🎄Xmas special: Self organizing & planning 2021 as a Product Person

Welcome everyone to another episode of the Product Bakery Podcast. Today a special episode because it's the 24th and the first thing we would like to say is Merry Christmas. So imagine this conversation with a subtle and maybe we can find it with like a subtle Christmas music in the background to get you all ready for these amazing holidays. And yeah, today we are not going to launch an interview and I think it's simply because I think we should all get some rest during the next couple of days. We did prepare some interviews though for a big launch early next year. And also if you like, feel free to listen to the previous episodes if you want to refresh certain things while you are reflecting 2020. Nevertheless, we decided to launch the next episode on the 7th of January where we're going to talk to Rory Madden from the UXDX conference and the week after already to Ryan Sousa, the Chief Data Officer from the Seattle Children's Hospital. It's good stuff coming. There's even more, but we don't want to spoil you too much. But I think Alex, it's also a good idea to share a little bit where we want to go with our podcast next year and what our motivations and plans are. Yeah, definitely. Obviously like we want to keep the pace. We constantly want to provide you with some interesting conversations with people from all around the world and from all different industries and functions within product development. But not only that, if you've been following the last episodes, we just recently launched our website. So we obviously also want to extend the content there. And as soon as we have a little bit like of attraction also on that site, we will not only provide you like with information on the spoken podcast radio style kind of way, but we also would want to share some information on a weekly or bi-weekly basis in product bakery newsletter. Yeah. On top of that, we should also mention that we start writing, we're just preparing summaries of the episodes. We are even just right now in the planning phase of launching a blog, which will maybe take some more time, but yeah, we just want to be available for you as much as possible on all different platforms, online and offline. And as Monika said, the whole community part is super important to us. And we really want to help people to not make the mistakes that we did. We also want to even learn more because you never stop learning if you are motivated and engaged in what you're doing. So there are many plans that we are right now following. And as you all know, this is not our main job. So if we talk about newsletters, if we talk about blogs and so on, then this is mainly out of like also conversations that we had with some of you. And therefore, like also here, feel free to really let us know what you like, what you don't. We are always reachable on our email addresses and so on. And for us, this is super helpful to just also better understand where we should prioritize and invest most of our time, which is definitely not infinite. And yeah, to just provide you with the most useful information as well. Yeah, and due to the Christmas time, I think it's also a very good time, not only today, but especially these days to say thank you for all the listeners. We had so many plays this year, much more than we expected. And which is really interesting to me is that people listen around about 90% to the end of each episode. So that tells us or gives us the indication that you like what we're doing. And if not, even then, feel free to tell us. So we are always up for feedback. And we don't want to do this on one sided way. So we are always happy to get feedback. So there are many emails that we have received based on a couple of episodes with suggestions and questions. And yeah, we're aiming to improve. We are aiming to follow up on your requests. And we don't want to do this by ourselves. We believe that this is something we should do together. Cool. That's that. I mean, let's not use the time only to self advertise. So maybe Christian, one thing, as I'm also like currently working a little bit like on my personal goals outlook for next year. Did you already look into your personal goals? Yeah, I actually wanted to start on the 25th. I actually don't know if there's the English word, I just need to look it quickly up. What's the German one? It's the Raunechte. Have you heard about it? It's called rough night. I'm not sure if this is the real word. But from the 25th to the 8th of January, I think, these are the times that are great to reflect and plan new years. So yeah, my plan is, and I have to say, even due to Corona, I had a really good year. So far 2020 was my personal best year that I had. And I'm aiming for continuing this next year. I'm just right now setting a couple of goals when it comes to my side projects, finances, health, everything actually. How about you? Yeah, I think, also looking back, it was a year that nobody probably expected to go the way it went. So I think like, I definitely have a few goals that are also influenced by how this year went. So starting with a bigger apartment with a nice office area to like really take working from home a little bit more serious. Also like more in the direction of there will be some pretty exciting news also from a work perspective. So yeah, I think we are never really stopping