PM Your Parenting

Deb Liu has a devastating observation about product managers: some of the best PMs she's worked with are terrible PMs for their own careers. They love the craft. They have plans and timelines and customer research for their products. But when it comes to their careers? They just drift from job to job with zero intentionality.

She asks them: 'If you had to write a spec for your career, what would be in it? What are your milestones? What does success look like?'

This maps so precisely to parenting. We read the books. We research the car seats and the sleep schedules and the developmental milestones. But do we ever step back and ask: what's the spec for this? What kind of human are we trying to help develop? What values matter most to us as a family?

Deb's career insight applies directly: if you're sure where your destination is, that's where you'll end up. But if you aim in the right direction, you can shape everything toward the place you want to go.

You don't need a rigid plan. You need intentionality. A direction. Otherwise you're just drifting from tantrum to tantrum, milestone to milestone, without knowing where you're headed.