5 Daily Habits that Will Make You a 5x More Effective Product Manager in Just 15 Minutes a Day

A product manager achieves their goals by repeating daily habits, illustrated here by the PM climbing a ladder surrounded by to-do checks.

Now is the time to completely rework the small things you do each day.

Each daily habit you commit to is a building block to your larger goals. As a Product Manager, you likely feel like you have no time to give. But the following habits are small commitments that can make you more effective and that take almost no time at all.

Here are the daily habits that will help you the most.

1. Listen to your customer (7 min)
2. Prioritize your most important task (3 min)
3. Timeblock your day (2 min)
4. Turn down everything that’s not mission critical (2 min)
5. Enjoy yourself (1 min)

Listen to your customer

It’s important to put yourself in your customers shoes first thing in the morning.

Depending on your company, you may have many different voice of customer tracking efforts. Pick a couple that are relevant to your work and read through them for a few minutes each morning.

By reviewing the verbatims daily, you’ll start to see trends but more importantly you’ll become more intuitive about what projects and ideas would actually solve your customer’s problems vs features your customer won’t care about.

Prioritize your most important task

After getting in the customer mindset, make sure what you’re tackling is the biggest problem that day.

Review all the to-dos on your plate and prioritize them. Avoid working on fire drills unless they’re absolutely necessary. Productivity is not doing the most stuff — it’s getting the most important things done consistently.

I like to use the 1–2–3 method. I pick one large to-do that’s my most important task, 2 medium to-dos that would be nice to get done, and 3 small to-dos that have been nagging me.

I tag these as such in my to-do app (I use Todoist) and then only look at a view with my tagged items throughout the day.

This helps me put blinders on and only focus on what matters most.

Timeblock your day

Now that you know what you need to do it, define when you’re going to do it.

We have endlessly busy days. By time blocking we ensure that we plan our day to focus on what’s most impactful. Block time for the most important item on your list at the very least. Schedule it just as you would a meeting. Give it a time, place, and length.

We get more done when we commit to it. This is your commitment to do what you determined was most important. Stick to it.

Schedule time every morning to prioritize your to-dos and timeblock your day.

Turn down any meeting that doesn’t relate to your goals

You’re likely double booked and even triple booked throughout the day.

This noise will get in the way of you completing what’s important.

Turn down all the unnecessary meetings. Be kind about it. Offer to help if people really need it.

Overall though, you should be devoting a majority of your time to work that drives your project forward and delivers value to your customers.

Remind yourself to enjoy the day

Finally set a small reminder to enjoy your day.

It’s easy to fall into the trap of jumping right into work each morning. Take a step back and remind yourself that you can enjoy your day with the right mindset. You spend ~40 hours a week doing this. You may as well start each day with a positive mindset.

This isn’t always easy but a simple reminder on your to-do list can go a long way.