there. Do you have any new year resolutions? No, not really. How about you? Sports, no drinking or whatsoever? I do have to say, many years ago, I tried that, but it never worked out. So I said to myself, if I want to make a change, I started directly. I'm just not the advocate of new year's resolutions. How about you? No. Going to the gym again? No. You see, like, where I'm probably different is I never really make any resolutions because I know I won't hold them. And I think I would be too upset with myself, so I only do things that I really can hold. So no, I think no new year's resolutions, a couple of new year's goals, I think that's definitely something. Yeah, but it's also good to emphasize to everybody else, make sure that you have a plan. A bad plan is better than having no plan. But considering that we are a product development, management, design podcast, and we usually talk also a lot about planning and scoping and roadmapping and so on, do you have any tools that you would want to share on how to prepare, I don't know, how to prepare for a new year, how to plan for the future, how to, like, even think of, like, purely from a personal perspective on three, four or five? What is it like the three weeks plan, the four months plan and the five years plan or something? I tried a lot of stuff when it comes to self-organization. I can imagine. I know you. And I do have to say, there are two things that are really keeping me alive. So one thing is a to-do list on paper, just very simple. I did use Evernote a long time, switched to notes, but realized the handwritten stuff is the best one. But what is even better, in my opinion, than writing things down is just directly putting it into your calendar. I really have to say, for all the planning that I do, it's 90% Google calendars. I put stuff in, I use color coding. I have a free email course on my website that you can use if you want to get familiar on being structured in meetings and managing your time. Just to mention the no self-advertisement part. But yeah, I just summarized all my learnings when it comes to time management. I would love also to hear how you do plan your time, especially as a designer with all this amazing stuff out there. I think generally, because I'm such a terrible planner myself, I also read a lot and it took me quite some time to get really comfortable with different tools. And I can say, it's not the first time that I hear planning with a calendar works. I think it's also what I see, especially between people who are in high performing environments, that it's really important to also block out the time and to also be a little bit religious around your time slots. Because first of all, it helps you breaking down tasks or even phrasing it differently. I try to break down my tasks so that they can fit smaller slots so that I can also really tick them off. And that I also have different time for when do I do my email address, my emails, when do I do my Slack messages, and so on, to also make sure that I have distraction free time and also communicate this directly with the team. I think people know when I'm in my focus time and when I'm not going to get back to them with the emails. And I mean, I think we are definitely still a company who's using emails as their main communication tool. Therefore, we also have certain agreements where we try to respond to an email within half an hour and so on. So it's like also important to draw your line and make sure to be efficient. But one tool for especially for smaller things and also long term planning and all sorts of planning that I can't do in a calendar. And I was waiting for your question because I really want to talk about this. I have this one tool that I use probably since two years now or maybe three years. And with all the free tools out there, I'm always like a picky and trying everything out. And for this one, while I think it is actually free to use, I'm even paying for it because I love it so much. It's WebFlowy. Do you know it? Never heard about it. Okay, so and I'm only talking about this because I love it so much. WebFlowy probably doesn't even know that I exist. So what they have is bullet point lists. And each bullet is like to do. So you can check off to do from this bullet point list. And it's like an endless bullet point list. And each new bullet gives you a page if you want. So the more you like tap in into the bullet points, and it gives you this amazing way to structure whatever sort of work you're doing. And I'm using it like whenever I'm, I don't know, like last year I was working on my CV and portfolio. And they really used it to even break down the storyline and different pages and so on and so forth. I use it to plan, okay, now for Christmas, who do I need to drop a message? Who do I need to contact? Who do I need to give a present? It's like really amazing for everything. Yeah, because it's so simple, right? It doesn't come with limitations. And I think what I hate about other tools is that they put you in a very specific framework right from the beginning. And this one is completely framework or border less, like I can use it the way I want to use it. And depending on a project or phase of my life, and so on, I use it differently. For my consulting work, I use it in weekly sections. So I have a bullet for every week of the calendar in the year. And for every week, I then have like my