How Taking 6 Months Off Made Me a Better PM
I’m writing this while looking at the sun breaking through the San Francisco fog — finally home after over five months away. “Away” in this case means full-time travel, over three months in Central and South America and two months through the western US. As I am comforted with food from my favorite Indian restaurant and feeling relieved to finally be back in my own apartment, reflection of my time off fills my thoughts.
What did I learn from this time off? Had I changed? Experienced enlightenment?
Inevitably, as I started thinking about finding employment again and my dwindling savings, a scarier question popped up. Did taking time off affect my employability? After all, that was something my parents vocalized strong concerns about throughout my pitches of taking this time off. And as much as I waved away their comments at the time, maybe there was a semblance of truth.
To continue a practice that started while traveling, I wrote down these thoughts instead of letting them fester in my head. Thinking back to why this period of time was necessary, what I did, and what I learned, I realized that this time off did not affect my professional trajectory. Actually, it helped me continue to grow some of the more important parts of my job — prioritization, communication, empathy, and creativity.
Time off wasn’t a last-minute decision. After a year of shuffling back and forth less than ten feet from my bed to my desk, the desire for a change ballooned. When all the perks from my job were stripped away, the day-to-day tasks were all that remained. The in-person interactions, a commute that supported barriers between work and home, and office perks disappeared, along with any semblance of normalcy. As we went through collective vaccination and the reopening of borders, the decision was clear. Luckily, in addition to craving a shift and an end to the current monotony, a travel-specific savings pile existed from monthly deposits when my career started 6 years ago.
So that was it. The outline for my journey took shape slowly. As a PM and generally checking boxes loving person, it started with some goals:
Become conversationally fluent in another language. My entire life I’ve deemed myself “bad” at languages. As I’ve gotten older and connected with more multilingual people, I saw firsthand how language allows for new channels of communication and relation. And it’s downright useful. I wanted to talk with someone about their family, their job, and their hobbies, not just feel comfortable ordering dinner and a beer.
Learn as many new skills as I can while moving my body. After so much time sitting in one place, my body was craving movement and exploration. I wanted to take advantage of the offerings in the places on my route. This manifested itself in getting my open and advanced scuba certification in the Caribbean, becoming more comfortable surfing on the beaches of Costa Rica, skiing 30+ days around the US, backpacking through Patagonia and learning how to ride a motorcycle on the roads of Guatemala.
Expand my mind through reading and writing. Reading has never been a challenge for me. Losing myself in a novel isn’t a guarantee with every book I select, but chances are high that it will take me away in some capacity. Writing, however, puts me in a much more uncomfortable position. I set a goal of writing — whatever — at least 3 to 4 times a week to expand my comfort and practice expressing my thoughts in a more concrete way.
Find ways to express myself joyfully. I wanted to continue developing a skill-set around hobbies that brings me joy. In this case, it was both expanding my interest in digital photography and purchasing a film camera. And possibly using “joy” too literally, I wanted to learn how to whistle.
Surprisingly, I partially achieved almost all of the above goals. My surfing skills didn’t reach the Blue Crush fantasy I imagined (minus me meeting my now partner in the waves), and my whistling never hit multi-note territory. But, overall I was able to learn, move my body, and practice mindfulness. Beyond that, skills were developed that directly affect my Product career:
Prioritization — When I started this journey, I had a million ideas. Should I climb to Everest base camp and spend three months in India, or should I rent a van and camp around New Zealand, or maybe even become a divemaster in Indonesia? To narrow down the list, I built out a spreadsheet with these ideas and potential budgets for different timelines. With timing, budgets, activities, and the complexity of covid restrictions in mind, a story started to take place. It made sense to eliminate locations where foreign entry wasn’t in question and based on my finances, cheaper destinations were more appealing. Add some other factors like wanting to learn a language and going to a location I hadn’t been to before, Central/South America emerged as the winner. This prioritization didn’t stop once I made the big decision of where to go. Every couple of days required some new scheduling or focus for what was to come next. It sometimes became a heavier responsibility than initially anticipated for me to make every decision along the way while traveling alone. But it reminded me of those daily decisions I made as a PM, those little things that added up, and the catch-all that the PM role entails. I got better at understanding where I should spend my time to receive the maximum benefit.
