Taking the time to think is so pivotal when you are in a creative role. Anyone who works in product development needs to flex a creative muscle that ensures the best possible product gets built.
This post is merely meant to convey one of the difficulties that I believe comes with the PM role. In truth, you could argue it comes with all roles in tech. Time spent planning and asking yourself the right questions before your teammates ask you them is so important. You must give yourself permission to to take the time needed to think things through. Whether it’s design planning, versioning, or writing longer form documents such as user journeys or FAQs, I find my best work (work that doesn’t require real-time collaboration with others) is done uninterrupted.
One trick I use that I would recommend is putting on Do Not Disturb on your computer. This ensures you won’t get a desktop notification every time a message comes through, so you can stay in a flow state. Though be careful — on important afternoons or while under a tight deadline where communication with others is required, definitely don’t turn this setting on.
Marty Cagan from the Silicon Valley Product Group touches on deep thinking here. Below is a great snippet from the article about the importance of deep thinking:
“As you identify an especially difficult decision or problem, to be able to have a solid hour or more of time to consider the problem, largely uninterrupted (be sure to turn off your phone’s notifications), can fundamentally change the quality of your understanding and your conclusions.”
We are all constantly connected now, and that has its drawbacks. Something that I find myself struggling with is feeling like I need to respond to Slack messages immediately. I’m talking about during normal business hours here, but the phenomenon is real. To ensure I do what I know needs to get done, I typically block time off on my calendar. But that doesn’t stop messages from coming in.
Generally speaking, I think it is super important for teams to know how others work best. This comes with time and getting to know your teammates, but it is a sentiment that I believe is a real takeaway of this post.
I’d love to hear from others in the product community in the comments below about best practices for ensuring you always do your best work!