The Software Product Management Blog

What to do with your physical stuff after a GTD sweep?

I’ve recently jumped back into Getting Things Done after a year or so lapse. Yesterday I “corralled my stuff” by going through my office and clearing out every self, nook and cranny.

Following David Allen’s method, I processed all of that stuff by tossing it, filing it or making a note of it as a Next Action in my system. It was an incredibly freeing process. I feel like at least as far as my office goes, I have a pretty good handle on all of my open loops. I was using a laundry basket as a giant container for the physical stuff that I needed to do something with.

Getting Things Done Book Outline

I’ve been a practitioner of the book “Getting Things Done” by David Allen for years. I reread the book every few years. Here is the Getting Things Done book outline that I use during my regular review process. I hope it helps you be more productive. Part 1 - The Art of Getting Things Done Part 1 provides a broad overview of the GTD technique. 1 - A New Practice for a New Reality The Power of Being Fully Present: Emphasizes the importance of being completely engaged and present in the moment, despite numerous tasks and commitments.

Eat That Frog Book Summary

Master time management & beat procrastination with Eat That Frog! book summary. Unlock productivity tips & achieve your goals.

Great sites for picking website color schemes

I have a hard time with colors. I don’t know if I’m actually color blind but I will admit that from time to time I’ve left the house with two different color socks. I know my inability to ascertain color can hamper my ability to create visually pleasing web sites but I don’t want to stick to black and white. However, finding color designs to steal (ahem, borrow) is extremely tedious.

The Rabbit Hole

Distractions are a bitch. I’m writing this as the last step in a hole that I found myself in. It went something like this. Wanted to work on a checklist for my morning routine. Had to decide best tool to create my morning routine in. Realized I already had it in a text file. Opened the text file. Made some updates to the existing checklist. Thought “Hmm. Doesn’t Tim Ferriss have a process he follows every morning?

Should Product Managers Do Wireframes? The Answer is a Resounding Maybe.

To promote a recently penned blog post, Product Plan CEO @JimSemik recently posted the question “Should product managers wireframe?” on LinkedIn. I have some thoughts on that I’d like to share. This question assumes that we’re talking about product managers in the software business. If you’re a product manager for a soup company, you might not get as much out of this answer. We all know that a product manager’s primary responsibility is to understand the market, customer and align it with your business strategy.

Does your app save content offline? Humanize your filenames.

Web applications sometimes download filenames for offline use. Naming those files is an afterthought. Read how your should do it.

Humanize Your Data

I’ve been playing around a lot with the app Rescue Time, it’s a really cool productivity tool that helps keep your workday focused. I’ve used it for a number of years. Today, I was taking a look at some of my stats and came across this pretty cool statistic. Wow, I’ve been productive for over 5 thousand hours. Wait, how long is that? Is that a year? So I popped on over to a time conversion website and plugged the data in.

3 Things I Learned About Usability Testing By Looking at Customers in Their Underwear

Usability testing is critical to building a better product. Learn how I've used qualitative and quantitative testing to help me improve my products.