• Stef the PM
  • Posts
  • A Day in the Life (of a Very Tired) Product Manager

A Day in the Life (of a Very Tired) Product Manager

The Meetings, Misconceptions, and Quiet Wins Behind the Job Title

Author

Stefanie Brown
June 13, 2025

Hey friends 👋

On the outside, product management looks like strategy decks, roadmaps, and big bets.
On the inside? It’s Slack pings, 1:1s, last-minute context swaps, and asking:

“Wait… what are we actually solving again?”

I shared a post on LinkedIn about what a real day in product looks like, and over 160,000 people saw it.
I think it hit a nerve.
So I wanted to go deeper here, in a format that lets me share a few more thoughts, and hopefully give you something useful to take into your own week.

💡 1. Expectation vs. Reality

🧠 Expectation:
Vision. Strategy. Influence.
The PM as the mini-CEO.

😅 Reality:
Slack triage. Explaining tradeoffs.
Being a human router between five teams with competing priorities.

Here’s what a typical day might look like for me:

  • 9 AM: Catching up on Slack

“Quick ping, can we launch this tomorrow?”

  • 11 AM: User interview

“Oh. They don’t use it that way at all.”

  • 1 PM: Prioritization debate

Every team has a different #1 priority.

  • 3 PM: Context reset

“Remind me… why are we building this again?”

  • 5 PM: Headspace opens up, right as my brain clocks out

It’s easy to feel like this means I’m not doing enough.
But that’s the trap.
Because…

🛠 2. Not All Wins Are Visible

As PMs, we often measure ourselves by shipped features.
But some of the most impactful work happens in the background.

This week, here are a few wins that won’t show up in Jira:

  • Saved the team from building something misaligned (by asking 2 questions in a meeting)

  • Rewrote a confusing spec that finally clicked for engineering

  • Gave context that unblocked a decision we’d been stuck on

  • Zoomed out mid-thread and asked: “Do we need this at all?”

These are small moves, but they’re high-leverage.
They’re the difference between product motion and progress.

🧠 3. PM as Translator, Not Hero

The more I do this work, the more I realize:

We’re not the “owner of the product.”
We’re the translator between what users need, what the business wants, and what the team can build.

That means…

  • You won’t always have the answer

  • You will need to ask the dumb questions

  • You’ll have to say “no,” “not yet,” or “we don’t know” and still keep everyone aligned

And somehow, if you’re doing it well…
It feels like you didn’t do anything at all.

👀 Food for thought

Here are a few prompts I’m sitting with this week, maybe they’ll help you, too:

  • What’s one “invisible win” you had this week that deserves more credit?

  • Where are you spending most of your time: doing, starting, or improving?

  • How much of your calendar reflects your priorities, not just everyone else’s?

🧠 This Week in PM Realities

This Week in PM Realities
I said “we’ll need to scope it down” four times in one meeting.
Not because I like saying no, but because the yes should mean something.
Every time we choose less, we’re protecting the core of what matters.
(Also, I’m tired.)

💬 Let’s Chat

What’s the part of PM work you wish more people talked about?

Hit reply, I’d love to hear from you.

And if you liked this edition, you can follow me on LinkedIn for more bite-sized posts, or share this newsletter with a PM friend who needs it.

More soon,
Stefanie