The Benefits of Taking Notes in Product Management

To progress in any field, there's usually a fundamental activity you need to consistently do to get better at it.

For sportsmen, that "building block" is practice, diet & workouts.

For the military, it's rigorous training routines.

For a comic stand up, it's refining & testing their material.

For a memorizer of Quran, it's revising the recommended daily amount.

Now, whether it's writing content on LinkedIn, driving a product or managing office work - the fundamental activity for me has always been the same:

Capturing thoughts & ideas in one place as soon as they come by.

For content, I use the Google Tasks app on my smartphone.

As soon I sniff some inspiration, I log a short note. In fact, most of the time, it's just a couple of keywords.

For product or office work, I use an Asana board.

As soon as I stumble upon a thought inspired by an email, a Zoom call, an interesting article, a conversation or a random life event, I switch to my trusty board to jot down a few words.

Ideas are like a Snapchat pic.

They appear all of a sudden and then eventually vanish. If you don't snaffle them up at the moment, you miss out on value-laden opportunities.

Note-taking is love.