Week 32, 2026
Most people know who Michael Jordan is. Even people who don’t follow basketball recognize the name. Widely regarded as one of the greatest athletes in history, Jordan didn’t become legendary because he showed up when the game started. He became legendary because of everything that happened when nobody was watching. The training. The practice. The recovery. The discipline. The relentless commitment to maintaining the physical and mental systems that made elite performance possible. In the 1990s, a famous advertising campaign encouraged everyone to “Be Like Mike.” For years, I’ve told Product Managers we should do exactly that. Not by playing basketball, but by adopting the mindset behind sustained high performance. I’ve often said, “Treat yourself like a professional athlete.”
On the surface, it sounds ridiculous. Most Product Managers aren’t training for championships. We’re sitting in meetings, reviewing roadmaps, writing strategies, resolving stakeholder conflicts, responding to emails, and trying to make sense of constantly changing priorities. Yet the longer I’ve worked in product management, the more convinced I’ve become that the comparison is surprisingly accurate. Elite athletes are not defined by what they do on game day. They’re defined by the systems they build long before game day arrives.
Recently, however, I realized I wasn’t following my own advice. Last week there was no newsletter. Not because I ran out of ideas. Not because I lacked motivation. The reason was far less interesting and far more uncomfortable. I spent four days dealing with a pinched nerve in my neck and was in constant pain. During those four days, I wasn’t thinking about product strategy, roadmaps, or stakeholder alignment. I was thinking about how much I wanted the pain to stop. Somewhere between stretching exercises and frustration, I had a realization: I preach this constantly. Somehow I wasn’t practicing it. I thought I was managing my workload. My neck disagreed. Nothing exposes your bad habits faster than your body refusing to cooperate.
As Product Managers, we spend enormous amounts of energy focusing on outcomes. We worry about launches, deadlines, deliverables, stakeholder management, quarterly goals, promotions, and career progression. We invest significant effort into producing results. What many of us neglect, however, are the capabilities that make those results possible in the first place. Sleep gets postponed. Exercise becomes optional. Recovery becomes something we’ll focus on “later.” Continuous learning slips down the priority list when calendars become crowded. Mental wellbeing often becomes reactive instead of proactive. The irony is that the capabilities that create career success are often the first things sacrificed while pursuing career success. We convince ourselves that we’ll take better care of ourselves after the release, after the quarter, after the promotion, or after things settle down. The problem is that things rarely settle down.
Product management is not a profession that suddenly becomes less demanding. New technologies emerge. Customer expectations evolve. Organizations change. Priorities shift. The environment keeps moving. My neck pain wasn’t some dramatic life event, but it reminded me of a simple truth: the body always sends the bill eventually. Ignored recovery eventually becomes forced recovery. What felt like a temporary inconvenience became a powerful reminder that performance is never free. Somebody always pays for it. If you don’t invest proactively in maintaining yourself, eventually you’ll do it reactively.
The lesson I took away was not that I should work less, but that I should practice what I preach. I need to maintain myself better. That’s where the athlete analogy becomes useful. Professional athletes don’t train only when competition arrives. They continuously invest in training, recovery, nutrition, resilience, adaptation, and performance systems. They understand that performance is an outcome, not an input. Product managers should think the same way. Today’s workplace provides more support than ever before. Most organizations offer learning opportunities, coaching, mentoring, wellbeing programs, flexible work arrangements, professional development resources, and access to world-class technology. Those resources are incredibly valuable. But resources alone do not create performance. A gym membership doesn’t create fitness. A learning platform doesn’t create expertise. A mentor doesn’t automatically create growth.
The resource creates potential. The individual creates results. That is why I increasingly believe one of the most important lessons in professional maturity is understanding where organizational responsibility ends and personal responsibility begins. The company can provide support. Only you can maintain performance. The company can provide opportunities. Only you can maintain readiness. Nobody can learn on your behalf. Nobody can recover on your behalf. Nobody can maintain your wellbeing on your behalf. Opportunities reward readiness, and readiness is built slowly through consistent investment long before the opportunity appears.
Many professionals unconsciously operate with assumptions that become limiting over time. They believe their manager will drive their growth, their company owns their development, hard work guarantees success, performance naturally takes care of itself, or they can always push harder when necessary. Over time, I’ve noticed that the highest-performing professionals tend to view these responsibilities differently. They take ownership of learning, growth, resilience, adaptability, health, recovery, and wellbeing because they understand that long-term performance does not happen accidentally. One mindset is primarily reactive. It focuses on immediate demands and assumes future capacity will somehow take care of itself. Another mindset is more deliberate. It invests in maintaining the capabilities that make future performance possible.
The difference becomes visible over long periods of time. Some people postpone recovery, neglect development, and assume their capacity is effectively unlimited. Others continuously invest in themselves because they recognize that their most important professional asset is their ability to keep performing. This fundamentally changes how success is defined. Career maturity is not working the longest hours. It is not being available twenty-four hours a day. It is not saying yes to every request. It is not sacrificing health for short-term results. It is not operating in a constant sprint. Career maturity is taking responsibility for the systems that make long-term performance possible. Careers are endurance sports disguised as office jobs. A career is a long-distance race won through consistency, not occasional sprints. Sustainable performance beats temporary heroics. Every year spent learning, adapting, recovering, and maintaining yourself increases your ability to create impact over the long term.
My four days dealing with a pinched nerve taught me a lesson I thought I already knew. The hidden work of maintenance is what makes visible performance possible. We spend so much time focusing on what we want to achieve that we sometimes forget to maintain the person responsible for achieving it. That means owning your skill development, investing in continuous learning, protecting your physical health, protecting your mental wellbeing, building recovery into your routine, taking advantage of available resources, investing in adaptability, and refusing to confuse exhaustion with commitment. Most importantly, it means recognizing that nobody can maintain your career assets except you.
Today’s Product Manager needs to think like a professional athlete. Organizations provide tools, learning opportunities, wellbeing programs, flexibility, coaching, and support. Those resources matter. But they only create value when we use them consistently. Your career is a triathlon, not a sprint. Own your skill development. Invest in continuous learning. Protect your physical health. Protect your mental wellbeing. Build recovery into your routine. Don’t confuse exhaustion with commitment. Don’t assume performance is infinite.
The most successful professionals are not the ones who work the hardest every single day. They are the ones who consistently maintain the capabilities that allow them to perform over the long term. The company can provide opportunities. The company can provide support. But only you can maintain readiness. Your career is your responsibility. Your performance is your responsibility. And the better you become at maintaining both, the longer and more successfully you’ll perform.
The old slogan said, Be Like Mike. Most people interpreted that as scoring points, winning championships, and celebrating success. But the real lesson was something deeper. If Michael Jordan is a little before your time, then Be Like LeBron. The principle is exactly the same. The real lesson here is be like Mike, LeBron, or your favorite athlete long before the game starts. Train for the game. Prepare for the game. Recover from the game. Maintain the system that makes performance possible. That’s the mindset elite athletes embrace, and it’s the mindset Product Managers need to adopt. Because while most of us will never play in the NBA, every one of us is competing in a long career. And the professionals who perform best over time are the ones who never stop preparing for the next season.
This newsletter reflects my personal views and experiences as a product manager. It does not represent the views, strategies, or opinions of my employer or any organization I am affiliated with.
