It can mean two things: One, that person is being polite and saying goodbye to you. Two, that person appreciates the opportunity to work with you and genuinely wishes you the best.

You can feel the difference. When the person feels grateful for working with you, they will say more than “Hopefully, we’ll cross paths again.”

As you work, solve problems, and make an impact. Hopefully, you’re also making a few friends. It doesn’t have to be a lot, but you get 3-5 people to say the number two.

Subscribe now

If you're not interested, even an obvious improvement will feel like a chore.

If you work on something you're passionate about, you can accumulate the learnings and skills over the years. You will become hard to compete with because you have passion and skill. That makes you dangerous.

Subscribe now

P.S. What topic are you interested in? Albert Einstein said the best way to learn is to enjoy something. If you’re interested, try to make time to explore that. Perhaps that will lead you to a new milestone in your life

Is it because of how the logo is shaped?

I would also argue that if you never use Apple's products, you'd feel something else. Maybe you associate Apple as "overpriced."

The logo is not a brand.

The logo is a symbol, it is trivial. In fact, most brands we care about have weird logos. Oh, let’s build a multi-billion dollar company that serves coffee. Let’s put a mermaid in the logo. How is that make any sense?

The brand is what you say.

The brand is something people expect or associate with.

It's funny how much the product experience can affect our perception of a certain brand. The brand is the instinctual feeling when people see your logo or product. You build it for years and years.

You can't just create a brand overnight.

Prompt: Find a logo that is surprisingly ridiculous from the brand we care about. Post them in the comment section.

Subscribe now

P.S. Actually, it’s a Siren. Folks who founded Starbucks looked at the old marine books and they found Siren. It resonates with them and they take that as an inspiration.

Hi friends,

I usually organize my week with to-do lists. The tasks that I want to do to help me progress with my goals. But sometimes, only doing the tasks feel dry and monotone.

One day, I got the work done, but I felt the stress piling up. Then the next day, I started an experiment where I dedicated a “fun time” as part of my schedule. I started to steal 30 minutes for a morning walk. I started to put that 30 minutes into playing online board games. These activities help me stay fresh.

Without realizing it, I created a “to-feel” list. This has been useful to keep me stress-free. This is a tool I’ve been using to maintain my emotion:

When I want to feel inspired → I read books or listen to podcasts.

When I want to feel fun → I make time to play game.

When I feel nervous → I make time to write why I’m nervous and how to reduce this feeling. Notice that you can use this exercise to recognize what you feel and change that feeling.

What I have learned from this activity is:

1 - The key here is to make time for it. I make 20-30 minutes to have a morning walk. Of course, I can use that 30 minutes to start writing. But because I have positive energy and feel inspired in the morning, I write faster than usual.

2 - Commit to your ambitious goal. These seem like extra tasks in my schedule. I always remind myself to commit and focus on my bigger goal. Don’t fall into the procrastination trap. Have fun but still commit to your goal. Play that game, but don’t overplay.

A prompt for you:

Now it’s your turn. Write your “to-feel” list. Start list down the emotion you want to feel. Pick the top 3. Then start to brainstorm any tasks or activities you can do to achieve that feeling. What are those? How do you feel after doing this exercise? Share it with us and get inspiration from others on the comment section.

I can’t wait to hear what you share.
Budi.

If you’d like, you can post your response in the comments below or on Twitter or Instagram by tagging @buditanrim.

Leave a comment

Share

P.S. There are only 4 spots left for my cohort-based course. Join us if you want to level up your product thinking and be more strategic in your work. Check it out here.

My newsletter is for people seeking to level up their creativity, business, and product skills. Both free and paid subscriptions are available. The best way to support my work and this community is with a paid subscription.

Subscribe now

Hi friends,

Since last year, many of you have sent me emails to say hello or ask questions. I'm grateful because I can connect with you.

Of course, I started to write for a selfish reason: to help me think. But as the subscribers of this newsletter grow, I keep thinking about how to write something relevant. I tried to make a series but felt disconnected.

So I want to try something new. I want to write my reflection once a week (maybe every Friday). Then, I also want to include a prompt. The prompt will help you to think about something, and I hope you can share it in the comment section.