Communication — About 2 weeks into immersive Spanish school, I have a vivid memory of me sitting in the garden trying to explain the pitfalls of student debt in America. As one would anticipate, the next day it was the American healthcare system. Initially, this was incredibly frustrating — keep in mind I only started learning this language 10 months ago. These were topics that I am decently well versed in and strongly opinionated about, but I could not communicate the same way that I would in English. After frustratedly fumbling through the second conversation, I hit an “ah-ha!” moment when I realized my teacher was actually understanding the concepts. In order to communicate my opinions about the system and my opinions with my limited vocabulary, I had to boil the concept down to the simplest terms. I had to shift my mindset and communication style based on who I was talking to and the language we were using. This is the same in product. To communicate with engineers, designers, sales, marketing, etc, there are many different terms and languages. No matter my proficiency in each space, I realized how important it is to boil down the conversation to the core concepts, what are we looking to achieve? Not only will this help all parties get on the same page, but it’s an incredible learning mechanism for this new language.
Empathy — Travel facilitates learning and building a reservoir of human experience. It makes us more understanding and open-minded. Through each of my conversations with my teacher, I was reminded of how difficult it is to learn a new language and how privileged I am to be able to experience travel like this. Many people have difficulties traveling outside their own country, not to mention how difficult it is to enter the United States. I met someone from Ukraine, quickly traveling home to assist in the war. I met someone burned out from two years as a travel nurse watching COVID patients die at under-resourced hospitals. I met people with stories focused on escape from their own version of monotony that was much more destructive than what I wrote about above. These stories may seem heavy, but they remind me to be humble, listen to others’ experiences, and enter into new situations with more empathy and understanding. This is the same mindset anyone in the product space should have when learning more about their clients and users. Know there is always more to learn.
Creativity — Practicing creativity seems wrong, since it should just strike when the time is right! Right?! Traveling does have its way of sparking creativity, but improving skills requires practice. Reading is a practice that I love and try to incorporate into my life outside of travel, but sometimes it comes secondary to other activities. By creating a list of books I wanted to finish by the time I was done traveling, I set aside time to continue my practice. This also lends itself to writing. In the beginning, I committed to writing about my travels in a physical notebook, but as I kept up with that, it bled to other mediums. Small poems here and there, reviews of those books on my list, and eventually articles like these! Finally — the biggest development of my focus of this time was photography. I pushed my understanding and knowledge of my Sonya7ii and invested in a new medium — film photography. Practicing this creativity bled into other aspects of my life. My journal which was originally filled just with words started to see small sketches appear throughout the pages. I was inspired to start sharing my photos and writing for feedback. Feeling comfortable creating made me more comfortable sharing feedback which made me also practice a personal trait I’ve been working on — receiving feedback. Practicing this creativity will perpetuate into other areas of my career. How can I use my creativity to look at solving a problem in a new way? Or create a new experiment to test the need for a specific feature or offering?
35mm film photo taken in Antigua, Guatemala.
This trip re-invigorated me. Coming back, I felt a renewed excitement and am inspired to try out a different path for my career. Before saying that everyone should have a similar experience, I would like to say the exact opposite of that. If this article got you excited, maybe consider something like this! If this article gave you pause, it’s alright if a path like this isn’t for you. Growth is about a mindset, not about shifting your life drastically. For those that got excited, I have a little advice…
Starting with a list of goals//bucket list items that you want to accomplish. These in no way have to relate to your career. They can, but I would start with something you want to do to grow yourself. You’d be surprised what you can learn by just focusing on your personal desires.
Talk with people that have had an experience like this. What did they get out of their time? Where did they go? What do they recommend? You can talk with me (I clearly have thoughts and opinions, not to mention a growing Google Doc with recommendations for Central and South America). Ask them what they didn’t do but wished they did.
Start saving. It’s not fun to feel like you’re hitting the end of your savings too early in your journey. Make sure you feel comfortable financially taking time off like this. Be honest about what you would be comfortable with, this is not the same for everyone.
And overall — good luck! Maybe learning how to whistle will teach you a new skill to use in your marketing campaign or the game you’re developing. You’ll never know until it happens.
If you’re interested in checking out any of my photos, I started adding them to my personal website here.