Commuting for Product Managers

I spend 30 minutes commuting to work and 1 hour coming back. That is 6.25% of my day, this is how I attempt to salvage that part of my life. I generalize three methods: listening, reading, and reflecting.

1. Listen — push learning

Podcasts

a16z: The quintessential VC firm, Andreessen Horowitz, rallies around trending topics in technology and updates very frequently. It can meander into speculative territory often, but in this industry nothing is farfetched.

Ventured: KPCB hits on trending topics that VCs care about and why you should too. Highlight podcast for me is with Reed Hastings, founder of Netflix, talking about how Netflix competes with drinking wine.

Freakonomics Radio: Stephen Dubner joins prominent scientists, researchers, and entrepreneurs to discuss diverse topics that bring in unique perspectives across numerous fields. I’m with the school of thought that fresh ideas stem from the breadth and depth of knowledge you garner through experience (firsthand or vicariously). This is a great opportunity to be a fly on the wall for conversations relevant to industries outside your own as well learn how to beat your friends at rock, paper, scissors.

Audiobooks

Audiobooks trump regular books in a few ways.

1. They set the pace and allow for more passive learning
2. They require less effort
3. They are easily ingested while walking

2. Reading —pull learning

Books

Whether it is a Kindle or a leather bound book, reading large amounts of cohesive content is mandatory. Internet content is the embodiment of ADD and it impacts how you process information. Challenge yourself to stick with content created with a sense of holistic creation with a finite beginning and end. It takes more effort, but the juice is worth the squeeze. I tend to read in cycles of one non-fiction/productive book and one fiction/joy book.

Productive Read — Decode and Conquer (recently The Charisma Myth)

Joy Read — Sapiens (recently Dark Matter)

Blogs

Aggregation platforms like Medium are great, but following content creators over time provides insight that sporadic article aggregation cannot. Here are my favorites.

1. Benedict Evans — a16z analyst, good at keeping PMs up to date
2. Sachin Rekhi — product guy, good at distilling actionable product lessons
3. Andrew Chen — growth hacker @ Uber, good at defining user metrics

3. Reflect — cached learning

You wouldn’t ship a product then completely skip the retrospective/postmortem. Thus, you probably shouldn’t skip reflecting on the end of each work day. This is your opportunity to highlight mistakes, plan fixes, and rally for your next iteration.

Writing

Yeah, you can type fast and its easier. Writing by hand is still proven to increase retention and improve sleep. Your mind needs to expel all the crap you have managed to throw at it over the course of the work day.

The human cognitive ability is finite, it has been studied repeatedly and you are not exempt. Overcome your limitations by accepting them.

Staring

Some days suck. I mean really, really suck. You’ll feel tired and if you’re a passenger on the commute, this is your chance to zone out the window and muse on life. You should always maximize your time, even if that means doing nothing on your commute home in order to feel like a human being again tomorrow. This isn’t about perfect attendance or max utilization, this is about being better than you were yesterday.

We’re helplessly bound into a box of 24 hours a day, your time is the most precious resource in the world. Be accountable to yourself, for yourself.

Happy learning.