Subscribe now

Prompt 01. The fear in our head

After I quit my job, I created a cohort-based course. I started working on this in November 2022. I was excited but terrified because I didn’t know if it would work. I have a lot of doubts: Does anyone want to pay for this? Can I deliver a good experience for the cohort?

But whenever I felt this fear, I tried my best to work on one puzzle at a time. In the beginning, I started by clarifying what transformation I wanted to give to my students. Then I started to brainstorm the essential frameworks, tactics, and ideas to help students transform themselves.

I quickly realized there was a lot to prepare. The reading materials, the in-class exercise, preparing the students' platform, and so on. Another fear starts to kick in: Am I good enough? If I prepare all of this, does anyone want this? Then, I decided to test.

Before I finished the Syllabus, I announced to my audience on Instagram about this idea. Then, magically 10 people signed up. They paid. I was really grateful for them to put trust in me.

It was a total roller coaster. Sometimes, I feel confident about the course. But there are days when I struggle to ensure the students can get the point and know how to apply.

What I have learned from this experience is simple but profound:

1 - Action gives momentum. Whenever I feel confused or worried, I realize that taking action is much better. I usually write the question on the paper, structure my thinking, and set a to-do list or plan to attack it. Whenever I don’t do this, I get overwhelmed and demotivated. Taking action is indeed key in this situation.

2 - Impostor is expected. Whenever you do something new, you’ll feel the impostor. There’s no guidebook. There’s no sure way to accomplish this new thing. You’re learning as you go. So, whenever in doubt, I said to myself: Well, I’m learning, and I’ll try my best.

A prompt for you:

Go to the comment section in this blog and introduce yourself. Then, share with us the last time you have fears—or even low points or felt impostor. What are those fears or worries? If you have overcome it, what were the key actions that helped you? If you still figuring it out, what questions do you have?

If you’d like, you can post your response in the comments below or on Twitter or Instagram by tagging @buditanrim.

Leave a comment

I hope to hear from you.

Budi

P.S. You can check the cohort-based course I’m talking about. For now it’s only for Indonesian audience. But hopefully I can open it up to english-speaking audience in the future.

Customer hitchhiking is following whatever the customers want. It's a lousy way to build a product. Oh, the customers want the page to be colorful. Let's make it colorful. Do they want a calendar feature? Sure, let's build a calendar.

It’s a common misconception people have about customer-centric.

In 1998, Apple removed the floppy disk drive on iMac. They used something new called USB. The customers thought Apple was crazy because everyone used floppy disks then. But this courage to make the technical decision is essential in innovation. Apple removed the floppy disk because they believed it was no longer relevant.

Apple has a point of view on the way they build products. With this point of view, we are being very clear about what kind of people should use them and how they're supposed to use them.

This is where intuition is useful. Without any point of view, we'll build mediocre products. We create a bunch of unrelated features in one product. We'll obsess with competitors or we customer hitchhiking.

A simple way to form your intuition is by using the feature strategy map.

Share this idea if it’s resonates with you.

Subscribe now

Two things to talk about today: Intuition and insights.

Intuition because it’s how most businesses, projects, and products started. Steve Jobs followed his intuition, and we have Apple today. Jeff Bezos had an instinct that Kindle was a vital innovation that Amazon needed. You get the idea…

Insights because our intuition is not enough. Look at this tech graveyard that recorded 200 startups that failed. Insights are the snippet of understanding about our users—the people we seek to serve. When we talk to this group, we want to understand their worldview and how they operate.

Then we think: Is our intuition makes sense? Can I envision creating a positive change I seek to make? How can I sharpen this intuition and execute it?

It is an essential concept to kick off our discussion about Product Execution. 

If we don’t dare to make that intuition, we won’t have a starting point. We won’t have an airplane if Wright Brothers didn’t listen to their intuition, made hypotheses, and built the first airplane in 1903.

If we don’t seek insight from people, we might build something no one wants. We might as well go to the Casino and say, "All in." You could win, but by surprise not by design.

