Thread by @onejasonknight

Let's talk about mental health in #prodmgmt because, whatever some naysayers might say, this is an incredibly tricky job. Even when it's going well it's hard! And it's very often not going well 🧵

Part of me wonders if this is down to many of the big books, you all know the ones, painting an aspirational vision of what product management is & what a product company should be. And, don't get me wrong, I *want* to work for one of those places. But they are few & far between

And, let's face it, even working for companies like that is hard. None of them say product management is easy! So, let's be clear, even in idealistically run, by the book companies, your average product manager's life is going to be incredibly difficult

Look at that through the lens of a non-ideal company, of which there are many, and you have a recipe for disaster. If PMs are having to fight even for the fundamental right to be PMs, on top of the difficulty of being a product manager, it will take a toll

That toll can manifest itself with PMs trying to do too much, or spending half their time firefighting, acting as project managers, analysts, CS, support. And part of this comes with the territory - sitting as we do in the centre of things, we are natural polymaths

But this adds up to an incredible sense of stress, burden, overwork & depression because we're there trying to hold all the strands together in a fundamentally broken system, everyone's blaming us when stuff doesn't work, and praising others when it does

So what to do? If we assume that we can't change company culture in a day, we need to get tactical & do what we can to survive, find the joy that we can. Just reading a book about swimming then jumping in the pool is going to lead to disappointing results

A lot of this boils down to effective product leadership, which seems lacking in many companies. PMs should not be left to struggle alone and need senior product people to step up to the plate, provide air cover, support, coaching & mentoring as appropriate

Aside from that leadership, being able to rely on the support of places like #prodmgmt Twitter or even product management LinkedIn & Facebook, and building a list of peer mentors (f2f or online) to share stories with & commiserate when necessary

Most challenges we face, when we look back on them, were probably not that bad & ultimately situational. Most of the time they've been seen by other people and peer mentorship can be a game changer in this situation. Just having someone tell you it's OK can really help

So find your people, support each other. We should all push our bosses to be a little bit better too. Ultimately we need to try to take the books for what they are, wonderful sources of what we *might* do but adapt them for our own reality & not crush ourselves under their weight