Lessons of a product manager during Pandemic.
Yogyata’s note : Hey, I welcome my new 10 subscribers who joined since my last essay. In each essay, I draw from my experience and learnings at startups. My last essay had 456 reads and I feel excited to share more. Feel free to share your thoughts or get in touch to discuss more. My last essay was about Hyperdocumentation and I received many views on the same, where many agreed to improve their documentation skills and some told me about why they want to avoid it. This is essay #8.
In 2020, the pressure was enough to block our minds. With so many things happening around, all of us almost turned to pessimists. With 2021, we became hopeful to gain back the strength and kept moving forward. So I thought to give a rewind to myself and think about the pessimism that grew in me but dulled out with time.
Life
Pandemic taught me to be in the moment, value life, value time. Saving self energy and giving time to family is what I learned was most important and what was needed at that time for everyone to stay strong at home.
Social
I started writing in public often during pandemic. Youtube, Instagram, Quora, Linkedin and Twitter were my go to places every few minutes. With so many calls done to personally connect with people and talking about product management was what I enjoyed and it kept me hopeful during that time until this took my health to a spin. With so many requests coming in, it became hard for me to keep a balance and so I went underground for sometime, said no to almost all requests to connect which made me feel bad, but was required.
My friends suggested me to use some apps that calm your brain and helps your soul but what can app actually do, if you are not in a mood to use your phones? I drastically reduced my time on phones gradually during pandemic.
Health
Working and keeping myself occupied has always been the way I used to spend most of the time everyday. I started utilizing more time into working and thinking it will deliver results until it started harming me from inside. Feeling mental fatigue drained me faster than any physical activity, I lost my focus and interest, which gradually made me feel demotivated and imposter started taking a toll on me.
Product Management
Pandemic brought a wave that actually differentiated products into 2 groups: Motivated for change and Demotivated from change. So many startups shutdown who no longer believed in their value proposition and felt they wont be able to survive with the change in the market.
Everything that happened, helped me become more productive as I realized I can do so much in 9-10 hours and still not be any productive while I can re-think my whole day and be super productive for straight 6 hours and still retain my energy for the whole day. I will write more about it in my coming essays.
What are your super powers that you got to know about during pandemic? Did you also do any mental repairs?
Connect with me on my Instagram and Twitter to share your thoughts.
Featuring an episode from my podcast that I uploaded last year, talking about the increasing sales cycle in B2B because of Covid-19
One reply on “8/ Product, Hope and Pandemic”
This is so relatable Yogyata ! I feel great about myself when i read about what you went through and i had a sense of relatability that we are not alone who felt this way. More power to you! I really like reading your weekly newsletters.