My Average PM Day

(it’s not just email)

Originally posted to my personal blog.

I couldn’t be more thrilled that @cthrin wrote the first one of these- especially including her detailed times. When I started interviewing for PM roles in college, the most common response was “well, there is no average day for a PM.”

If someone tells you that, I’m tempted to say that they aren’t a very good PM (that isn’t necessarily the case: it could also be a problem with the organization they’re in). It’s not a role that works well if you’re scattered and just react to what comes up. If you don’t have some consistency, it’s easy to get bogged down in “urgent” work, but neglect what’s actually important. Of course, my days aren’t identical, but there definitely is a semblance of routine.

Here’s my “average” day:

1) 7:00 — 9:00AM. Wake up. I stopped using an alarm clock because it’s very rarely necessary. I only set an alarm if I need to (if I’m meeting friends for early breakfast). If I wake up on the early side, I have more time to play with the cat, do chores, make my Github commit for the day, and talk to Tom!

2) 9:00 AM — 10:00 AM. Coffee with somebody. I set up a lot of morning meetings. These meetings are usually me asking for someone else’s advice, or someone asking for mine. I’m always trying to think about ways I can improve. One of my favorite recent pieces of advice was from a former VP Product at a well known startup. She recommended that I should always define and track metrics that I find important privately, even if they aren’t the most important ones for the organization as a whole. Since so many great people have been willing to give me advice, I also try to be available to help out others who are interested in the field. Most of those conversations are about how started in Product (do side projects).

2) 10:00 AM — 11:00 AM. Arrive at work. Drink more coffee. Eat yogurt. Look at Trello (our project management tool) and Campfire (our group chat room) and see what’s going on with coworkers. Usually at a least a couple things have come up that need my attention. A designer or developer might have a question about a feature detail we didn’t nail down. A bug might have come up and I need to add a Trello card to the backlog. My first priority is resolving anything that’s preventing someone else from getting work done. Then, I answer emails. I don’t get why people say you can’t do email in the morning — I love my email. I also read Twitter in the morning.

3) 11:00 AM — 12:30 PM Working Block 1. Lately, I use my first block of working time to respond to questions from creators and backers with the Community Support Team. This has been extremely productive. It helps me get a feel for how people are using our product, and it means the CS team has someone from Product sitting with them if they have a question or notice a bug. I intend to write something longer about this in the future.

Historically, I’ve also spent this time doing wireframing, spec writing, or doing a critique & brainstorm session with someone on the design team. I also might spend a working session compiling data on a feature we already released (or a feature we’re thinking about changing). If I’m starting a new project and need to get everything set up in Trello, I might do that. Sometimes I’ll spend an entire chunk of time just sitting, thinking, and drawing sketches in my notebook.

4) 12:30 PM — 1:30 PM Lunch. I try to go to lunch with my co-workers! Sometimes I go with someone I used to work with closely, but haven’t as much recently. Sometimes it’s whoever in our campfire room wants to grab lunch. Sometimes I meet a friend. Sometimes I just eat alone and read my book. For me, this is another type of “water cooler” interaction — I discover things serendipitously during the lunchtime conversations.

6) 1:30 PM — 3:00 PM — Working Block 2. This is often when I do my best work. It’s usually very similar to the first working block. Since it’s some of my best time, I usually use it to think about a product area: how do we want this to look in the future? Can we re-align this feature to another part of the site? How does this fit into our navigation? Our settings? I might also write or revise a specification for a new feature — or do detailed critique with a designer before we present to a broader team. (Critique is fancy word for design feedback. The most important part is that it’s focused and appropriate to where the work is: at the beginning you’ll be talking about features, but towards the end it might be about much more detailed visual decisions).

7) 3:00 PM — 4:00 PM — Meeting! I have one “administrative” meeting most afternoons. They aren’t all at exactly 3pm, this is just my general guide. Monday I have my 1:1 with my manager, Tuesday we have a product team standup, Wednesday we have an all-hands meeting, and Thursday we have our Product team meeting. Each of these meetings is usually a place I can get feedback about my direction, or learn something new I should consider.

8) 4:00 PM — 6:00 PM Working Block 3. This is where I tend to revise my thinking based on what happened during my conversations and meetings of the day. I also tend to start getting ideas for what I want to do the next day. I very rarely put meetings during this time if I can avoid it. I need a lot of alone time, and I particularly like it at the end of the day after I’ve been with people / before going to see people again.

9) 6:00 PM — 7:00 PM Prepare to leave work. This is not a very productive hour for me. Sometimes I get lucky and am really excited to keep working on something from that day. Sometimes I just write and think about what I’ve already done that day. Sometimes I make a to do list for the next day. Sometimes I read Twitter. Sometimes I’m exhausted and I just go home.

10) 7:00 PM — 10:00 PM Something else! I try to do interesting things at night — I’ve taken art classes and writing classes. I go to meetups. I schedule time to catch up with people, or meet with anyone who isn’t available at 9am. Sometimes there’s an Awesome Foundation event. I used to go to Global Shapers events, too. I try to make the things I do at night are fun and aren’t obligatory. I also try to balance doing things with time at home and relaxing.

So where does that leave me, in terms of my actual productive hours?

• I have 3 big chunks of serious working & thinking time that combined amount to 5 hours.
• I have 2 chunks of “light” work, amounting to 2 hours.
• I have 1 chunk of “meeting” overhead, amounting to one hour.

This works really well for me. I feel like I often talk to PM friends who say they are “scattered” or “putting out fires” or “crisis mode” or in meetings all the time. This very rarely happens to me. I value the large chunks of time I have to think and work (alone or with others). I think is mainly due to the company culture, and am very grateful for it.

It’’s still very important to me that I’m available for the rest of the company. Chances are, if you email me, you’ll get a response within a couple hours. If you chat me, you’ll get one near-immediately. If you stop by my desk and say “hey can we talk about X?” I almost always can. Since I have big chunks of time, and I can regularly rely on them, it’s not a big deal to stop and help somebody out for awhile. I’ve found that because people at Kickstarter are generally respectful of time that being open hasn’t resulted in my time disappearing.

The luxury of large chunks of working time means that I also don’t have many”atypical” days. Catherine mentioned a bunch of types, including strategy, thinking, project management, data and customer days. While those are all types of work I do, they usually get slotted into one of my big chunks of work time. There are occasional outliers, but those are uncommon.

Most of the time, my day is just like this. I’d love to hear more about yours.