Subscribe now

Related post: Product execution series

In this workshop, I minimize the lectures. You know, that one person talking in front of the class. A lecture for 5-10 minutes makes sense. But a one-hour lecture? That’s boring.

Together with ten people who want to grow and level up. We’ll practice in the next six weeks. So, here’s how it works.

Self-paced because everyone learns at a different pace. They can find the best time to consume the material before the live class.

Practice. Only 10% of students' time is for consuming. We'll dedicate the rest of the 90% to doing this. Practice is where the learning is. Practice is about doing things you never did before. It’s not going to be easy. But practice is a small step toward mastery.

Live class. Then, at the end of the week, we'll meet in the Zoom class and exercise together. The class focuses on applying the concept. Not me talking.

Implement. Whenever they’re ready, they will apply it to their work. After the workshop, they still get support because they can post questions on the community portal.

Share

Product execution

We’ll practice product execution. These ten people are on the journey to level up how they build the feature. We’ll discuss how to define the feature strategy and how to talk to users.

Cheers for the new year.

P.S. I’m still beta testing this workshop. If you’re interested, let me know. I will let you know when I open the next cohort.

Subscribe now

The way you operate and execute is going to be different depending on the company’s phase.

Phase 1: Drunken walk.
The company start with the founder’s vision—an idea. The company aims to experiment as much as possible to prove that many people want that idea. The data is scarce and decision making is using intuition and vision-based.

Working in the drunken-walk startup? You’ll make a lot of decisions without data. Utilizing your intuition and sticking to the vision. You need a founder or owner mentality.

Phase 2: Product/market fit.
The company has proved that many people want to use their products. It's time to double down on what's working. The company focuses on adding value and differentiator from the competition.

Working in a company who have achieved product-market fit? You’ll need to add value fast. Start utilizing data to improve the product.

Phase 3: Growth.
The company has seen a healthy annual growth rate. In this stage, the core products have successfully served the core audience. The company needs to scale the product to adjacent markets or different use cases. As a result, the product can be simpler or more complex.

Working in a hypergrowth company? You’ll start dealing with bureaucracy. You'll see people who manage other people to ensure the execution continues to support the growth.

Phase 4: Scale.
The company becomes the market leader. Think Facebook, Amazon, and Google. The internal problems stack up. The company focuses on sustaining growth and serving the current customer's needs in a better way. This is where the innovator's dilemma becomes most acute: Should we look for new disruptive innovation or maintain the growth?

Working in the scale and market leader company? You’ll get a lot of “stability” in terms of career—although the layoff can happen anytime. You have a lot of resources to innovate. But require a strong leadership to break the “comfort zone”

Subscribe now

Scientists have figured out their method, known as the scientific method. It’s a way for them to investigate nature by making a guess (hypothesis). They test it and see the result.

For creative people like us, we need a creative method.

When you want to prioritize, what’s your method?

When you want to design a landing page, what’s your method?

How do you go about creating a multi-year vision for your business?

Being methodical is when you have a simple system to do the work. To execute effectively, which I shared in some of my writings. I shared how to find time for deep work, how to come up with UI exploration, how to scope your design work, how to start a new product, or how to improve the situation you see as a team.

Watch out, though. Being methodical has downsides too. If your method is too rigid or narrow, you can be trapped. The scientific method works because it combines inside-out (when the scientists make their hypothesis) and outside-in (when the scientists see the results or feedback from reality).

So, the next time you repeat a particular activity, ask yourself: What is my method to go about this?

Subscribe now

P.S. Next January, I’ll be a full-time learner. I’ll spend my time to learn programming, writing, and learning other topics. I look forward to that. I’m preparing a paid mentorship program, stay tuned!

Related posts

• Make your 30 days onboarding plan

• Principles on career advancement

• How to prepare your one-on-one as an individual contributor

• “Next month, I’ll quit my job”

• The recipient will feel better about themselves, boosting their morale and motivation.

• The recipient will feel connected with you and grateful because you're expressing this positive feeling.

• You will have more positive vibes since you are now focusing on their positive aspects.

Saying it explicitly, "Hey, the meeting went well. Good job on how you structured the meeting. Keep it up." Practice it in the individual setting first. Once you're comfortable, show appreciation in the group setting.

