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Great Product Managers don’t just make decisions, they get better at making them. By writing down one decision you made each week and why, you build sharper judgment, clearer communication, and a bank of real-world examples for interviews, reviews, and retros.
Example:
❌ “We deprioritised Feature X.”
✅ “We deprioritised Feature X after user interviews revealed it solved a low-frequency problem, allowing us to focus on a higher-impact request.”
Product Managers are making decisions constantly.From what to build, what to cut, when to launch, and who to align with. Some of these decisions are small, however others are much larger and strategic. For those making decisions on a daily basis, most of these decisions blur together, and that’s a missed opportunity.
It’s a missed opportunity because the Product Managers who grow the fastest aren't just decision-makers. They're decision-learners, taking the time to reflect on why they made the call, what informed it, and how it played out. This self-reflection builds a library of real world examples that can be drawn upon during interviews, retros, promotions, and performance reviews. It sharpens their judgement.
This seems like a huge amount of extra work when you’re already stretched beyond capacity. But here's the good news, you don’t need a journal full of case studies to build this habit. You just need to start by writing down one decision you made this week, and why you made it.
In fast-moving teams, Product Managers are rewarded for velocity. They’re rewarded for shipping faster, iterating quickly, keeping momentum high. But when speed becomes the only focus, something critical gets lost: intentionality.
As a Product Manager you make dozens of decisions a week, but how many do you actually stop to examine? Without reflection, your product instincts don’t evolve, they harden. You start relying on default patterns, gut reactions, or what worked last time, rather than considering what’s different this time.
Over time, this autopilot mode creates risks:
1️⃣ You repeat decisions without learning from outcomes.
2️⃣ You miss patterns in what’s working, and what’s not.
3️⃣ You struggle to articulate your thinking to others, especially in interviews or performance reviews.
Worse, when someone asks why you chose to cut Feature Y or prioritise Experiment Z, you might find yourself fumbling to reconstruct your logic after the fact.
Without a habit of documenting decisions, you’re flying with no black box meaning you’ve got no flight log (data) to learn from.
Through this exercise you will begin to create a log of decisions made as Product Manager, building your own reference log and data to actively reflect upon when you’re faced with more challenging decisions.
Understanding that you’re likely already working at capacity it’s important to understand that you don’t need to capture every decision you make. You just need to start with one.
By writing down a single decision each week, along with the reasoning behind it, you begin to develop a deeper awareness of how you operate as a Product Manager.
It’s not about documentation for the sake of process. It’s about building your judgment over time. Because the more you reflect on your decisions, the more intentional your next ones become.
And the benefits compound:
✅ Sharpened product thinking: You start to see the patterns in your logic, assumptions, and blind spots.
✅ Clearer communication: You can articulate your reasoning in stakeholder updates, retros, and roadmap presentations.
✅ Career leverage: You build a vault of real, thoughtful examples ready for interviews, performance reviews, and promotions.
Example:
❌ “We deprioritised Feature X.”
✅ “We deprioritised Feature X after user interviews revealed it solved a low-frequency problem, allowing us to focus on a higher-impact request.”
That’s the kind of answer that sets you apart, not just as a Product Manager who makes decisions, but as one who makes them well.
Building the habit of documenting decisions doesn’t require a new tool, process, or ritual. It just takes five quiet minutes on a slow afternoon, and a little consistency.
Here’s a simple approach to get started:
“What’s one decision I made this week, and why did I make it?”
That’s it. No templates, no fuss. Just a clear question that invites reflection.
If you’re stuck, try scanning your calendar, Jira board, Slack threads, or roadmap changes. You’ll usually find a decision hiding in plain sight.
1️⃣ The decision: What you chose to do (or not do),
2️⃣ The reasoning: What informed your call (data, user feedback, stakeholder input, constraints),
3️⃣ The context: What tradeoffs you considered or what made the decision difficult, and
4️⃣ The reflection (optional): What you'd do differently next time or what you learned.
This habit isn’t just about personal reflection, it pays off in nearly every corner of your career:
🤝 In stakeholder meetings, it helps you clearly explain the tradeoffs behind a decision, especially when there’s pushback or competing priorities.
🔁 In retrospectives, it gives you a structured way to evaluate what worked, what didn’t, and why certain choices were made.
🎤 In interviews, it provides sharp, ready-made examples when you’re asked to “walk through a tough call” or “explain a product decision.”
📊 In performance reviews, it helps you demonstrate not just outcomes, but the thinking and strategy behind them, something many Product Managers struggle to articulate.
🧑🏫 And in mentoring moments, it allows you to guide junior Product Managers through the decision-making process with clarity and credibility.
You don’t need to do this forever. But even a few months of documenting decisions will leave you with clearer judgment, sharper stories, and stronger confidence in the decisions you’re making every day.
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