How I’m product managing my own life

Written By Howard Chan

Starting with the why

After years of designing and launching successful mobile apps and product features (as well as some failures and unsuccessful launches) I’ve distilled some of the key lessons that can be applied not just to professional product management but also to life. In effect, I’d like to share how I’ve been product managing my own life. This is a fun exercise because for once not only do you get to be the product, but also the customer and key stakeholder all at once.

The ultimate goal of a product manager is to help an organization achieve success. When examining how to achieve success in life, there are some fundamental questions that a good product manager would ask, such as:

  • “Why is a change needed?” aka ““What is the overall strategic vision?”

  • “How do I get there?” aka “What is the roadmap?”

  • “What does success look like?” aka “What are my OKRs?”

Creating a strategic vision using a vision board

To help answer these questions, I found that creating a vision board is the best tool for the job. I start by writing and drawing what’s important to me using my favourite pen and notepad. Once the goals and dreams are transferred onto paper, it’s time to add some more colour to the exercise.

The next step is to create a high fidelity, digital version filled with photos and imagery to bring the dream to life. By collecting images that represent the life that you aspire to, the “why” and the “what” of the strategic plan become clear. I found that it worked best when images of past successes where also included to re-enforce the feelings and goals that you’re striving for. Make sure to add the various dimensions that are important to you beyond career and finances, such as the relationships you want to nurture and the adventures you want to experience. Finally, add numerical targets where possible such as: number of trips in a year, financial goals, or fitness goals.

Create the roadmap and think in years

Once the vision board has been completed, a roadmap can be created to guide you from the present to the future version of yourself. I found that creating a spreadsheet worked best for this task. The columns can be labeled with your age from now to end of life to project your goals into the future – this can be quite a reality check. Each row can represent one of the key dimensions that were visualized on the vision board such as health, career, relationships, and travel. Finally, the fill in each cell with your goals and dreams.

Creating the Action Plan

Now that we have an exciting roadmap, the key is to break each goal down into smaller steps so that the vision can be realized. Determine what the dependencies are and who else is needed to accomplish the goals. Once these steps are broken down, it’s important to add actions onto the calendar so that the vision can be realized.

Just like launching a real product, things can change, unexpected situations may occur, and so the plan can remain agile, however there this now an overall vision that new requests can be evaluated against.

Lessons learned from a retrospective

Over the years, I’ve also tweaked the planning spreadsheet to the ages of not only myself but my family members. As the kids get older, there are things they may no longer want to do anymore, there may be a small window for them to enjoy going to the Science Center for instance, as well as the number of years before they run off to college. The other huge factor is overall ability to realize certain goals in later life with deteriorating physical and mental health.

The benefit to having a vision board and roadmap for the planning is that it makes it easy to evaluate how each year unfolds and to see if you’re able to make progress on your goals. Just like a good product manager, you don’t want to randomly make changes for the sake of change, by having a clear vision and roadmap, you can evaluate if the actions you’re taking roll up to the larger vision.

One of my favourite things about software development is the ability to start with a dream and with good planning and execution, something that might seem impossible can become reality. The same can be true when this is applied to personal goals.

Additional reading

Howard Chan
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