Subscribe now

The way we and society see productivity is by doing the work or learning. When we do anything that does not directly contribute to the work, we see it as less valuable. We feel this guilt of not being productive.

I certainly have been falling into this trap of productivity, thinking that I must maximize my time to learn and doing the work. Eventually, it will lead me to burnout state. So, I’ve been wondering lately about this. I want to break out from this condition and want to be able to see it from the different perspective.

I do a little research that might be useful for you who is in the cycle of burnout.

Two modes of brain

Perhaps insight from Barbara Oakley can be useful. Our brain has two general modes of thinking: Focused and Diffuse mode—both are valuable for the learning process.

The focused mode is when we read or process something with minimum distractions. We dive into the material. Unfortunately, only relying on the focused mode to learn is a path to burnout because we need time to process what we learn and digest it into our existing condition.

The diffuse mode is interesting because it happens when you relax your attention and just let your mind wander. It happens when you walk, take a shower, listen to music without words, meditate, or sleep.

Studies have found that after a period of mind wandering, the mind makes more creative connections between bits of information you already know. This knowledge help me to understand that putting a time off and take a break actually beneficial—so, I see it as a valuable activity, at least I try.

Eureka moment happens in diffuse mode

Have you ever had that aha moment during a shower? Why do activities like walking, running, or showering seem to produce many eureka moments?

These wandering activities put our brains in the right state of mind to have an aha! moment. Exercising or being in nature releases a rush of endorphins that can promote a positive, relaxed mood (source). This, in turn, can broaden your scope of thought to include remote ideas and long-shot possibilities.

Haruki Murakami, the famous novelist since the 1980s shared his routine includes run for ten kilometers, then read and listen to some music. He got to bed at nine. He keep this routine everyday without variation. It’s just shows how important it is to keep the mental and physical strength to be creative.

Be obsessed with working and learning. But taking a break is as important.

Subscribe now

Share

*

P.S. It’s 8 week before we close the year 2022.

*

Programmers usually write pseudocode before they write the actual code. They write in a plain language to sketch out their logic on how the algorithm might work. We can borrow this can concept and apply it in our work as product practitioners.

I find myself thinking about the business process a lot. For example, let’s say we need to hold a contest for YouTube every month, I will need to think quickly what are some of the big steps:

1. Decide what the theme of the contest
   — Billy must decide what theme based on trending data
   — We lock the theme in the first week of the month

2. Prepare the landing page
   — Should embed the submission form

3. Announce it
   — We’ll prepare an entry point in the app
   — We’ll email active users

4. Wait for the submission

5. Curate the submission
   — Use machine learning model to eliminate bad submission

You get the idea. It’s useful to think in this way before I go into creating detailed flow or something more advanced.

Related posts

• Handling conflict with people

• On strategic differentiation

• Disagree then commit

• See more on the table of contents

Gentlemen, I take it we are all in complete agreement on the decision here. Then, I propose we postpone further discussion of this matter until the next meeting to give ourselves time to develop disagreement, and perhaps gain some understanding of what the decision is all about.
—Alfred P. Sloan

That’s interesting, right? What Alfred meant there is basically, if everyone agrees without any disagreement, you should watch out. Develop a healthy disagreement is necessary to find the best answer in the room and avoid Groupthink bias.

Done right, disagreement helps you to uncover the blindspot.

At the same time, we must be decisive. The problem with a disagreement is that we can run in a circle, slowing us down. So, someone has to make a call. That is why I like the idea of DRI (Directly Responsible Individual). The goal is to commit to the best possible path, not to make everyone happy.

So, challenge people's views with respect and good intention. Have a debate with open-mindedness. Then, commit to the best possible path forward.

Subscribe now

Related posts

• 13 notes on user research

• Do things that don’t scale

• Next month, I’ll quit my job

• Switching cost

1 - It's essential to validate risk for your business

2 - You don't have enough time to validate everything

I used to think we needed to use data as much as possible. I always feel it’s necessary to do research first. But I realize that even after we do any user observation, there's always some ambiguity, and we will never be able to eliminate all of this unknown.

