomodoro Technique and time boxing to stay productive. The paragraph concludes with Parker responding to negative reviews on a new app, adopting a positive and empathetic approach to turn critics into brand advocates. Additionally, he touches on his role in designing mock-ups for a potential partnership, showcasing his versatility in product management.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡Product Manager
💡Engineering Meeting
💡Rome Research
💡Eating the Frog
💡Pomodoro Technique
💡Time Boxing
💡Amplitude
💡Google Analytics
💡Power BI
💡PRD (Product Requirement Document)
💡Multi-Menu Support
Highlights
Introduction to the daily life of a product manager during COVID-19.
The importance of staying away from work emails during breaks but checking in occasionally.
Using the 'eat the frog' technique to tackle the most pressing task first thing in the morning.
The necessity of staying hydrated with water before consuming coffee.
Incorporating journaling to generate new video ideas and staying organized.
Engaging with the founder of Rome Research and exploring new features.
Preparing for and conducting engineering meetings to discuss weekly work plans.
Building friendships with team members and the value of personal connections in a remote work environment.
The significance of clear communication across different departments in product management.
Utilizing tools like Asana for task management and coordination.
Analyzing metrics using various tools to assess the impact of product features on business outcomes.
The Pomodoro Technique and Time Boxing as effective time management strategies.
Addressing negative app reviews by turning critics into brand advocates through empathy and responsiveness.
The role of a product manager in designing solutions and collaborating with designers using tools like Figma.
Creating mock-ups and product requirement documents to communicate solutions effectively.
Identifying win-win solutions that benefit both the client and the broader user base.
Balancing work with personal activities like playing soccer to maintain a healthy work-life balance.
The commitment to producing regular video content and engaging with the audience for feedback.
Transcripts
spent the last five minutes arguing with
one of my best friend engineers kale
i don't care
hey i'm parker and welcome to the
channel i'm a product manager working in
tech which means i make apps and
websites for a living so today i'm going
to be recording and editing the day
in my life of a product manager during
coven
new type of series for me where i
attempt to do some version of what
ali abdal does so bear with me start off
my day around seven
this is my first day back on the job in
over a week we've been on christmas
break
and i've tried really hard to stay away
from my inbox
but of course i checked in occasionally
because i'm a freak and i know that
before i even got here that there's a
few things that i need to get done today
in order to get back on track
there's some planning i'm going to do in
rome research and
before i really get the day going i have
a project in mind so i'm just going to
knock that out
this is called eating the frog weird
right but it's where you immediately do
whatever's on your
mind first thing in the morning and now
that that task is complete
i'm ready for my meeting with
engineering at 10 and i can reward
myself with a nice
coffee now i always always force myself
to have a huge bottle of water before i
have any coffee coffee is a bit of a
diuretic which means it dehydrates you
anyways i'll throw back some vitamins
after that and
now it's about 7 41 so i'll spend the
next 45 minutes going through my journal
and it actually turns out that i came up
with a good video idea
so i end up going ahead and doing that i
just got an email from the founder of
rome research which explained a new
feature i thought was super interesting
now being the nerd that i am i decided
to jump into
final cut grab the camera and make a
quick video explaining how
i use those templates if you're
interested in that feel free to watch
i'll link it in the notes
and after that i get ready for my
engineering meeting i know that that
time is gonna be very important it's a
quick kickoff meeting where we'll
discuss
what we're gonna be working on for the
remainder of the week we only have
wednesday and thursday this week we were
out monday and tuesday or at least i was
and friday is the day after new year or
the actual new year's
day so we won't be in the office so i'm
spending some time here
getting on the phone with a couple of
the engineers because i've actually
grown
great friendships with all the folks
that i work with we're a tiny team
there's only three engineers on site
john mark
cale and myself and we have a few
engineers off-site that we've partnered
with as well
if you want to learn more about how to
partner with engineers off-site leave a
comment below i'd love to make a video
and share that experience with you it
truly is amazing being able to work with
different folks
across the world so once i get a couple
of the guys
on before the actual meeting starts then
i can kind of catch up with them
understand how their break went and
really just have a nice chat with them
before we jump into strictly business
hey look only a small percentage of my
viewers actually
subscribe to this channel so if you like
the video consider subscribing
it's free and you can always undo it
got a lot done that kickoff took way
longer than usual just because
we ended up chatting about holiday and
all that stuff but
what was good is now everyone has
priority on exactly what needs to get
done over the next couple days because
it's a really small amount of time just
two or three days
this week because we started late it's
important that directions provided but
you're not
overbearing you're not micromanaging
you're kind of explaining what we're
doing and why
and bringing in notes about what
customer issues are going on
so that way the engineers can be
empathetic
towards what they're doing and they
really know
why they're doing it now they need to
figure out how next i'm going to go and
communicate that across to all my other
departments
operations sales accounting project
management
and let them know hey this is what we're
