 Hi, y'all. My name is Simone Barski-Neely, and today I'm going to be touching upon a topic that isn't often covered in depth, which is combating burnout as a product manager. While search results for burnout will give you tons of results on Google, you likely won't find much in the way of how to specifically address burnout in the discipline of product management. So let's talk about it. We'll discuss today what exactly is burnout. How do you recognize it? What is unique to burnout in product management? And what are some actionable strategies that you can take in order to address it? So I'll go ahead and share my screen. All right. So who am I exactly? My name is Simone, as I mentioned. I am currently the Product Director of Commerce over at CNN Digital. And previously, I was in product for companies like Discovery, Inc., People, Sports Illustrated, Sundance Now, Warner Brothers, and so on. So I definitely feel like at some point in my career, perhaps multiple times, I've definitely experienced burnout and have developed some strategies I'd love to share with you on how to overcome it. And in general, what's important to know is that I spend all day with product managers. So not only am I a product manager, but I report to product managers. I have product managers report to me. And I'm also married to a product manager who you will hear about plenty in this discussion because he and I have some very different ways of tackling burnout. Neither of them are better than the other. It just really depends on who you are as a person and what works for you. So let's just talk about what is burnout for a moment. It's a pretty obvious feeling that hits you when you start waking up in the morning with a feeling of dread about your day. We've all heard of Sunday scaries. They're really typical. But if you're finding that every morning you're waking up feeling a sense of dread about your day because you're overwhelmed or you are not excited about what you're doing, that typically is a result of burnout. It might look throughout the day like difficulty concentrating or a general lack of motivation. A lot of times there are some physical symptoms that come up such as not sleeping well, getting sick and just general emotional exhaustion. One thing I did want to point out about burnout is there are different ways to experience it. A lot of times we associate it with being overworked. I've actually found that in the past I myself have experienced burnout when I'm feeling under challenged, when I'm just not excited about the work I'm doing or I no longer feel like it's in the growth trajectory that I was hoping for and each day sort of feels like a drag. So burnout doesn't have one size fits all definition, but you typically know it when you're experiencing it. So let's talk a little bit about what's unique to product management burnout. Of course there are many different careers and projects really that can lead to burnout, but product management has some very specific reasons behind that burnout and it's important to identify them as you think about your own performance. The first one is really just you're working with every department. So everything is your business. You work with finance and legal and business development, editorial content, marketing, all of them, which means that usually you're spread pretty thin and also a lot of your coworkers don't necessarily know what you're working on. They believe that anything you're working on with them is the only thing you're working on. They don't realize maybe how much you have going on. It's also quite difficult working with every department to keep people in the loop in real time all the time, especially when you have a big list of things to do. And often you are kind of that communication point for management and execution. So while things are being executed and you're helping folks on the engineering or design side execute a project, you often need to be reporting back constantly to management as well. This just requires a lot of upkeep managing all of these different stakeholders. Burnout also comes for product managers because you have to say no to people a lot. Nobody likes to give bad news, but it's a really regular part of the product management job. And really managing expectations for your stakeholders can sometimes be mistaken for incompetence or idleness because a lot of folks don't know everything you have on your plate. If you don't communicate properly why you haven't gotten to something yet, they might think that you're being idle or you're not getting done what you need to, but really it's that you need to help manage expectations of when things will be ready. And in general, bad news has to roll off your back when you're a product manager, but having that positive attitude all the time and taking things in stride can take a lot of energy and definitely result in burnout over periods of time. Another thing that's unique about product burnout is that you're always on demand. So of course, engineers and designers are always relying on you for day to day direction and answers. Every sprint that you plan is really dictating what the work is going to be for the next couple of weeks for your team. So that's a lot of accountability and responsibility that sits on your plate. And very unique to product is that when you go on vacation, there's usually not someone to take on specific, particularly strategic parts of your work because there are usually one product manager per team. So you might have multiple designers or you might have a whole squad of engineers, but typically one product manager per team. So when you come back from vacation, the work is always there when you get back ready to get picked up. So it can definitely feel like work piles up as a mountain and it's hard to always delegate the work that you have because it's so unique to your position. You also are often this go-to technical person for non-technical peers and executives. So while I would definitely