The Word Product is in Productivity

Ok sure, the words "product", "produce", "productive", and "productivity" are all related, and all contain the word product in them. So why pick just two to highlight?

The TL;DR is because if you ran your todo list the same way a Product Manager at a software company might, you'll find you are much more productive. And, probably happier since you would be doing the more valuable work first, and not necessarily the easiest (which I'm guilty of too).

A Product Manager's main focus is to prioritize the backlog in such a way that it creates the biggest return on investment for the software company. Investment could be money, but most often it is time. Software Engineering time. With AI, this has changed a little bit. One talented developer and an AI copilot can now do about the same work as a 4-5 person team did just a decade ago.

But this isn't about AI. So let's get back to Product Management. How does a Product Manager prioritize products, features, and bugs in the order they need to be produced?

Well, how do they measure the "Return" in "Return on Investment"? Growing users, subscribers (paying users), revenue, and growth while reducing churn (the number of users that leave).

If I were to do a simple spreadsheet to figure out the order to produce my backlog (there are better tools, but for simplicity let's use a spreadsheet), I might list all my products, bugs, and features in the first column. Then I might put the "returns" mentioned above going left to right. With those in place, I could then determine how each product, bug, or feature might impact each of those returns with a simple scoring system. Say, 1-10, with 10 being the biggest impact.

Some quick math and I could extract a score for each, stack-ranked in order of impact.

My backlog is now "groomed" into a roadmap. I'll redo this roadmap monthly, quarterly, annually, or after any big change in the landscape. Whatever works best for the pace of the company.

As a Product Manager, I now have the confidence of knowing I can keep the Software Engineering team productive with productivity being at a highly efficient level.

Let's circle back on your todo list now. What if you ran it the same way?

What if you dropped it in a spreadsheet, listed the important areas of your life across the top. Maybe you'd use areas like:

• Self growth, joy, and actualization.
• Your people, such as friends, family, community.
• Your health, both mental and physical.
• Your career (or education).
• Your money (savings, investments, spending, etc.).

Then, after you scored all your tasks and goals in the todo list based on their impact to your life, wouldn't you have a list of things to do in the most productive way to do them?

Sound like a lot of work?

Whenable does all this for you. All you have to do is toggle the areas of impact when you add a task or goal. 

Whenable even goes a step further and lets you sort those five areas of life in the order they're important to you, so that your todo list is even more personalize and matches your values.

As a bonus, since each task and goal have a score, when you complete them, Whenable can track your performance over time. In software, Product Managers call this your "velocity". 

Grab Whenable today and increase your velocity towards a valuable life filled with satisfaction.