How To Evolve As a Product Manager: The Ultimate Guide to Writing Online

Sep 07, 2023

4 min read

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As a product manager, one of the essential necessities for growth is curiosity and a desire to learn. Learning is the key factor in evolving as a product manager. This article will combine the insights from "How To Evolve As a Product Manager" and "The Ultimate Guide to Writing Online" to provide a comprehensive guide for product managers who want to continue growing and evolving in their roles.

Learning and Growth as a Product Manager

Product managers wear multiple hats, including design, engineering, legal, sales, marketing, and more. To excel in these areas, a product manager needs to constantly learn and acquire new skills. The equation for learning is simple: Learning = (Knowledge * Skills) + Ability. While ability is important, how we deal with new knowledge and acquire new skills makes the biggest difference in our growth as product managers.

Writing as a Tool for Growth

Writing is a powerful tool for personal and professional growth. It allows us to not only share our ideas but also attracts opportunities and helps us think better. Writing consistently and frequently is crucial to success in the online writing game. The more we write, the more opportunities become available to us. Quality writing is a force multiplier on our success. When our ideas resonate with others, the number of opportunities multiplies.

Writing from Abundance and Conversation

Writing from Abundance is the art of collecting ideas to think better and avoid writer's block. By building a bank of inspiration through capturing epiphanies, saving quotes, and jotting down ideas, we ensure that we have a constant source of material when it's time to write. The key is to capture ideas when they're at the forefront of our minds, so we don't have to rely on memory alone.

Writing from Conversation is the art of using dialogue to identify our best ideas and double down on them. Engaging in conversations with others helps us refine and strengthen our ideas. By discussing our thoughts with others, we gain new perspectives and insights that can shape our writing.

Curating Our Information Diet

To have unique ideas, we need to consume content that others don't. Warren Buffett gained an edge by going beyond the Annual Reports that everybody else was reading and delving into less accessible sources. David Epstein reads ten journal articles per day, often synthesizing them for a public audience. High-quality writing begins with good taste for what we consume. Prioritizing the accumulated wisdom of humanity over what's trending on social media is crucial. Finding people whose recommendations we enjoy and subscribing to their newsletters can help us discover content that others may overlook.

Capturing Ideas and Building a Central Note-Taking System

Being a writer doesn't mean sacrificing huge portions of our lives. We can find inspiration in our everyday experiences, conversations, and media consumption. Effective ambient research happens when we capture the best ideas we come across, the epiphanies we have, and the things we've already written. By saving articles to an app and refusing to instantly read everything we come across, we raise the bar for what grabs our attention. Having a central note-taking system is essential for capturing and organizing our ideas. Whether it's a massive Google Doc or a physical box filled with notes, the key is to have a central place where all our ideas reside. The easier it is to search and access these notes, the faster we can connect the dots and create meaningful writing.

Actionable Advice for Evolving as a Product Manager

Embrace curiosity and a love for learning: Cultivate a mindset of constant growth and improvement. Seek out new knowledge and acquire new skills to evolve as a product manager.
Write consistently and frequently: Make writing a daily habit. Set aside dedicated time each day to write and publish your ideas. The more you write, the more opportunities will come your way.
Curate your information diet and capture ideas: Seek out unique sources of information and save the best parts of what you read. Build a central note-taking system to capture and organize your ideas. This will serve as a valuable resource for future writing and inspiration.

In conclusion, evolving as a product manager requires a commitment to learning, growth, and continuous improvement. Writing can be a powerful tool in this journey, helping us refine our ideas, attract opportunities, and think better. By embracing curiosity, writing consistently, curating our information diet, and capturing our ideas, we can evolve as product managers and achieve success in our roles.