A Day in A Life of A Product Manager
(my no-frills schedule!)
This is how I roll on most days.
p.s: I would like to remind my fellow PMs to not skip lunch and merienda. We need food to supercharge!
I wake up around 7/8am. Eat breakfast. Drink coffee.
at 9am, I open my laptop (yes I do shut it down by end of day). Check Slack messages.
I start my day by talking to our developers. We do daily ~15 to 30min tech scrums and its my way to also greet them with “ola! have you eaten breakfast?”
I then have a separate call with our UI/UEx Designer by 10am— we talk about why a “sprint” ticket needs to be even built in the first place and how to make design feasible and should fit a very ‘crunch” dev timeline we have. We also look into the competitors and user data. A lot of critiquing happens here
Then I take a quick morning walk/break/ exercise to think through. yes it definitely helps me to let my mind be on pause.
We currently used Linear + Notion to manage tickets. I usually block time to go through each ticket just before lunch — making sure what we’re working is business’ top priorities. Though I admit I sometimes feel overwhelmed — is it really a question of balance: do we optimize or do we build?
I take lunch around 12 and I dedicate 1 hour for it, no explanation. I love to enjoy my food!
In the afternoons, my ~2–3 hour schedule can be filled with up to (3) meetings:
Funnel call where we discuss what’s the product status and how we to improve our scaling strategy and product roadmap — why we’re not hitting numbers (real talk and unbiased way to resolve product and business issues with leaders) I’m usually “grilled” on this meeting, but I’m surviving haha. It’s part of the deal.
Customer Success Call that looks into the quantitative + qualitative data status of our users whether they’re on paid or free trial. This is a very important call as my colleagues share VOC (Voice of Customer), Customer Feedback/ Complaints/Wishlist. We drill down what worked and didn’t worked. Specific for Tech, we assess all the customer experiences shared in this call. I’m actually a notetaker here as a I doodle a better approach to solve issues and make users keep on using the product.
Mini-huddles with other BUs (Business Units) are also called pocket call sessions with other teams to discuss work flow, processes and even ask them what they like and don’t like about the product. Again, I’m a note taker here and I just let them do the talking. I listen and provide context + estimated dev timeline. I usually don’t commit yet if we can do it, but I manage their expectations.
I also set 15–30min break around 5PM to do different “non-work” stuff. I walk, get some sun and/or read or drink. For me, it helps when you rest your eyes.
2x a week (*every Mondays / Wednesdays): I dedicate time to clean, fix and crunch data. I admit this take a bit of my time as its a lot of work. Pivot tables and Google Sheet formulas help me get through.
Before the day ends which is around 6PM, I dedicate time to QA + check back with devs — status of the priority tickets.
Its truly a lot of work — but challenge accepted! Hope this rundown of my schedule gives you an idea how PMs thrive and hustle so be kinder to them.
My advise to my fellow PMs: kudos! Be kinder to yourself too and find time to enjoy life. For me, after 6pm hours should be yours so go ahead and plan fun stuff!
