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Before the coffee even touched my desk, the day was already coming for me.
Here’s what a typical morning looked like for me as a Product Manager:
A cluster of emails. A dozen Slack pings. Three calendar invites. Two “quick” requests. All landing at once like stones in a pond.
Someone needed a bug fix.
Someone else wanted a status update.
A stakeholder had a “cool new” feature idea.
Design needed feedback on Figma screens.
Sales wanted a feature pulled forward for a big deal.
An executive wanted me on a call in 15 minutes.
My boss needed “that slide again.”
Every sender believed their need deserved top billing. The younger version of me treated them all like alarms.
My notifications were always on. Email docked in one corner, Slack in the other. Meanwhile I tried to finish a deck, analyze user data, write requirements, and somehow be “strategic.”
Then — exhausted, overstimulated, and slightly proud of being so “helpful” — I’d look up and realize the truth:
I hadn’t actually accomplished anything meaningful.
Why? Because I was running on everyone else’s urgency.
Here’s the lesson most PMs learn late, often painfully:
Urgent to someone else does not equal important to your product.
Most “urgent” requests aren’t urgent at all. They’re someone else’s poor planning landing on your lap.
What You’ll Learn Today
How to tell real urgency from manufactured chaos.
How to reclaim your agency and steer your time.
How to set boundaries that strengthen trust.
How to say “not now” without burning bridges.
How to spot when the real problem is your boss.
How to run your week — and your 1:1s — like a leader.
The Chaos of Everyone Else’s Priorities
Product Managers sit in the blast radius of every team’s pressures:
Sales wants a feature to win a deal.
Support wants escalations resolved yesterday.
Marketing wants clarity for the next launch.
Engineering wants decisions to unblock sprints.
Leadership wants the roadmap realigned. Again.
To them, every request is immediate.
But if we treat every request as urgent, we spend our entire week reacting.
And when we’re reacting, we’re not leading.
Reactivity feels productive. It looks helpful. It even gets praised.
But underneath, it quietly erodes everything that makes us valuable:
We lose control of our time.
We surrender our agency.
We dilute our strategic impact.
We send a harmful message without realizing it:
“Your lack of preparation deserves more respect than my planning.”
One of my friends shared a visual from the book Wild Courage. I haven’t read it yet, but he shared this image from the book with me that I liked — it framed a truth most PMs avoid:
Every time we drop our priorities for someone else’s crisis, we train people to keep bringing us more crises.
The result is predictable:
Your roadmap gets reshaped by whoever yells loudest.
Your strategy gets watered down by noise.
Your credibility as a product leader thins out.
The irony is people will love your responsiveness, but will criticize your lack of vision.
“Great team player,” they’ll say in your 360. “But we don’t get strategy from Shardul. There’s no product vision.”
And that is how careers drift sideways.
From Reactive to Intentional
Goals require intention.
Intention requires boundaries.
Boundaries require the courage to disappoint people.
It will feel awkward. It still feels awkward for me. But the alternative is worse: watching your big dreams stay dreams.
Here’s the mindset shift that saved me:
URGENT is someone else’s tempo.
IMPORTANT is my North Star.
Your job is to bridge the two without losing sight of what actually matters.
Practical Ways to Take Back Your Time
These tactics aren’t theoretical. They’re survival gear.
1. Use the Eisenhower Matrix
Urgent vs. important isn’t a just productivity hack. For PMs, it’s triage.
2. Anchor yourself to strategy and goals
If a request doesn’t align with these, ask why it matters. Or, maybe it’s time to revisit the goals.
3. Time-block strategy work
Customer calls, thinking time, synthesis — these don’t appear magically. You have to carve space for them.
4. Time-block responsiveness
Yes, we work in a fast-paced environment. But answering every message the second it lands? That’s not pace. That’s panic.
I responded in windows. And shockingly, the world did not implode.
A Tactic I Still Use Today: The 3 Questions
When deciding whether to say yes or no, ask:
Does this align with my priorities?
If I say yes, what am I saying no to?
Am I doing this because it matters? Or because I want validation?
And flip the mirror:
Am I the one labeling everything “urgent”?
Did I plan poorly and now need someone else to scramble?
If roles were reversed, would I expect someone to drop everything for this?
Remember:
When everything is urgent, nothing is.
Empowered Communication for PMs
Contrary to popular advice, your job as a PM is not to say “no.” It’s to redirect urgency without caving to it.
We can say "not yet" or “yes, or” with confidence and clarity.
Here’s language that protects your focus and builds trust:
“This sounds important. Let’s evaluate it during our next planning cycle.”
