SoC #53: Protect Your Sanity - Why Guardrails Matter

I'm Lisa - welcome to this week's edition of Stream of Consciousness - the newsletter for product leaders who want to build products and their careers more consciously, in ways that are inclusive, holistic, ethical, accessible, and sustainable.

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Q: "I'm starting a new product role soon and I want to make sure I have boundaries in place so my new job doesn't consume my life. How should I approach this?"

A: When you're a kid learning to bowl, very often you get to try it first on an alley with bumpers - metal railings on each side of a bowling lane that prevent the ball from going in the gutter.

As adults, we often only realize we're not on track when we've gone so far off track that we're past the gutter, several lanes over. We're standing there, overwhelmed, burnt out, and exhausted, trying to understand how to not feel like we feel and figure out where the heck we went wrong.

This especially true when it comes to our careers.

What often happens subconsciously is this prioritization:

CAREER > LIFE

We rely on our jobs for financial security, forming social connections, having a sense of belonging, and we also might use them to numb ourselves and to avoid dealing with trauma and deep emotional wounds.

There's another way to approach this though - we can consciously flip the narrative:

LIFE > CAREER

Thinking about how we want our LIFE to look first and then how our careers fit into that can help us understand what is most important to us and where our boundaries need to be to protect those things so we don't go off the rails.

For a variety of reasons (read: societal constructs, hustle culture, capitalism, etc.) we are systematically taught to ignore our inner voice - the very thing that is there to protect us and help point us in the right direction.

It's not normal that for many of us, our basic human needs fly out the window when starting a new job.

Thinking about these core needs is a great place to start when establishing our own personal guardrails - things like:

• Sleep (i.e. Sleeping enough and getting a high enough quality of sleep)

• Nutrition (i.e. Making sure you're eating regularly and making good choices about how you fuel yourself)

• Emotional and Physical Safety (i.e. Being in a psychologically safe environment vs. having your sympathetic nervous system activated all the time and causing you to be highly reactive and hypervigilant)

• Health (i.e. Being able to exercise and meditate regularly)

• Relationships (i.e. Investing time and energy in the social connections that matter most, like family and friends)

To think about what your guardrails might look like, it's often helpful to think of the inverse: For example, times when you have felt most depleted or like you didn't maintain a boundary that could have helped you feel sane.

Was it when you realized you were not enjoying your time with friends after work because all you could think about were the steady stream of Slack messages you've been receiving from your boss after-hours?

Was it when you spent the week feeling frazzled, only to realize that you skipped breakfast and lunch every single day?

Was it when you saw how much your son or daughter has changed while you haven't been around or been fully present because of how much you've been working?

I regularly encourage my 1:1 coaching clients to think about what their guardrails are and to phrase them as specifically and tangibly as possible - that way there's a binary variable to react to and action on (i.e. "Have I been getting 8 hours of sleep regularly?") gives you a hard YES/NO line vs. it being a boundary that is every shade of grey and more difficult to respond to concretely (i.e. "Have I been getting some sleep?").

Some examples of tangible and clear guardrails include:

• Spend 1 hour exercising (strength training, cardio, or yoga) every day

• Sleep soundly for 7 hours

• View and respond to Slack messages only from 9am-6pm on weekdays

• Spend time with my friends 1 evening per week

• Spend slow mornings with my partner and daughter from 7-9 am

The important thing here isn't to view this as an all-or-nothing game. Rather, a tool to help you identify patterns and trends proactively so you have an alarm bell that goes off long before you enter burnout and breakdown territory.

For example, if you find that over the last month you haven't been sleeping well, that's a flag.

If you've only been able to get 1-2 exercise sessions in per week, that's a flag.

If you've been on Slack at midnight regularly responding to co-workers in another time zone, that's a flag.

Have you written out your guardrails before starting in a new role? What did yours look like? Let me know!

P.S. I'm building a course on Personal Positioning for those transitioning into product from other careers. If you'd like early access and a discount, let me know here.

Conscious Bytes 📰

I GOT 99 HEADLINES AND TIKTOK IS...A LOT OF THEM: As government and leadership bodies continue to impose TikTok bans internationally, a former TikTok employee (who worked a risk manager in their Trust and Safety division) is fighting the company in a now not-so-secret way by exposing its security flaws.

WE NEED REGULAR INTELLIGENCE BEFORE ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE: Why a human-first mindset is needed for AI (AKA why focusing on boosting our profits and efficiency above all else is probably going to bite us in the ass pretty soon).

TECH THAT BRINGS OUT THE BEST IN US: Exhausted from hearing about all the problems with the tech we use? Me too. That's why I loved listening to this podcast episode, "Designing and Using Tech to Bring Out the Best In Us" where my friend Clo S talks about using tech consciously to promote our wellbeing.

THE ETHICS OF EMERGING TECH: My friend Josh Cadorette wrote this post about the main "buckets" of ethical questions we need to consider when it comes to emerging tech - think: "These are the questions governments and regulatory bodies should be asking before some of these tools are released...but probably won't".

Soulwork 💜

• 🦸‍♀️ Ridding Yourself of Imposter Syndrome by Mike Monteiro

• 🔥 If You Want to be Confident... by Cory Muscara

Thanks for Reading!

If you're looking to improve as a conscious product leader and achieve outcomes in your career and the products you are building more intentionally, there are 3 ways I can help you:

1. The Product Manager's Career Guide: If you are an early stage product manager with 0-5 years of experience and want to design your career more consciously this is for you. Get clarity on what to focus on and why, define the trajectory you are moving towards, and use my practical tools and downloadable templates to help you iterate on the systems you are using to reach your goals.

2. Stitch: The Best Resources for Product Managers: The most comprehensive resource for anyone in product looking to save hundreds of hours Googling to search for anything from "How to do customer interviews", "How to get promoted", "Roadmap templates", "How to build accessible products", "Stakeholder alignment", "Product pricing", and more. Over 2000 practical resources organized by product area in a single .pdf.

3. 1:1 Coaching and Feedback: Schedule a 30-minute or 60-minute video session where we tackle the most challenging problem you are facing right now, or ask me for product-specific feedback on something you're building.

Have a great week!

-Lisa ✨

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