😰 Coming with the Territory: 4 ways a Product Manager can manage their stress | by Kasey Fu | Apr, 2024

Product management is one of those rare disciplines that entails huge fulfillment, but not without the stress and pressure that comes with it.

While I know there are many generic suggestions out there for stress management, such as “understand some things are out of your control,” or “your product success doesn’t define you as a person,” I find that advice in-actionable and lacking real-world value. Who would want to find the same advice their relatives provide in an article online?

So here are 4 pragmatic ways a PM can realistically manage their stress, pressure, and workload 🔥.

I’ve done this multiple times while I was at Microsoft, and have already done it once while here at Planview, leading their AI Copilot project.

When you’re a PM on a growing product, you’re almost certain to crash into chaos, where many things are happening at once. Think about it: stories/epics, strategy documents, new marketing initiatives, announcing releases, contributing to technical operations/strategy, creating onboarding content, product evangelism, sales enablement, and other items that spring up unpredictably. This doesn’t even include the abundant meetings that clog up your schedule (and result in more follow-ups as well).

When this (inevitably) happens, it’s important for PMs to step back and “reset their plate”: reflect on all that’s happening, and jot down a top 10 list of items that are currently happening in a prioritized manner. As you craft this list, it’s important to weigh its value based on ROI and alignment with your own mission as a product manager for the company.

One such list could look like this 👀:

1. Spending time working on the product roadmap for the next quarter. ROI: High, Alignment: High
2. Work on a partner marketing program to get vendors to market our product, ROI: High, Alignment: Med
3. Draft a spec for an internal tool needed to analyze bugs. ROI: Med, Alignment: High