Navigating the Product Builder's Dilemma

The Siren Song of the Shiny New Feature

It was 2 AM on a Saturday night and I was hunched over my laptop, furiously sketching out wireframes for a feature that had just popped into my head.

This was the one, I told myself.

This was the feature that would take our product from good to great. The one that would have users beating down our door and investors throwing money at us.

Never mind that we hadn't yet figured out product-market fit.

Never mind that our core features were still buggy and confusing.

Never mind that I had promised myself I would take the weekend off to recharge and strategise.

This is the grip of the product builder's dilemma. We're tempted by twin sirens.: the task treadmill and the visionary vortex.

The task treadmill is the incessant pressure to ship, ship, ship. It's the belief that if we just crank out enough features, fast enough, we'll somehow stumble our way to success.

We measure our worth by our velocity, even if we're not entirely sure where we're headed.

The visionary vortex is the temptation to dream big without the discipline to deliver. We sketch out grand visions and bold roadmaps, but struggle to break them down into actionable steps.

We're always chasing the next shiny object, the next disruptive idea, without fully executing on the ones we already have.

Escaping the Dilemma

So how do we escape? How do we find a way to channel our creative energy and skills into products that get built and solve real problems for real people?

The answer lies in a framework called Vision-Driven Efficiency.

It's a simple but powerful approach to product development that keeps us grounded in our long-term goals while still allowing room for experimentation and iteration.

It’s about aligning our day-to-day work with our overarching product vision.

It's about making sure that every feature we build, every sprint we plan, is in service of something larger than itself.

Here's how it works:

Step 1: Clarify Your Product Vision

Get crystal clear on your long-term product vision.

What’s the change you're trying to make in the world? What does success look like 1 year, 3 years, 5 years down the line? What are the core user needs and market opportunities you're uniquely positioned to address?

This might sound fluffy but there’s nothing more practical or powerful than a compelling product vision.

When you have a clear destination in mind, every decision becomes easier.

You can say no to distractions and detours with confidence, knowing they don't serve your ultimate goals. You can rally your team around a shared purpose, knowing that their hard work is contributing to something meaningful. Every one knows why they’re building what they’re building.

Creating an inspiring product vision is equal parts art and science. It requires deep customer empathy, competitive awareness, and team alignment. But the payoff is immense. With the right north star to guide you, the path ahead becomes clearer and more purposeful.

Step 2: Break It Down into Milestones  

A lofty vision is just a pipe dream if you can't translate it into reality. That's why the next step in Vision-Driven Efficiency is to break your big goals into tangible milestones.

If your vision is the final destination, your milestones are the checkpoints along the way - the concrete indicators that you're making measurable progress. They should be specific, achievable, and time-bound, so you know exactly what you're aiming for and by when.

Some examples of good product milestones:

• Launch MVP to 100 beta users and achieve 500 weekly active users within 90 days

• Double monthly revenue and reduce churn by 20% by end of Q3

• Expand into 3 new geographies and localise product for each market by end of year

The key is to choose milestones that are ambitious enough to push you out of your comfort zone, but realistic enough to keep you motivated. You want to feel a healthy sense of urgency, but not an overwhelming sense of panic.

Step 3: Identify Weekly Strategic Priorities

With clear milestones mapping out your mid-term trajectory, you can zoom in on your week-to-week game plan with greater focus and intentionality.

At the start of each week, look at your upcoming milestones and ask: what are the 1-3 most important things my team needs to accomplish this week to stay on track? These are your strategic priorities - the high-leverage moves that will generate outsized impact.

Strategic priorities are not just tasks to check off, but missions to accomplish. They are the major rocks that move the needle, not the minor pebbles that create busywork.

Some examples:

• Scope and spec out the next major product release

• Conduct 5 user interviews to validate (or invalidate) a critical assumption

• Analyse funnel metrics to identify biggest drop-off points and brainstorm experiments to optimise

The beauty of having clear weekly priorities is that they act as a forcing function for focus. With only 1-3 major objectives to tackle, you can channel all your energy and creativity into doing them exceptionally well. You're not just staying busy - you're moving the ball down the field in a meaningful way.

Step 4: Protect Time for Strategic Deep Work

Here's a secret of product management: the most important work often gets crowded out by the most urgent work. We spend so much time firefighting, sitting in meetings, and responding to emails that we barely have any bandwidth left for the deep, strategic thinking that will propel our product forward.

That's why an essential part of Vision-Driven Efficiency is ruthlessly carving out and defending blocks of focused time each week to make headway on our strategic priorities. I'm talking about 2-4 hour chunks of uninterrupted "maker time" where we can dive into problems, prototype new ideas, and push our product thinking to the next level.

This deep work time is sacred - it's the engine that powers our most creative and impactful work. So we need to treat it as such. That means setting clear boundaries to minimise disruptions, leveraging tools and systems to enable focused flow, and learning to say a polite but firm "no" to non-essential requests.

It's not easy to prioritise depth over responsiveness, especially in a fast-paced startup environment.

But if we want to build products that truly move the needle, we need to create space.

Step 5: Streamline the Rest for Maximum Efficiency

Finally, with our strategic guardrails in place, we can optimise the rest of our week for maximum speed and efficiency in execution. This is where all the classic product management best practices come into play:

• Running a tight agile process with clear sprint goals and deliverables

• Leveraging productivity tools to streamline communication and decision-making

• Building a culture of rapid experimentation and data-driven iteration

• Relentlessly prioritising our backlog based on user impact and business value

The goal is to create a well-oiled machine for cranking through our tactical to-do list, so we can focus our best energy and attention on our strategic bets. It's about achieving a state of flow where the urgent and important are in perfect balance, not constant tension.

Easier Said Than Done

Now, if you're reading this and thinking "easier said than done," I hear you. Vision-Driven Efficiency is a simple concept, but it's far from easy to implement. It requires a level of discipline, focus and alignment that can feel superhuman at times, especially amidst the chaos of a fast-growing startup.

You'll face days when you get sucked into the task treadmill, weeks when your vision gets sidelined by unexpected challenges, and times when you feel like you're failing on both fronts.

As a product leader, I've been there. I've overcommitted my team, chased shiny objects, and let the urgent overtake the important. But I've seen how clarifying our vision, breaking it down into milestones and priorities, carving out deep work time, and streamlining our processes has transformed our ability to build impactful products.

Becoming a great product builder is not a destination, but a direction. It's a daily commitment to aligning our time and energy with our deepest values and goals, even amidst the chaos and complexity of startup life.

So let’s embrace the dilemma and find our way through it. The world is waiting for the products only we can bring to life. Let's get out there and build them.