say the engineers that I work with, the tech lead that I work with will exponentially always be better at explaining some of the technical insights needed, all the bugs tend to get sent to you, concerns get sent to you. And that's because you really are supposed to be able to translate the technical issues and blockers into plain language to everyone. Nobody wants to get in the weeds and you kind of have to be that translator. So a lot of times timeline questions are directed at you, even if you have project and program management support, a lot of times because you are seen as that go-to technical person, they often get sent to you directly. One last thing is that something always feels like it's slipping through the cracks. This is a really common feeling in product management. I would say of all product managers that I've spoken to that have hit a period of burnout in their careers, this one seems to always be the most common because people always feel like they're not doing enough, but they're always working somehow. And typically your to-do list is about 10 miles long. It seems like the work never dries up. And that's really because part of product management and being a good product manager is prioritizing what are the things that absolutely must be done and what is nice to be done. The truth is that if you are a great product manager, you are going to have things that you want to do that you don't always get a chance to, but you have to make that confident and self-assured decision what is important to be done now and what can be done later. That being said, it doesn't always feel like you're on top of it because it feels like there's never a version of your work where there are no more tasks to do. So you might ask who in the world would take this job? This high pressure, lots of accountability job. I would say that product managers tend to be incredibly ambitious. They love to build things and it's a really cool job because you get to take an idea to execution and see it out in the world and work with users to see how they love it, work with stakeholders to help build a business and people who really love juggling multiple tasks and being at the center of a concept love being product managers. So there's a lot of glory involved. Whenever things go well, product managers get lots of support and praise. But of course, when things don't go so well, product managers need to have that thick skin in order to accept that most things don't happen perfectly all the time and it's always a learning experience. So we figured out product management burnout, it's very specific. How do we fix it? So the first way that you can tackle product burnout is that you need to really identify what is it about your job that is draining you. I say this because even though product management has a lot in common across industries and roles, not all product jobs are created equal and frankly, product managers range so wildly that they're just not seeking the same things. As we know, there are marketing specific product managers, there are services and technical specific product managers. There are people who have more of a business background that are applying it to product management. So everybody is looking for something slightly different in their career and knowing yourself is super important to finding the right role for you. I've included two great resources that can help you identify these personal insights of what would make me happy as a product manager. The first one, this is a shameless self-plug. Back last year, I did a talk about what kind of product manager am I? I've included a link in this particular slide if you'd like to try it out for yourself, but it basically helps you make a declaration of what kind of product management role are you happiest in, depending on the revenue model, depending on the type of company in terms of size, in terms of the users you work with. It's really important to understand exactly what kind of role you're looking for when you're settling for a product role. So you will know in advance if it's exactly what you're looking for. So I definitely recommend trying out the product management declaration. And then I also would love to give credit to PMDaisy.com, where I also included a link that also helps you understand how our product management jobs different even within the same industry, let's say. So here's an example of two product daisies, one that I created for two different jobs. The one on the left is the one that I have right now at CNN, and the one on the right is one that I previously had at a role that I felt a lot of burnout at and didn't feel like it was quite the right fit. Rather than just feeling like I was overwhelmed and couldn't understand why I was feeling that way, I went ahead and filled out a product daisy to understand what are the parts of my job that are either lacking or that I'm frustrated over. So you can see that on the left, depending so the different colors actually correspond to the level of involvement you have with each department in your role, you can go to PMDaisy.com and actually fill out your own daisy. And it does wonders to helping you understand your own position. But on the left, you can see that there's a lot of collaboration right now for me in departments when it comes to decision making. This is huge for me being able to be really involved in all of the decisions, even if I'm not the one actually executing on them, but at least getting, you know, being able to provide insight. That's been really important to me in feeling like I have control over my role. Also noticing on the left that I have program management support. I have really wonderful resources at CNN of some fabulous project and program managers that really helped me organize my day, organize engineering sprints. And that's something that I have found time and time again is not my strong suit. So having that support is really helpful in making sure that I focus on the things that I do feel