Product Therapy: public access TV, expensive honey and experience design
July 2026
Glass balls were always rubber balls
Nearly a year ago, I wrote about Glass Balls, Rubber Balls in an attempt to ground myself during a chaotic time.
“The scope of my new role at Hampton has increased and my normal frameworks are being stretched. I’m finding it hard to resist overworking, impossible to shed my perfectionism patterns and difficult to model what strategic prioritization looks like for my team.
Imagine you’re juggling. Some of the balls you’re tossing are rubber: they’ll bounce if you drop them. Rubber balls represent the things in life and work that are important, but recoverable. You can drop them, pick them back up, and they’ll bounce back.
Others are glass: if you drop them, they’ll shatter. Glass balls are the things you cannot afford to lose track of. If they fall, the damage is lasting.”
I wrote about prioritization with a sense of having grasped it, but in reality I think I was smoke and mirroring my way through a difficult time. Cut to a year later (now) and the stakes have changed. At 5.5 months pregnant, the amount I can physically take on forces prioritization in a way I’ve never experienced before, and the hills I’m willing to die on have dramatically shrunk. To borrow from the glass balls, rubber balls metaphor: I’m switching many of my glass balls to rubber balls.
The thing I didn’t expect: almost none of them were actually glass. I’d just called them that because letting go felt unthinkable, not because anything would really break.
Being pregnant took the choice away from me, and once the baby’s here I know that’s only going to get more true. It turns out that when you literally can’t hold everything, you figure out pretty quickly what shatters and what doesn’t.
So I’ll leave you with the question I’m sitting in during this moment of physical limitation, waiting and anticipation: what are you treating like glass that would actually bounce if you let it go?1
Things I Stacked
I went on a Babymoon and I came back with some revelations about product onboarding. Very product of me. Read my latest on experience design below.
Hiring Alert!
I’m growing my team and need to find a perfect match for the Moderator Success role. Learn more about it and apply here.
Culture Clicks
📚I crushed Yesteryear (contrary to Substack opinion, I liked it alot!) and The Lion Women of Tehran (My Brilliant Friend meets The Kite Runner). I also pre-ordered Looks Perfect, the debut novel from my dear friend I met during The Process, Jessica Siskin. I think you should preorder it too.
I think the Grainless Granola from TJ’s is better than most regular granolas, minus the Eleven Madison Park Granola. There’s a subculture to the fro yo trend in NYC that’s frozen Greek yogurt. My favorite is near my office at The Gyro Project, but I have a bone to pick with Go Greek in Noho where they charged me $1.29 for them to squirt honey on your DIY yogurt bowl. In what world am I living?
Fabrik was featured in The New York Times - I love everything they do there but especially the people :)
Robin Byrd was so ahead of her time on Manhattan public access TV in the 70s. And New York now? Knicks!2 World Cup! Tayvis Wedding! NYC is so alive … in ⑤. What a time to be a citizen of this gorgeous city.
Substack clicks
I’m Jori Bell, VP of Core at Hampton and a coach for Product Leaders. Learn more about my coaching practice here.
Plus, it’s summer so, let some things drop.
Correction: My last update read “Go Knicks” and I’ve been told its Let’s Go Knicks. My deeeep apologies.