to do's, my meetings, my notes, and so on. And I have different tags, and then I can find everything. And in my past, I did more work around projects. It's just so flexible. So yeah, for everyone. Because for example, I manage my private life and my business life in my calendar. So it's just interesting to see how people use certain tools to do both actually private life and business life. Yeah. I would struggle if I would have to do it because I also love to be slightly unorganized in the evenings. For example, if I would have to completely structure every evening also of the week. You don't have to. Yeah, but in theory, I would have to because otherwise, I would lose sight of the to do's if I don't put them in my calendar. I need to have this, let's say more free floating structure, which gives me general direction and to use the calendar to like really get worked on. I think the calendar helps me to get things through and work flowy, or even a handwritten like kind of to do lists would help me to simply keep track of everything that I need to do. But since we're touching this topic of self-organization, and which is also connected to personal development, what were the favorite books you have read this year, or a couple of years? I know that you read not as much as I do, but you do read, so what would you recommend our audience? What inspired you a lot? Yeah, you're saying it. I'm definitely not as good and as focused with reading as you are. I always get sidetracked by binge watching some series or episodes. It just helps me like to switch off my brain in the evening. But one of my hidden secrets is definitely Blinkist. I use that one quite a lot to get insights out of like some books that I wanted to read and then didn't have the time to read. And actually, just looking at the last Blinks that I was listening to, I was, for example, reading about or listening about the bullet journal method from Ryden Carroll. I think very interesting topic if we talk about like journaling and having task lists and to-do lists. I can definitely recommend it. I'm still not there yet. And I really want to also start like bullet journaling, but then I would miss the digital part of Workflowy. Other than that, Hooked, I actually read the book as well. Yeah, I read it as well. What else was good? I won't bore you with things like Future of Capitalism by Paul Collier and so on. I definitely also listened to some financial books. I had some refresh on the Lean UX book, speaking about the Lean. High Output Management by Andrew S. Grove. You hate it? Oh, yeah, I do. Why do you hate it? I mean, the message is good, but I think, I don't know, it was so hard to read to me. Yeah, maybe it was better. Writing style reminded me also of the book, The Blue Ocean, similar to that. So yeah. I mean, great books, the content is amazing, but I didn't read it. But I definitely have to say, speaking also about like maybe one New Year's resolution that I definitely will set myself is to read more. And I think for you, it will be the future. But last week when we were recording the session with Ryan, that you will hear in three weeks from now, if I'm not wrong, he also mentioned a couple of like super cool books. Absolutely. So yeah, I will extend my library and listen to them, definitely. But Christian, give us your recommendation. Give us your three top books of 2020. That's hard to say. Because there are different areas, right? No, no, no. Three. You're forcing me. Yes. Okay. I will just speak. Yeah. Wow. I would need to choose three. So I have to say one big book that really inspired me was Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. Amazing book. I can really recommend that. I love that one too. For everyone who has the entrepreneurial mindset, who works in product management, who needs to negotiate a lot and talk to people, I recommend listening or reading the book, Pitch Anything. Really good book. It's from a guy who supports people who are investing money, looking for investors, how to pitch an idea in a nice way, in a psychological, scientific way, what you should do, what you should not do, how long a pitch should take, etc. Really in-depth. It inspired me a lot. I need to read it again, I have to say, because there is so much input and so much information The author is sharing. Really amazing. Yeah, that was my second one. That's number three. Number three. What inspired me this year a lot was the book The Prosperous Coach. As you know, at the beginning of the year, I was still working with you at SumUp in January and then from end of January, I started my own business. As you know, 95% of the startups fail. I have to say, I am surviving and this book definitely helped me a lot to really think about what I want to do as a coach and also how I want to build up my business. What are my do's? What are my don'ts? Yeah, that were definitely the top three this year. Amazing. And my goal actually for next year is, I'm not sure if I want to read more because I just realized there are many successful people out there who are not reading, but yeah, it's just tough. I realized this year, having all these projects, having a job, doing a product bakery, having your own website with your newsletter, with your courses, with your blog, it takes so much time. And I definitely realized that I have less time to read. So let's see what the next year will bring. Yeah, I