like I'm good at. And lastly, you can see that I've got a lot of research support at CNN. We've got a really fabulous research team that helps to do either qualitative or quantitative. And so any time that I have questions, I can go to them and feel like I'm really connecting with the users. Let's compare to the other side here. So this job I was really feeling burnt out on. And you can see that I had a lot of distance from the business and marketing departments when it came to decision making. A lot of times things would just be put on my plate and people would say, you have to do this. And even if I didn't necessarily agree or didn't understand why, it was now a part of the decree of my job, which became very frustrating and eventually led to burnout. Also, there were really no resources for program or project management. And because that is really not my strong suit, I definitely felt overwhelmed. I would also say it was a bit of like an imposter syndrome experience that I had because it was something I just simply wasn't good at that I was being requested to make as part of the focus of my role, which made me feel like I just wasn't very good at being a product manager. Little did I realize that having a little bit of support in that department meant that I could flourish in other areas. And lastly, you can see that there was virtually no relationship with a research team. So I felt really disconnected from users and connecting with users is what has really inspired me to become a product manager. So obviously, that was not going to be a great fit. So definitely recommend that you go ahead to PMDaisy.com, create your own and then really assess the fit of your role for who you are as a product manager and then sometimes move on if necessary. But typically this will help you narrow down what exactly is frustrating you. How else can you tackle product burnout? So I always say, don't be a martyr. Burnout is not just affecting you, it affects your team as well. So if you come into work and you have a really poor attitude or you're not concentrating and your performance is not up to par, it's going to impact everyone around you. It's better just to take a day off work and reset. I would say, though, be really strategic about the time off. So this is where I will definitely reference my product manager husband. So when I take a day off, I like to create, I like to work on projects, I like to bake, and I spend all week preparing the time that I'm going to take off because creating something helps remind me who exactly I am. But on the other end of the spectrum are folks like my husband who decompresses in his own way. He will prepare all week for a video game he's excited to play or a book he's excited to read and really take it easy and not put too much pressure on himself. So everybody has their different way of taking the day off, but either way that you choose, whether it's decompressing or jumping into a totally different project, it's important to be strategic. The last thing that you want to do is to panic, take the day off, have nothing to do and spend the day just feeling anxious about work that you have piling up when you're not there because that defeats the whole purpose of it. But yeah, don't be a martyr. Take the time that you need. Otherwise, your performance is going to suffer and it doesn't help anybody. Another thing that really can help you tackle product burnout is identifying and resisting negative reinforcement. Look, we all work with some folks who have either been at a company for a little too long or just generally tend to be pessimistic and they might come to you and vent. Totally cool. That being said, it's super important to, while displaying empathy for them, know that there is a limit because a lot of times when you focus on negativity, it reinforces the feelings of frustration you might have. And rather than feeling like you can problem solve, which is really the fundamental foundation, I guess, of product management, it makes you feel helpless. The truth is that there is not going to be a single day in your product management career that you come into work and there isn't going to be a problem. That's the whole point. You're supposed to be solving those problems and helping your colleagues through them. So having problems arise can't possibly be the thing that brings you negativity. It has to bring you inspiration in order to overcome them, problem solve them and feel like you really achieved it. So if you are facing a lot of challenges at a certain point, just avoiding negativity can be tremendous. Another thing that is worth noting is in the workplace, typically there can be a lot of gossip and I would say that gossip tends to forge very insincere connections. I recently realized that when I looked back at my whole career and I think about the people who I've stayed in touch with at previous companies, we did not forge a relationship over gossip. We did it over projects that we worked on together, creativity, excitement. Those connections might feel real in the moment but in retrospect, they will appear to be insincere because they don't actually help either person move forward. And lastly, I just wanna note that not falling into negativity requires discipline. It's really hard, especially when you're super overworked or super overwhelmed to contribute to somebody else's negativity. It feels like the natural way to go but it hurts only yourself. It's also important to assess if you're being reactive and need to organize. And this is where we'll get into a couple of strategies around organization. One thing that's very common in product management roles is that you context switch constantly. You might be working on 10, 20 different projects for a moment every day and nonstop slacks from all of your colleagues, nonstop emails can be really distracting. So here are a couple of organization strategies that I use to feel less overwhelmed. These are those that work for me. There are some that