1.) You have given up trying to explain your job to friends and family
2.) And you die a little inside when someone calls you a project manager 😖
via GIPHY
3.) There have been times when this was your idea of a ‘light schedule’
4.) But in reality you spend most of your days trying book a slot in everyone else’s calendar that works for an upcoming meeting
Ok, that’s an exaggeration! This Saturday at 4am works, right? 😇
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5.) You Googled this more than once pre-pandemic…
© Google
With the number of post-it notes you’ve written, you’re probably down 20 IQ points, at least.
6.) You can name the authors of at least 3 of these classic books:
Answers at the end of the article!
7.) You un-ironically use a Kanban board to organise your personal life 🤓
© Trello
8.) You sometimes create fake tasks in Asana for the joy of seeing the unicorn when you complete them 🦄
© Asana Celebrations Revamped
Whoosh! Never gets old 😎😎
9.) When you forget to pick up groceries on the way home, you don’t apologise to your family, you simply explain that it was de-prioritised…
…but they shouldn’t worry, it’s in the backlog and will be considered again for next quarter, promise! 😇.
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10.) You know at least 20 nice ways to say ‘No’ without saying ‘No’
Top hits include:
- “Which OKR does it align with?” 🤔
- “Let’s take that offline.” 🚫
- “Can we get some more data around that proposal?” 🤓
- “What problem are we really trying to solve here?” 🕵️♀️
- “Is there a manual workaround?” 🔨
11.) You also come with some other catchphrases
Forget Barbie and Action Man, Convertia is the action figure our kids need! 😊
12.) You just silently judged me for using Comic Sans MS above 😏
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13.) Another day in the office is just another opportunity to AB test your outfit choices to optimise for compliments
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Woohoo! That’s a statistically significant uplift in self-esteem 🥲.
14.) You spend your life talking about goals and MVPs but you don't know your Ronaldos from your Rooneys ⚽🤷.
15.) You shamelessly overuse gifs and memes to spice up your slides and emails
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Conclusion
So, product managers, how many of these signs did you tick off? And can you think of other tell-tale signs we missed? Let us know in the comments below!
Answers to question 6) The Lean Startup — Eric Ries, Inspired— Marty Cagan, Sprint — Jake Knapp, The Hard Thing About Hard Things — Ben Horowitz, Don’t Make Me Think — Steve Krug.
