Build Strategic Habits

Put pen to paper and build your daily habit of thinking strategically about your product.

Set yourself up to have the right conversations with your team by leveraging the curated thought provoking exercises from today's top product leaders.

“I'm excited to see The Product Journal coming to life. It promises to be a great way to learn and perfect your craft in an approachable, easy to engage way. I believe these exercises will be beneficial for any product manager.”

- Henry Latham, Founder The Product MBA

Step Away from Distraction

Identify what distracts you and make a plan to deal with it.

Focus on What Matters

Focus on what really matters for your product. Get clear on your product vision. Cut through the noise and identify gaps in your strategy.

It is a dangerous belief that strategy is this mysterious thing that is done “over there” by “those people” and it must be “mystically” revealed.

Craft Your Path Forward

The Product Journal will give you clarity on purpose, prioritization, and priority. Leverage the strategies you need for tackling hard problems and winning in the market.

The Product Journal gives you a 'single source of truth' to capture your product strategy. Instead of leaving all your ideas scattered across your computer, on sticky notes or in different notebooks, you can capture them in one place.

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How it works

Analogous Thinking Exercises

The Product Leader’s Journal uses an innovative step by step method of analogous thinking exercises and simple workshops, to help you break free of constraining tool structures and daily distractions.

30 Day Habit Builder

Using the conceive, canvas and compare approach you will learn the simple habits and tools that elevate your thinking, build your confidence in 30 days.

"What you do every day matters more than what you do once in a while"
- Gretchen Rubin, Author, The Four Tendencies

Practice "Alone Together"

Using the power of “alone together” you will go on a creative journey of digging deep into problems to find product/market fit by engaging you in the deliberate practice of the key habits from today’s top product leaders that will help you master product strategy.

Strategy Focus Stacks
Over 50 different exercises to help you connect with your intuition in 15 minutes a day

Conceive

Use targeted brainstorms and interviewing techniques to capture hypotheses and insights.

Canvas

Use multi-dimensional thinking to canvas your strategy for gaps and opportunities to exploit.

Compare

Use analogous thinking to break free of your internal perspective by looking at other products.

Lots of Room for Your Notes

In addition the habit builder and target exercises, there is ample room for free form notes and drawings.

“From speaking to people around the technology industry, it sounds like many product managers and product leaders have faced the same challenge: we are asked to think strategically, but in practice, we are responsible mostly for administrative tasks. So, how does a product manager take ownership of more than just backlog management? How can you take responsibility for the vision and shape the future of your product when you don’t control strategy at the corporate level?”

- Radhika Dutt, the co-author of Radical Product

What's inside

THE PRODUCT JOURNAL

Whether you are a product manager at a startup trying to build the company's first "thing" or working in an established company seeking to incrementally add value to an existing product suite, the Product Journal will help you connect with your intuition and build the fundamental habits top product leaders follow to find product market fit fast.

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About the Author

Hey! My name is Justin Zack and I'm an entrepreneur and project manager based in Atlanta, Georgia. During my career, I've led the execution and delivery of products in large enterprises, startups and medium size businesses.

For the last few years, I've been leading a team of project managers at Mailchimp and watching how our product team "does" product. I noticed how product managers get consumed by the daily drama taking them away from their most important task of thinking strategically about how to help the customer and the business.

I wondered how I could help to create space for strategic thinking, free of distractions and still accommodate the busy nature of product management life.

I spent time reflecting on my own techniques that have helped me to focus. Journaling was the one thing that I kept coming back to. It has been a source of freedom, ideas and reflection for me for over 10 years. This set me on the path of countess customer interviews, iterative testing of concepts and a deep empathy for product managers.

Even though I'm a project manager, I've come to recognize that product thinking can and should be applied in any context where humans interact with things. Tools don't solve human problems, humans do. It is my hope that this journal will help keep product management work human by guiding product managers to think strategically on paper and then have the right conversations with their team.

Stay Connected

Thanks for stopping by and checking out The Product Journal. You can connect with me on LinkedIn or on Medium, email me at justin AT justinzack DOT com or you can subscribe to our weekly newsletter @ theproductjournal.com.

I'd love to know more about you too! Say hi!