definitely envy people who have these crazy schedules in their day. And if we talk about like also habits of highly efficient people and so on, like waking up in the morning, reading, doing sports, going to work, reading another book, and stuff like that. I just, I mean, I have to say like with work, I really love to sometimes have these brain dead moments where you come out and or like, I just turn on the music and I stand in the kitchen and prepare something and then I eat and then I'm in my food coma and so on. And I just simply couldn't do it. I don't know. I think people do the same. I think maybe it's so what you need to understand is if you are honest to yourself, or at least if I'm honest to myself, if you look at what you're doing all day, there's a lot of time to be productive, right? So if you go to bed at, let's say 10 and you wake up at six, you still have eight hours of sleep and you can be productive. And I just realized for myself after 10pm, I'm not productive anymore. So I'm just watching a movie or I'm the opposite. Yeah, you're the opposite. I know. I'm sometimes the opposite as well if I'm stuck or if I'm in the tunnel of a project and if I'm focused. But overall, it's take an average day. I just like to use the time in the morning to do sports and to do reading for let's say half an hour or an hour. And then you have done all the work that you need to do that is important. And then your day just starts like the average day does. And then you can decide whether you want to have some chill out in the afternoon or in the evening or if you want to continue working. Most important thing is no matter what you do, don't force it. So you should have a natural rhythm and I need to try out a lot and I will try out a lot in the future. But, but, and I think here it's important even if like you can, you need to have a natural rhythm, but you can train your natural rhythm and you need to train it by forming habits. And I think that's, that's important if you only do it once. And this, this comes like with when you go to bed, when you wake up, when you read, if you read. You need routine. Exactly. I have one more book then to use my joker last time this year, because this is also a book that I read and it is Atomic Habits. It's a great book that gives you so much input on changing your behaviors, which helped me as well to change my, my whole schedule and my rhythm. But talking about this whole routine and scheduling and habits, it's very important also to apply those principles to your day to day business, to your job, especially when you work in product. You need to have a rhythm. You need to have also, as you said, your slack time where you are either focused or where you're doing nothing. And I just can't highlight enough saying as a product manager, you need to spend so much time as a product person in general, in your calendar, managing your time. I'm always protecting my, my calendar, like a dog's mom, the puppies, because you just really need to know what you're doing and you need to have free time. If your calendar is full every day, then you will at some point lose track of the main thing. Yeah. And as we also talked about, or I mentioned hooked earlier, I think it's not only what routines you have, but you can even use this and apply this to your product and your product principles that you have in place to create habits and routines on the user side. And that simply will close the loop, I think, best because, and that's also one of my mistakes where, like I mentioned it earlier, when I'm, for example, like in binge watching mode of an episode or something, that's one of these negative, I mean, patterns of like habit forming, for example, like I can simply, without a single break, skip through intros, summaries and outros of a series and simply watch through it. And I think that puts me in the wrong routine because I just simply lose a couple of hours in a week. You can make this routine a little bit better. It's also a life hack that I would like to share is by just doubling the speed of the videos you watch or the podcast you're listening to. Yeah. And with that said, good habits, every first day morning, product bakery, yes, double speeds, you will, you will get your fresh product news. Although I have to say, I do like listening to our episode in 1.5 because... What's actually weird? What's weird? I have this thing where when I listen to whatever podcast I listen to, I usually listen to at least one and a half or two. And so usually when someone laughs, you have this, and it completely fucks me up. Like even when I hear people laugh in reality, I think of their laugh in double speeds. And then I'm like, Oh my God, why are you laughing so slow? It's super weird. I don't know. This, this completely, yeah, fucks me up. Okay, we should stop laughing in our episodes then. Let's do that. But Christian, I think it was a good Christmas chat. I will call you simply before New Year's. Then we can even wrap up the year. Exactly. To everyone else listening in, thank you very much for this great year and helping us. Happy holidays. Happy holidays. Happy New Year and stay healthy. Stay motivated. There's a nice saying, it's also a book quote that I would like to use to close the podcast today. Tough times never last, but tough people do. Very good. Christian, enjoy the Christmas Eve. You too, Alex. Talk to you soon. Bye-bye.