Jeff Bezos pointed out we don't always have enough data to be sure about the decisions. "All of my best decisions in life and business have been made with intuitions, heart, guts," he added. [1]

Tim cook shared a similar sentiment. His decision to leave a corporate job and join Apple was not something he could analyze, "It wasn't a decision that you could kind of sit down and do an engineering analysis saying here are the pluses and here the minuses." He said that analysis would lead Tim to stay in the corporate job—following the conventional wisdom.

Remember the two competing truths.

You need both—intuition and data. Find this sweet spot. Using only intuition is like gambling. Over relying on data is unrealistic.

Subscribe now

P.S. Lately, I have been enjoying the Internal Tech Emails

P.S.S. I think about onboarding design

Related posts

• 13 notes on user research

• PMF narrative

• PMF narrative template

• Vitamin vs painkiller

• Need vs want

• See more on the table of contents

At least do it when…

…you still proving if your product is valuable for users.

…you still finding that product-market fit.

…you still early in your startup journey.

Paul Graham pointed out, “One of the most common types of advice we give at Y Combinator is to do things that don't scale. […] You build something, make it available, and if you've made a better mousetrap, people beat a path to your door as promised. Or they don't, in which case the market must not exist.”

The point is, don’t think about scale before you actually prove there’s people want to use your product. You don’t want to waste your time and effort.

For example, if you are going to build a platform like YouTube, you shouldn’t think to build a platform where creators can upload their video. It’s expensive. Instead, find 10 creators that actually willing to make content with you. Prove if they can produce good contents, let them send their video manually, and you publish it on the platform. Then, maybe consider build the platform.

By doing things that don’t scale, you can spend a lot of time learning what best solution to build.

Consider this 6 elements to think about product-market fit.

Subscribe now

Share

Related posts

• PMF narrative

• PMF narrative template

• Vitamin vs painkiller

• Need vs want

• Switching cost

• See more on the table of contents

I use Google Pixel 3a. It’s okay—not the quickest in doing any task. What’s funny is I have iPhone that no one uses. This iPhone performed faster, but I just kept using the Google Pixel.

It’s a switching cost.

Customers, although not 100 percent satisfied with a product, tend to stick with it because of convenience. Tweet this

This is precisely why you should ensure your product is 10x better than the competitor. If the new product is only incrementally better, people will stick to the existing solutions. It’s more convenient.

It’s one of the components product managers must start thinking. Read Product/Market Fit hypothesis for more complete discussion.

Subscribe now

Related posts

• PMF narrative

• PMF narrative template

• Vitamin vs painkiller

• Need vs want

• Framework for defining strategy

• See more on the table of contents

People want a headphone, but what they need is to listen to the music privately.

People want a luxury watch, but what they need is prestige.

People usually express what they want. But our job, as product practitioners, is to figure out what they really need. Then, together with the team, we must figure out the best solution for that need. A solution that works for the users that fit with the product’s strategy, yet aligns with the company’s mission.

Try this: When you hear a specific feature request, ask yourself, is that a want or a need?

Subscribe now

Related posts

• Outcomes, not outputs

• Problem solving principles

• Next month, I’ll quit my job

• How to scope product design work

• See more on the table of contents

Answering questions on the spot is not an easy task. Our brain needs time to process the questions and build arguments.

It’s better to give a thoughtful answer rather than a hurried one. Remember, be quick but don’t hurry.

Retweet this

Subscribe now

Relevant posts:

• Interesting insights vs. useful insights

• How to be a strategic in designing onboarding experience

• How to identify the acute problem users have

• How to scope your product design work

Interesting insights are the one that makes people goes, "Wow, that's new." But people can't do anything about it. It's interesting but irrelevant.

Useful insights, on the other hand, provide good patterns and signals to make a decision. A product manager can see the insight and go, "Okay, with that in mind, I think it's better if we do X."

To find useful insights, make sure to be clear on what decision you want to make. If you understand the decision point, you can plan better. You can ask better questions. Ultimately, you can synthesize the data to be relevant.

Subscribe now

For paid subscribers:

• How to be a strategic in designing onboarding experience

• How to identify the acute problem users have

• How to scope your product design work