I did not include here because while they sound great, I have not been able to do them. So just wanna be honest with myself. One of them I consider it like stop, make a note or ticket. Let's say somebody messages me with a bug or a question that I don't have the answer to offhand or even there's a ticket that I need to make. Before I try to jump on it, I always try to write it down. On the left, you can see here that I am a fan of Trello but there are always other opportunities within Evernote or even going directly to GitHub or JIRA to make the ticket. So long as you write it down, you will feel so much more comfortable that something isn't slipping through the cracks. I really believe that short-term memory in product management is one of the challenges we all have to work against. So just not trusting that you'll remember later and writing it down always is helpful. I also would say make your roadmap cross-departmental and public. So this goes back to one of the points of burnout that product managers experience, which is a lot of folks don't know what you're working on and they might be mad or pushy towards you if they feel like you're not prioritizing their work when they don't know what else you're working on. So I like to make my product roadmap really, really explicit to all of my colleagues, show them what we're working on, the progress of it, even when it's across departments. So marketing typically doesn't really care as much about what business development is doing or editorial and while they have needs of their own, it is important to show them that they're not the only folks you're working with. I also would say that if you even better can tell them how you're determining the priority rank that's ideal because then you can get input from folks who don't necessarily agree or have insight into the importance of something that you might not know about. I love using the rice model. It's looking at the reach, impact, confidence and effort that a particular initiative requires. And I actually create a key for everybody to see where did this measurement come from so that we can all be aligned. Another organization tactic is to organize and block your days. I have a couple of examples in the bottom left here of the type of calendar events that I will set for myself. I find that particularly if I'm writing requirements or I'm working on strategic prioritization I really need focus time. So blocking off that time to just commit to those things is really helpful for me. Communicate your focuses. Here are a couple of examples on the top right of times that I explicitly, these are real life examples of times I've told coworkers I'm in a meeting for the next hour, mind if I circle back or I'll need to wait until this afternoon because I'm in the middle of something. The truth is that if you do things as soon as everybody wants you to you will never get more than one minute done of anything at any time. And lastly, I would say, chase that inbox zero magic. For me in my email, if I'm at inbox zero that means that I have responded to everything. There are no more to do. So making sure that you really discipline yourself to go through each email and only archive it if you know that you've responded to it or there are no next steps can really take a lot of the anxiety and that feeling of things slipping through the cracks off of your mind. And last but not least this is not just for product management. It's certainly for everybody but it's a good reminder and one that frankly I struggle with a lot. So I put it in here to even just remind myself it's really important to manage your work hours. Wherever you can delegate to have people on engineering or design or marketing or anyone really help you whether it comes down to research or writing out requirements lean on the people you work with. Particularly, I can say at CNN I have some really incredible colleagues who have insights I simply don't if I can delegate to them to be able to tackle some things it will save me significant time and it might honestly come out better. So delegating where you can is super important to managing your own sanity. And then when you do take off either stay off and create boundaries. I know that's really hard to do sometimes especially when like crazy bugs pop up or business critical issues. So either stay off unless something really critical comes up or actually set times for check-ins. I will every once in a while if I take a vacation that's a little more extended I will book a time for a check-in just to make sure that nothing is on fire because it brings me a lot of peace knowing that everything's under control while I'm out while also making sure that my team has the support they need. But setting those times for check-ins and not just making it you on your slack all day is really important. And then lastly, we always talk about OKRs in the context of product management in order to hit all of our goals for different initiatives but we all as people need to consider our life OKRs. We have to think about our partner or our friends other things that make you feel like a complete person your family and kids, your personal health your fitness and hobbies. All of these things are important for having a successful person let alone a successful business or product think about your own life in OKRs. And if you ever find yourself really running low in any one of these categories make sure to give it some attention because that will really help prevent burnout and remind you who you are. So that's all I've got for you. I hope that this was helpful. That being said, I really encourage if anybody out there is feeling burnout or has specific questions around how to organize their day or prevent burnout or even in the thick of it and want someone to talk to please feel free to reach out to me you can see my LinkedIn and Twitter here. And thank you so much. I wish you all the best of luck as we go on to build great things and stay sane doing it. Thanks.