A couple years ago, I remember psyching myself up to write my year end review, only to realize that I couldn’t remember any details about what had happened in the first half of the year. Has that ever happened to you?

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We’re down to the last two weeks of the year! Last week, I shared part 1 of the ritual that I’m using to set New Year’s Resolutions for 2021. In it, I walked through how you can create more time in your day to bulletproof yourself against times when things get busy, so that you don’t have to sacrifice your resolution. This week, we’ll dive into how you can set better resolutions that lead to action.

It’s almost the new year… finally! Like many of you, I can’t wait for a fresh start in 2021. I usually start the year feeling hopeful and setting a few New Year’s Resolutions. As the year goes on, I see great progress on some resolutions and limited progress on others.

I’m going to try something different this time. I will be transforming my New Year’s Resolutions into a two-part ritual this year, which I’ll cover in this post and the next post. This post will focus on how you can create more time in your day to bulletproof you against times when things get busy, so that you don’t have to sacrifice your resolution. The next post will focus on how you can set better resolutions that lead to action.

As a PM, between meetings, Slack, and emails, I often felt like I had no time left to do “real work”. And yet, in business school, my friends had nicknamed me “T2K” because of how I got things done with robot-like efficiency. What had happened to the machine that I used to be?

I found the answer in “Indistractable” by Nir Eyal. Not only was I nodding along as I read the book (as odd as that is when you’re in a room by yourself), but it has been one of my favorite books that I’ve read this year. In this post, I’ll share my key learnings from Indistractable.

Each year, the Thanksgiving holiday celebrates the blessings of the year. This year certainly doesn’t feel like there’s much to celebrate. Between COVID-19, racial divisiveness, and massive wildfires, most people can’t wait for 2020 to be over.

And yet, ever the optimist, I’ve found things to be grateful for this Thanksgiving. Living in the San Francisco Bay Area with all of the pressure to have a big life, I’m appreciating the joys of a small life. From “ambient TV” to health, here are some serious and not-so-serious things I’ll be giving thanks to this holiday. What are you grateful for?

Before becoming a Product Manager, were you in Engineering, Design, or Business? Unless you came from the first group, many PMs battle imposter syndrome that they are “not technical enough.” Contrary to this belief, you don’t have to have a technical background to learn about new technologies. My friend and former colleague, Michael Lee, is proof of it.

Mike studied Economics as an undergrad and got a Masters degree in Interactive Media. He’s never worked as an Engineer, and yet he’s now built two proof of concept apps with machine learning and computer vision. How did this Analyst turned Product Manager teach himself about these hot new technologies? Read more to learn about Mike’s strategies on how PMs can be fluent with new technologies, even if you’re feeling a little technically timid.

Recently, my alma mater, Lowell High School in San Francisco, decided to change their admissions policy for the upcoming school year to be lottery, rather than merit-based. I can’t help but feel bad for this year’s 8th graders. They bought into the admissions game. They worked hard following the rules of the game, but the rules changed on them mid-game. Those that were at the top of their class and don’t get in next year because of the lottery will be left feeling supremely let down.

I know how they’ll feel, because it happened - temporarily - to me. Not many people know this, but I almost didn’t get in. Because of my personal experience, I’m taking a break from my normal product-focused writing to share what happened to me and three lessons that we can takeaway to turn this situation into a learning experience.

You’re excited. You’ve been put in the driver’s seat for a new project. You’ve looked at the data. Now you’re ready to talk to some users to validate your hypothesis from the data. You run to your user researcher with a list of asks. But your enthusiasm comes to a grinding halt when your request meets the reality of being slotted 39th in a long queue. Has this ever happened to you?

I sat down with my friend and former colleague, @Reed Townsend Jones, to understand this situation from the perspective of a user researcher. (In other words, I user researched a user researcher!) He shares the foolproof secret that will get you to the top of the queue with your user researcher every time.

Halloween is only about two weeks away and it’s clear this year’s celebration will be unlike any other. In past years, our family walked to a block party a few streets away. My husband and I stood shoulder-to-shoulder with our neighbors and admired the elaborate decorations, while our kids went trick-or-treating down each driveway.

We didn’t want Halloween to end up as another casualty of 2020. Halloween is one of the kids’ favorite holidays and they’ve already missed out on so much in the last six months that we really wanted to make sure that Halloween still has a little magic this year. I realized that I could take my PM wand out and “solve” Halloween, just like I would any other user problem. Read on to hear about how I used product principles to design a magical Halloween experience, with a COVID-friendly twist.

Whether you’re on Team Biden or Team Trump, we can all agree that the past week could have been a plot on a show like the West Wing or House of Cards. In the middle of the night, the nation learns that POTUS has COVID and numerous others in his inner circle test positive. He’s helicoptered to the hospital, treated with experimental drugs, and then discharged and back at the White House within days.

As we’ve stayed abreast these developments throughout the past week, it’s been hard to know who or what to believe. For example, the White House physician later admitted to giving false and misleading information. Sometimes there are good reasons that leaders do not share the full story with their teams, but clearly this was a case of information sharing gone wrong. Read on to learn what we can take away from the White House’s example and how you can still be a transparent and authentic leader, even if you don’t share everything you know.

P.S. - Get out and vote! Schedule the time in your calendar to get to the polls on November 3rd or mail-in your ballot early

LinkedIn has rolled out a new design and features. If you’ve seen it, what were your first impressions?

Honestly, when I scrolled through the LinkedIn Newsfeed, I kept getting confused and thinking that I was on Facebook. Here’s why I think that LinkedIn’s redesign misses the mark and three ideas that address user needs and business goals.

Previously, I wrote about how great UX makes technology “So easy a toddler can do it.” Now, I’m back with a distance learning edition! Read on to hear about what I’ve observed about distance learning and what we can learn from first graders about how to work more effectively.