Applying Product Management Principles to Life (with Miloš Belčević, Author "Build Your Way")

Miloš Belčević is a product manager and author who believes that product management principles are powerful not only when managing products, but also when managing the ultimate product; your life itself. He has written a book on the subject, "Build Your Way: Applying Product Management to Life". We spoke about the book as well as some of the lessons inside.

Episode highlights:

1. We can apply product management principles to life

We can apply product management principles to one's life, beyond just professional settings. This includes using prioritisation frameworks to manage personal goals and tasks, and considering whether there's a "North-Star metric" that can help guide personal growth and decision-making.

2. Context switching can be hell at home as well as work

Whether we're switching contexts between different roles in our careers or having to balance multiple responsibilities, we can apply product management strategies to help us prioritise our time and manage our mental bandwidth.

3. We can define "Value" for our life as well as our products

There's no magic formula for "value", but it's important to understand the deeper meaning of the concept of value, whether delivering value to customers or identifying what brings value to one's life.

4. Our time is limited and we need to prioritise what's most important to us

We don't have to use prioritisation frameworks for everything, but applying product management prioritisation techniques can help us focus on what is most important. If we practice enough, we can get into the habit, and it even becomes somewhat intuitive to our life decisions.

5. Product discovery techniques can foster better interactions and conversations in life

We can use our empathic and discovery mindset to help solicit genuine feedback and dig into people's motivations in conversations. This offers the tantalising prospect of being able to bridge ideological divides and improve the quality of our interactions with society as a whole.

Check out "Build Your Way"

"Perhaps you have heard about product management. Maybe you use it in your work. If that’s the case, chances are high that you know that product management is full of useful frameworks, principles, and tools that focus on prioritization and maximizing value, better planning, agile delivery, and more. But what if you want to use these tools in your personal life? How would you do that in a way that will make sure you will live a better, happier, and more fulfilled life? In this book, author Miloš Belčević will show you how."