Last year, I realized that my writing lacked clarity. While working on PRDs, product newsletters, and similar product documentation, I found myself struggling to express my thoughts on paper. To address this issue, I decided to take a creative writing course from my writer friends.
This month, I successfully completed all of the sessions. In addition to technical and structural subjects, I gained some meta-level learnings that are very applicable to product management. Here are three of those learnings:
- First drafts are always bad. That’s why they’re called first drafts. It’s important to accept that you will need to iterate over and over for the piece to reach the state in your mind.
- It will never be perfect. During my high school and college years, I started many blogs and wrote articles that I wanted to send to magazines. However, I abandoned them after two or three attempts because I felt that my writing wasn’t good enough. The classes taught me to be okay with what I have. I can always improve later.
- Why? Why? Why? I have never been asked so many “why” questions in my life. Every sentence in every homework assignment was scrutinized with a “why.” It felt like the teacher/editor was managing my articles like a product. This process greatly enhanced my skills in product discovery.
I highly recommend a creative writing class to all product managers to gain a new perspective towards product documentation processes.