January is a great time for product teams to make adjustments and set the stage for a more creative, impactful 2024. The right small tweaks can create large differences in how your work year goes when played out over a 365-day-year. Here are a few of my favorite strategies to create more space to think and breathe. I’ve found I am at my best when taking action on more of these and less so when not.
Focus on the main thing. Re-examine your team’s Q1 (or, even better, entire 2024) roadmap, aiming to be super clear as a team about the top two or three things that really matter. Repeat: Two or three things. Focus almost all effort on those 2-3 top objectives and strongly consider pausing everything else. Over time, it’s almost always the highest impact actions that make a real difference in any product and business. Do the work as a team to agree on this focus, and then take it further and agree on the single action that is really THE main thing to accomplish. Avoid creating or reacting to long to-do lists. The very best companies excel by focusing on fewer goals and most often do this kind of prioritization company-wide vs by team. If your company has N teams with cascading Y x N priorities, you are distracting yourself from the overarching main thing and creating non-clarity.
Create time for yourself and your teams. Now review your team's meeting calendar and prune like crazy. Assess recurring meetings for usefulness and either reset or cancel them. Reduce recurring one-on-ones to essentials and consider having more 1:1s “when needed.” Where meetings remain, tighten significantly (60 minutes can often shift to 30, 30 minutes to 15, etc.). Avoid the standard time creep, where a recurring conversation magically expands to take up whatever time it’s set for. Now breathe. You’ve just created some meaningful space in your calendar.
Ask others for agendas and pre-reads. Now it’s time to look at the meetings you don’t own on your calendar. Take a batch of upcoming meetings you don’t own, write out a polite email template to send each invite owner. Something like: “To help us all use this time effectively, could you share a quick agenda and pre-read for our discussion?” Send that note for any upcoming meetings you are unclear about. Rinse and repeat as needed. One of three things will happen: Some invite owners will share helpful material, some will delay the meeting to get organized, and some will just cancel the meeting altogether. It’s magic - you just helped create more clarity and found even more time.
Create time blocks in your daily schedule. Now lock in some of that calendar space you just found yourself. Block two consecutive hours during each work day for creative thinking, writing, or whatever is needed to advance the most important goals you identified above. Use this blocked time to push those goals (not too many!) forward versus reacting into “catching up on email.” If finding two hours is hard at first, start with one.
Move your body and get out in the sun–every day. Start small, but ensure you move and get sunlight daily. This can be as simple as taking a single call while you walk, or shifting all 1-1 meetings to walk and talks by phone. The more I commit to this personal habit, the more creative and clear-headed I am at work (and the healthier I am overall physically and mentally). Bonus points if you find time each week to thoughtfully breathe. Whether it's meditation, quiet exercise, or reading small passages that create a mindful, aware state –just do something small. Try holding still with no phone or laptop for just 5 minutes. This approach is your antidote to phone, text, and Slack-induced scatterbrain.
Now go create. Thoughts? Think I missed anything? Let me know!
If this helped you think more clearly about leading teams or products, I write here once a week.
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