Principle: Everything matters, and nothing matters

Product Managers… how important would you say onboarding is? What about font selection? Or how information is laid out on a screen?

Those are all trick questions – there are no right answers. It depends on your circumstances: are you in a startup or large co., are you working on a new or established product, how much marketing can you afford, is it before or after [insert unexpected, destabilizing world event]?

The only real answer can be: “Everything is important, and nothing is important.” (Which is not helpful… or is it?)

In a paradox like this – where two things are simultaneously contradictory and true – the answer is always somewhere in between. Sometimes closer to one extreme, sometimes closer to the other, and in a different place every time. The only way to answer the question is by thinking through your particular situation. I wasn’t happy to come to this realization because it meant more work and less certainty.

For those of us that crave certainty, uncomfortably embracing paradoxes is critical. When we don’t, we waste time searching for the “right answer” and, worse, we hang on to the answer long past its expiry date. We also miss the world changing around us as we bask in the comfort of our knowing.

The only way I’ve found to deal with paradoxical situations is to understand why things happen from first principles. When you understand the underlying mechanics you can figure out what’s likely to happen in different situations.

It’s said that the answers to the most important questions in life are paradoxes. It seems that the same is true for the most important questions in product management.

Which might also mean that life is just one big product management job.