As product managers, we are often accountable for the success of our teams. The constant pressure to meet deadlines and deliver successful products, combined with the current economic climate and accompanying uncertainty, can lead to exhaustion and burnout. That’s why, for this week’s Whisper, I wanted to share a few tips that have helped me reduce stress and avoid burnout.
This topic is near and dear to my heart, since I have been working on managing and preventing burnout as a product manager over the past few years. My job has always been fun, but it can also be stressful. That stress was compounded by having to manage two little kids (six and four years old), who rely on me for transportation, food, homework, and bedtime routines. The end result? Life was becoming both interesting and challenging—and, at times, overwhelming. This kind of whirlwind schedule can lead to burnout, a condition characterized by fatigue, anxiety, illness, and a loss of job satisfaction.
I ended up reaching out to many mentors for their advice on juggling my life and work as a PM without ending up burnt out. Over the course of those conversations, I was able to identify the three key components of battling burnout: (1) an acceptance mindset, (2) a prioritization method, and (3) a delegation framework.
So, what does each of these look like, and how can we apply them during stressful times?
Building an acceptance mindset
The first tenet of managing burnout—and probably the hardest one for me to practice—is developing an acceptance mindset. An acceptance mindset is, essentially, the ability to acknowledge that you can’t do it all. There is more to this than just paying lip service to the idea. In order to take your foot off the gas, you have to be able to admit, to yourself and to others, that you have to say no, and either delegate or de-prioritize things.
“But these are exciting areas, and I take pride in getting a lot of things done,” I remember telling one of my mentors. He calmly suggested to me that, as a product lead, my job is to prioritize the things that matter. “If you’re not making hard tradeoffs, you’re not doing your job well enough.”
It took me a while to surrender to that fact. I’m so used to being helpful to team members that I found it hard to say, “No, I didn’t have time to help you,” or, “Unfortunately, this is below the line in terms of priority.” The book Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman was what finally helped me realize that constantly increasing my productivity was longer working. I have had to accept the reality that I can't do everything in order to do a better job prioritizing the right thing!
Creating a prioritization framework
After internalizing the fact that you have to drop certain things in order to make the most of your time, your next step is to find a prioritization framework.
There are many different methods of prioritization that you can choose from. I have personally become a fan of the famous Eisenhower Matrix of urgent and important tasks. The things that are both urgent and important are the ones I try to do immediately. However, I purposefully keep this quadrant to less than 50% of my time. Having a cap on this bucket has forced me to prioritize even harder. Less critical projects might get dropped, despite still being impactful, because their ROI no longer makes the cut. At least two days a week, Wednesday and Friday, I schedule time for things that are important but not urgent, such as working on the long-term strategy for the team, or developing a training program for the product managers in our org. I use the same framework to prioritize things across my work and personal life, putting exercise and vacation time with family abroad high on my "important but not urgent" list. Accomplishing these important personal tasks keeps me healthy, happy, and focused at work.
Delegate
Last but not least, I found Shreyas Doshi’s Radical Delegation framework helpful in scaling myself through the team. I had to start evaluating whether the work was high-leverage for my team, and whether I was really the only one who could do it. High-leverage work is work that, if done right, will have a significant impact on the team’s direction (for example, strategic direction or PRD on important features). Calling work “low-leverage” does not mean that the work is not important. Sometimes, we need certain reviews to launch our products, but the impact might not be high when it comes to the team’s long-term direction.
Keeping this in mind, I was able to apply the right delegation tactic based on where a given task fell within the four quadrants below:
If the work can be done by others, I choose to delegate it to them. If the work is low-leverage, I can delegate and forget. I let the people who take on the work know that they can always reach out to me for help, but I don’t check back on the work that often. For work that is high-leverage—for example, a sub-team strategy—I delegate it to the right person, someone I can trust. I then apply a “trust and verify” strategy, checking in often to make sure the work is done at a high standard. Delegation can feel uncomfortable at first, since there is a chance that the work might not be done at the quality that I used to expect from myself. That said, I still choose to delegate, and I’ve seen positive results. At this point, many of my team members really excel at these tasks, and I'm proud that we have built a strong bench.
"What if I’m an individual contributor and I don’t have anyone to delegate to?” you may ask. I would encourage you to look more broadly at your partners across different functions. It works better if you can make it a win-win situation for the team. For example, by delegating this work, you might be able to complete a more important effort that helps the team make better progress in the long run, while also giving the other team members an opportunity to stretch themselves with PM-related tasks.
If it turns out that I'm the only one who can do that work, or if the work is low leverage, I will set up the essential foundation and coach another team member to take over. This leaves me time to do the work that only I can do and continue to have high leverage.
An important point to note is that high leverage work that requires focus time often demands deep thinking. In my case, this resulted in me drifting back to work that I was more comfortable doing. I ended up applying the “eat the frog” framework (check it out in last week’s Whisper) to help me address it head-on, first thing in the morning.
As product managers, we are at a higher risk of burnout due to the high-stress nature of our job. By changing our mindset, prioritizing ruthlessly, and delegating until it hurts, we can be more effective in our role while also lowering our risk of burnout. Remember, trying to do it all is not the recipe for success, especially when you’re a leader. Keeping ourselves healthy and happy while allowing the right people to do the most important things will help us be more successful in the long run.