A couple years ago, I remember psyching myself up to write my year end review, only to realize that I couldn’t remember any details about what had happened in the first half of the year. Has that ever happened to you?

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We’re down to the last two weeks of the year! Last week, I shared part 1 of the ritual that I’m using to set New Year’s Resolutions for 2021. In it, I walked through how you can create more time in your day to bulletproof yourself against times when things get busy, so that you don’t have to sacrifice your resolution. This week, we’ll dive into how you can set better resolutions that lead to action.

It’s almost the new year… finally! Like many of you, I can’t wait for a fresh start in 2021. I usually start the year feeling hopeful and setting a few New Year’s Resolutions. As the year goes on, I see great progress on some resolutions and limited progress on others.

I’m going to try something different this time. I will be transforming my New Year’s Resolutions into a two-part ritual this year, which I’ll cover in this post and the next post. This post will focus on how you can create more time in your day to bulletproof you against times when things get busy, so that you don’t have to sacrifice your resolution. The next post will focus on how you can set better resolutions that lead to action.

As a PM, between meetings, Slack, and emails, I often felt like I had no time left to do “real work”. And yet, in business school, my friends had nicknamed me “T2K” because of how I got things done with robot-like efficiency. What had happened to the machine that I used to be?

I found the answer in “Indistractable” by Nir Eyal. Not only was I nodding along as I read the book (as odd as that is when you’re in a room by yourself), but it has been one of my favorite books that I’ve read this year. In this post, I’ll share my key learnings from Indistractable.

Before becoming a Product Manager, were you in Engineering, Design, or Business? Unless you came from the first group, many PMs battle imposter syndrome that they are “not technical enough.” Contrary to this belief, you don’t have to have a technical background to learn about new technologies. My friend and former colleague, Michael Lee, is proof of it.

Mike studied Economics as an undergrad and got a Masters degree in Interactive Media. He’s never worked as an Engineer, and yet he’s now built two proof of concept apps with machine learning and computer vision. How did this Analyst turned Product Manager teach himself about these hot new technologies? Read more to learn about Mike’s strategies on how PMs can be fluent with new technologies, even if you’re feeling a little technically timid.

You’re excited. You’ve been put in the driver’s seat for a new project. You’ve looked at the data. Now you’re ready to talk to some users to validate your hypothesis from the data. You run to your user researcher with a list of asks. But your enthusiasm comes to a grinding halt when your request meets the reality of being slotted 39th in a long queue. Has this ever happened to you?

I sat down with my friend and former colleague, @Reed Townsend Jones, to understand this situation from the perspective of a user researcher. (In other words, I user researched a user researcher!) He shares the foolproof secret that will get you to the top of the queue with your user researcher every time.

Halloween is only about two weeks away and it’s clear this year’s celebration will be unlike any other. In past years, our family walked to a block party a few streets away. My husband and I stood shoulder-to-shoulder with our neighbors and admired the elaborate decorations, while our kids went trick-or-treating down each driveway.

We didn’t want Halloween to end up as another casualty of 2020. Halloween is one of the kids’ favorite holidays and they’ve already missed out on so much in the last six months that we really wanted to make sure that Halloween still has a little magic this year. I realized that I could take my PM wand out and “solve” Halloween, just like I would any other user problem. Read on to hear about how I used product principles to design a magical Halloween experience, with a COVID-friendly twist.

Whether you’re on Team Biden or Team Trump, we can all agree that the past week could have been a plot on a show like the West Wing or House of Cards. In the middle of the night, the nation learns that POTUS has COVID and numerous others in his inner circle test positive. He’s helicoptered to the hospital, treated with experimental drugs, and then discharged and back at the White House within days.

As we’ve stayed abreast these developments throughout the past week, it’s been hard to know who or what to believe. For example, the White House physician later admitted to giving false and misleading information. Sometimes there are good reasons that leaders do not share the full story with their teams, but clearly this was a case of information sharing gone wrong. Read on to learn what we can take away from the White House’s example and how you can still be a transparent and authentic leader, even if you don’t share everything you know.

P.S. - Get out and vote! Schedule the time in your calendar to get to the polls on November 3rd or mail-in your ballot early

LinkedIn has rolled out a new design and features. If you’ve seen it, what were your first impressions?

Honestly, when I scrolled through the LinkedIn Newsfeed, I kept getting confused and thinking that I was on Facebook. Here’s why I think that LinkedIn’s redesign misses the mark and three ideas that address user needs and business goals.

Previously, I wrote about how great UX makes technology “So easy a toddler can do it.” Now, I’m back with a distance learning edition! Read on to hear about what I’ve observed about distance learning and what we can learn from first graders about how to work more effectively.

Today, I walked outside and took a deep breath of fresh air. Hooray!!!

After a record breaking streak of Spare the Air Days, everything outside being covered in ash, and a day that drew comparisons to BladeRunner, I can no longer take clean air for granted. It got me thinking about what each of us can do to slow global warming.

Read on to hear my thoughts on the responsibilities we have as Product Managers and how we can build more environmentally conscious and socially responsible products.

Our COVID habits are here to stay. Or are they?

A quick Google search surfaces tons of articles that speculate on which habits will stick. The truth is, nobody knows. Planning your roadmap expecting that these habits will stick is risky because you might place your bets on the wrong habits. A better approach is to combine scenario planning with a good ol’ user needs assessment. In this essay, I’ll show you how.

Dark patterns are sneaky, deceptive, manipulative... maybe even evil. They conjure up nightmare examples of agreeing to privacy policies that (you didn’t realize) share your data with third parties, having to jump through hoops to unsubscribe from a service, or getting notifications to pressure you to speed through checkout.

But are dark patterns just misunderstood? Can dark patterns be used for good??? Read on to find out how I applied the persuasiveness of dark patterns responsibly.

What do you want to be when you “grow up”?

What are you doing to make it happen?

In today’s post, I’m sharing the Product Decagon framework that I created. It’s a tool for product managers to clarify your vision of what you want to be when you grow up, assess your skills and gaps, and plan your career development. I hope you’ll give the Product Decagon a try, and would love to hear what you think in the comments.

Prioritization is a key part of any Product Manager job. It seems like there have been a million+1 articles written about how to prioritize. Let’s have a little fun and talk about how NOT to prioritize. Read on to find out what’s in my top 3 “favorite” list.

Anyone remember drunk UX testing? The premise was that your website should be so simple, a drunk person could use it. I decided to do my own riff on this idea, replacing a drunk person with a toddler. Your website should be so simple, a young child should be able to use it, right?

Read on to find out what happened in my experiment. What websites did they test and did they pass the toddler UX test???

What is it about music that creates such a strong imprint in your memory? Often I find that I can remember not just the lyrics and harmonies in a song, but also exactly what I was doing while listening to it. Read on to hear more about this cause and effect, and I’ll share my magic formula for how you can build product experiences that people love and remember years later.