Commit to being competent this year
It’s that time of year where everyone usually start thinking about new year’s resolutions. I want to lose 20 pounds, I want to read 10 books this year, I want to do this and that. Most times, it’s just a wish. They are not actually going to lose 20 pounds or they might buy some more books but never read them. But at least they gave themselves hope. A belief that they could become a better them. I think that is impressive.
The issue with a lot of these aspirations, though, is that they require forming of new habits and carving out new chunks of time in an already busy day. While this is not impossible, it is hard.
But one key activity that takes a huge chunk of time is work. Your 9-5, your business, or maybe school. This is at least a solid 8 hours for the majority of people with a regular job. This is about 4000 hours in 6 months. Imagine you spent just 10% of that dedicated not to working harder, but to deliberately refining your craft.
When I think back over my career, this is where the bulk of the advancement happened. Through a commitment to getting better, smarter, faster at what it is I already spend eight hours a day doing, during that time.
There is, however, a smarter way to play this game. I do not believe you need to find more time. You need to leverage the massive block of time you already have.
When I look back at the steepest trajectories in my career, the growth didn’t happen on weekends. It happened between 9 and 5, by treating the job not just as a to-do list, but as an opportunity to experiment.
In Product Management, or really any knowledge work, we face a specific danger called the competency trap.
When you write a strategy deck, run a meeting, or execute a roadmap, you rely on patterns you already know. That is the dividend of experience.
You have done it before, so you can do it again, quickly. But efficiency can overtime be the enemy of excellence. Experience makes it easy to repeat the past, but it makes it more difficult to try something new.
To grow, you have to be willing to pay that cost. You must consciously choose the harder path.
What does this look like in practice?
For a Product Manager, it means resisting the urge to just "ship the document." We all know the saying: Make it work, make it right, make it fast. I recommend a fourth step: Make it beautiful.
By this, I do not mean aesthetic padding. In strategy and execution, "beauty" is defined by the Four Cs:
When you stop settling for "good enough" and start striving for "elegant," you force yourself into the wilderness. You have to find new ways to frame problems, new ways to persuade stakeholders, and new ways to synthesize complexity. That is where the actual learning lives.
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In real life scenarios, the most practical tool is your draft.
In engineering, there is the "Pull Request" which is defined by a moment where code is reviewed before it becomes reality. In our world, we often skip this. We fire off the email, we present the raw slide, we speak before thinking.
To level up, you must treat your own work as a collaborative exercise with your future self.
Look at your own work with the eyes of a stranger. Critique the flow. Question the proportions. Does this roadmap actually tell a story, or is it just a list of features? Does this email actually persuade, or does it just inform?
The Compound Interest of Excellence
As you read this, I feel like I can hear the objection already: "I don’t have time for that. We need to move fast."
This is the greatest lie in business. Your career is not a single sprint. It is enduring and long.
If you don’t take the time to refine your form now, you will spend the next twenty years repeating the same sloppy mistakes. But if you slow down, take that extra fifteen minutes to turn a chaotic thought into a crystal-clear directive, then you are building muscle.
Remember the old saying: Slow is smooth, and smooth is fast.
You cannot expect one good email to change your career. But a year of intentional, structured, "beautiful" communication, will almost inevitably lead to a year of rigorous strategic thinking. This is how you will notice the compounding effect.
In Summary, I believe work offers you endless reps. Treat every meeting as a chance to practice active listening. Every document as a chance to practice persuasive writing. Every crisis as a chance to practice emotional regulation.
The opportunities are there. The time is already booked. The only variable is your will to use it.
Move the blocker out of your way for 2026. You will be amazed at what a year can do if you stop just "working" and start practicing.