doing right now
expect these bugs to roll out on this
date we're still good for
this launch date it's kind of
communicating because that's a big part
of the product management roles
getting that that word out so once i
complete that in asana
i'll go ahead and jump into some metric
analysis
so that's looking at amplitude it's
looking at google analytics
it's looking at power bi it's using some
spreadsheet exercises to
understand how did those releases work
out
so if we launched a feature that
includes photos for
food or photos for restaurants did that
affect the average
subtotal did that affect the conversion
rate for the folks ability to get
through the funnel and order
food was it a positive or a negative
trend how many dollars in revenue did
did it shake out so that's going to be
the exercise i'm going through over the
next probably hour and a half
two hours one thing i wanted to call out
that is super duper helpful for time
management is not only the pomodoro
technique which is working in 25 minute
blocks but
time boxing i know today that i have a
certain amount of things that i need to
get done
as you can see i'll just go ahead and
throw them all on google calendar box
out different blocks of time because i
know
okay cool if i need to do metric
analysis it's going to be an hour and a
half or maybe an hour
or if there's a pitch that i need to
write or a product requirement document
it's probably going to take longer than
that but at least i'll assign like 90
minutes
to it so that that session is dedicated
i also think that there's some power to
working in smaller blocks of time
because if i just say like oh cool five
hours to write a pitch
it's gonna suck like i won't get as much
done parkinson's laws i
think what it's called but yeah try time
boxing so i just spent a few minutes
just responding to negative reviews
on our new app that we dropped so we
dropped a new app in the ios store
it had like 11 new features but then a
couple that were not in there from the
previous version when you look at
negative feedback you don't take it
personally it's actually fuel for your
product
going through all of them trying to
actually flip those haters
into brand evangelists so that they'll
be your biggest fan and the way i'm
doing that is just saying i'm trying to
just kill them with kindness but also
like agree with them and be like hey can
i give you a credit in the meantime i'm
going to fix this for you and make it
personal
um because if they feel like they
actually had impact on it then they're
probably going to order from us again
like imagine if you left a negative
review and you're like hey you should
add this and then they added it
you'd probably go to use that brand
[Music]
all right quick check in uh spent the
last five minutes arguing with one of my
best friend engineers kale on uh
how to empathize with the user it's
really important to empathize with the
user
i don't care
[Music]
that's not what you want to hear 130
designers out of town for holidays
it's a good thing i know how to design
jumping into figma putting together some
some specs there's a partnership that
we're trying to land national
non-national partnership but a really
good partnership so we did the numbers
on it's worth uh
worth it for us to design some custom
stuff for us so
i'm in figma it's been a minute i i have
a designer that i partner with to do
this stuff usually
but we're gonna do like a quick and
dirty set of mock-ups
let's go
okay so for this pitch i just did up all
the
mock-ups myself some drawings now we're
getting the technical solutions
of what actually needs to get coded
what a whirlwind of a day 410 now i got
about two more hours of work than
playing soccer
because that's good for it now it's fun
i have a lot of fun doing it
and yeah so i spent a good chunk of my
day
basically coming up with mock-ups using
figma don't use photoshop
using figma and mock-ups are basically
screens
different solutions that you could have
so it starts in written format
where you're coming up with the solution
you're writing you're really living in
that
problem space so this problem is we
don't have
a good website interface for ordering
food
from a marketplace downtown so this
marketplace has like 20 different
restaurants within it
right now on our app and our website it
doesn't have multi-menu support
so that was the solution that myself and
our lead engineer came up with was to
have multiple menu support so we not
only fulfill the need of that
one big client but also
every other single restaurant that we
have so you want to look for those
win-wins
and yeah i just spent a lot of time kind
of writing up that
document that prd or that pitch and
then designing out what the flows would
look like they're not pixel perfect but
it's really important as a
pm to be able to work with the designers
and give them something
better than like you know scribble on a
notepad not only will it be more helpful
for them
and yourself but you're going to gain
respect from them they're going to say
oh he put this effort in
and then they'll be inspired to take it
to the next level now
i have a call in a few minutes and then
probably just spend the rest of the day
continuing working on
those pitches and i have a video i think
on how to write a pitch if i don't i'll
i'll make one soon that's the day in the
life of a pm
i can wrap this video up and say that
you should have learned a lot or you
could have learned a lot or i hope you
learned a lot in this video
still have a lot to get done like i
mentioned but i won't make you stick
around for it i'm excited to continue
producing
two to maybe even three videos maybe
even three videos a week make sure you
stick around
like the video if this was helpful for
the youtube algorithm there's some pm
somewhere at youtube
that's working on that algorithm and the
like count
helps so every like counts thank you and
then make sure you subscribe to the
channel if you have any questions
send me an email at me at parkerx.com
it's just my name with the word me in
front of it
and shoot me an email i'm gonna start
adding questions to the end of every
single episode i think that's a good way
to
kind of help everybody out and i'll see
in the next video
you
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