“Here’s where this fits among our current priorities. We can revisit if things shift.”
“Let’s align on the underlying need; there might be another way to solve it.”
“If we pull this in, here’s what gets pushed out—does that make sense for the business?”
This is PM judo: using clarity to deflect chaos.
Keep Your Agency
Too many PMs tie their sense of empowerment to titles.
“I don’t have decision-making authority.”
“My boss makes all the calls.”
“I’m not empowered.”
Here’s the red pill:
Authority is granted.
Agency is chosen.
You can always retain agency even without formal power.
As an individual contributor PM, I brought the same structure every week to my 1:1 with my boss:
My goals and priorities (year, quarter, month).
What I achieved last week.
What blocked me.
My proposed priorities for the next 1–2 weeks.
Where I needed help.
And here’s the irony:
Every PM Director and VP I know wishes their PMs would do this.
It shows leadership. Ownership. Clarity.
It makes alignment frictionless.
It builds trust quickly.
And it puts you back in control of your work.
This is agency in action.
When the Problem is Your Boss
Angela (name changed) learned this the hard way.
She started as the responsive PM. Always available, always helpful.
She burned out. Her boss told her:
“You’re very responsive, but you’re not making progress on your goals.”
So she reset. Reclaimed her time. Got disciplined.
And then her boss complained:
“I’m hearing you’re unresponsive or not available.”
She was whiplashed. Six months later, she wasn’t just doubting her job, she was doubting her career.
It wasn’t her. It was her boss.
A weak, inconsistent, ineffective boss who clearly didn't know how to lead.
If you’re in that situation, you need to ask yourself a hard question:
Is this the right place for me? Or am I shrinking myself to survive someone else’s incompetence?
Life is too short for bad bosses.
Your Responsibility as a Boss
👉 (If You Lead People, Read This Twice.) 👈
If you manage PMs, your job is to create the environment where they can do the work well and support them in doing so.
1. Provide context
Set clear goals and priorities.
Explain why. Provide strategic context often.
Continually connect the dots between your employees' work to department and company strategies and objectives.
Goal: They feel like their work matters.
2. Empower them
Provide role clarity and decision making.
Prioritize intentionally.
Ensure appropriate capacity and resourcing.
Goal: They should feel they have what they need to get their jobs done.
3. Develop them
Coach proactively.
Know how to give feedback. Individualize and personalize it.
Provide long-range career advice.
Goal: They should feel like they're succeeding in their careers.
4. Educate the org on PM’s role and value
If you don't, others will.
Champion the team’s impact.
Goal: They should feel they're part of something valuable.
5. Be the “poop umbrella”
Be the one to take the crap when it comes your team's way.
Protect them from unwanted distractions and unfair criticism.
Publicly defend them in how they spend their time. Privately mentor them on effective prioritization and time management.
Goal: They should feel safe doing their best work.
Failure to do these five things is a dereliction of duty on your part.
Lead the Work — Don’t Chase it
When you guard your time, something magical happens:
People start planning better.
They become more thoughtful.
The noise quiets down, and the real signals emerge.
Yes, some people will be disappointed. But a meaningful career—and a meaningful life—requires letting a few people down so you don’t keep letting yourself down.
Being a great Product Manager isn’t about responding instantly. It’s about knowing what matters and helping everyone else see it too.
So the next time a hot request lands in your lap, ask yourself:
Urgent for who?
Then choose your response with intention.
Your product will thank you.
Your team will thank you.
And, most importantly, your future self will thank you.
Because how you spend your time is how you live your career. And you never need to apologize for putting your priorities first.
That’s it for today.
Have a joyful week, and, if you can, make it joyful for someone else too.
cheers,
shardul
Here are 4 ways I can help you today:
Strategy Design Workshop: Transform scattered priorities into clear, actionable direction. I’ll facilitate your team through a customized workshop to align stakeholders and create strategies that actually get executed instead of forgotten. Book a call.
Product Management Audit: Get a clear picture of what’s working and what’s holding your team back. Through a systematic analysis, I’ll evaluate your strategy, processes, roles, metrics, and culture. You’ll walk away a practical set of findings and actionable recommendations to strengthen your product organization. Book a call.
Corporate Training: Elevate your entire product organization. I’ll teach your team how to think and act strategically, craft outcome-driven roadmaps, and dramatically improve how they deliver measurable results that matter to your business. Book a call.
Improv Based Team Building Workshop: Boost creativity, trust, and collaboration through improv. Your team will problem-solve faster and work better together. Book a call.
Shardul Mehta
I ❤️ product managers.