Product tasks you could do instead of doom scrolling on election day
Ok, product tasks you can do in between doom scrolling.
Lots of new faces today! Welcome!
I’m dropping into your inbox on an interesting day, right?
It’s election day in America and if you think real work is getting done today, well…I’m not sure where you’ve been1.
Today is the day of “back burner” “keep-the-lights” kind of work.
You aren’t shipping.
You aren’t holding customer interviews.
Hell, you’re barely holding meetings.
With that in mind, here are the product tasks you’ve been putting off all year that are absolutely perfect for a nail biting, existential kind of Tuesday in November.
Groom the ole background. And by groom, I mean color coordinate the labels. Make sure the typography matches. Ensure all the tickets are written with the same format so they’re really easy to read. Bonus points for linking relevant tickets together. The engineering manager has been asking you to do that for months now!
Categorize the customer support tickets. Yes, finally take the time to find themes so you can make room for them on the backlog. Quickly realize that most of them are edge cases, but assure the teams that you will totally make sure that customers in a country you haven’t launched in can access the buying feature on an iPad.
Respond to those emails about people’s really great product ideas. Sales wants a custom hub, tell me more! Marketing wants a personalized email template, you got it. The CEO wants to thwart the roadmap, makes sense! It’s time to make everyone’s dreams come true because they will surely forget about it after today.
QA your latest release in every browser and device possible! It’s not just about Chrome, you know. You’ve got to be compatible on every possible device. You have to get that iframe loading in Microsoft Edge!
Add actually funny gifs to the product strategy deck. The Product Marketing team has been outperforming the Product team in comedic performance2 and it’s time for Product to claim what’s theirs!
Log more hours in the #politics slack channel than your team’s channel. Nothing better than sharing memes and tweets all day. You want team building and product culture, I’ll give you product culture!
Call a code freeze at 5pm. Because nothing was ever getting merged today anyway.
Convert your daily stand up to a slack up on Wednesday morning. Show come compassion because Tuesday is going to be a doozy, whichever way you swing.
What’d I miss?
ICYMI: Check out my latest post about individual product contributors below3
Hi - I’m Jori and I’m a Product Coach. Here’s how to work with me ↩️
I work with Product Leaders and their teams to unlock their biggest career moments. If you’re looking for support - drop me a note, I’d love to connect. 🤝
I co-host Product Leadership Breakfast NYC, a monthly product breakfast series to bring together curated groups of PM leaders to connect and share learnings and insights over casual breakfast. If you live in NYC or find yourself passing through, join us! ☕
I am very excited to see my two clients today if they happen to read this article before we meet :-)
This is my real feeling, that PMMs have better bits during presentations. I’m jealous.
I’m rarely political adjacent but this week felt *special*