To Be A Product Manager | Week 34
This journal helps me improve 1% every day…
Welcome to Week 34 of
To Be A Product Manager
You are probably wondering why I’m writing this on a Thursday night, because I’m wrapping up this week and taking a trip to Japan. Now I’m waiting for the boarding annoucement in Hong Kong Airport. We went to work both Saturday and Sunday last week, so this week actually still means a full week for me.
The past couple days have been insane for me. Too many product lines need to be followed, too many super urgent demo need to be prepared in a short time and not too many sleep hours I can have every night. We also had a group monthly review this afternoon, I frankly talked about my feelings, and there’re 3 things I need to do when I’m back from this trip:
1. Make my own priority over task priority
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying I will work against the boss, but make sure I will do the most important task, both for company and myself improvement.
Some tasks I should leave them to other colleagues, after I get really familiar with it. I should write a document or guide on it, and move on to the next challenge, making sure I only do things requires a lot of creativity.
2. Make yourself clear
We are having regular meeting for demo app updates, and lately I found I was doing a really bad job on communicating with engineers. Basically it’s just not clear enough.
It seems that I was holding a bias and thought other people have the consensus on certain words. I think this is only going to happen when you are close friends or colleagues for many years. If not, you need to explain a feature from other people’s perspective, to help them understand.
3. Treat everyone with the same eye
This is the suggestion I get from other colleagues during the meeting. Even if I did not do a good job at explaining details of new features for engineers, it turns out that it’s even worse for designers and operations team.
There’re 2 excuses:
- We are closer, relationship wise. So I’m holding the bias that they will get what I mean and in order to save my time, I won’t spend too much time on it.
- Applying the priorities for task, also for people I talk to. Great people always keep all the work they put out at a very high level.
What I accomplish
- demo app
- research on weibo and live streaming
- CMS
What I’m pondering
Staying away from work for a while, getting lost and meeting new friends in Osaka, Kyoto and Nara. Find the ultimate motivation and reasons for me to move here.
My name is Zake Zhang, a VR product manager based in Shenzhen, China. I write weekly product journal and reflection.
Thanks for reading and let’s keep on hacking!
Warm Regards,
Zake
be so good they can’t ignore you.
