Work From Home Setup

How A Product Manager At Hive Works From Home

You might’ve read our series 7 Hours With where we explore the routines of leading professionals and learn about their top productivity hacks. Since day-to-day life has been so drastically affected by the current global health crisis, we’re creating a new series: the Remote Work Diaries. First up in the series, Hive’s very own Winshen Liu, an incredible product manager, details her daily routine. 

7 AM

I usually wake up around 7 AM and either read, do yoga, or play the Spelling Bee word game in The New York Times.

Breakfast is my favorite meal of the day, so it’s been nice to sit down for breakfast now that we’re working from home. I’ll often check Hive on my phone during this time. Around 8 AM or 8:30 (depending on how many Hive updates there are!), I take our dog, Lily, out for a walk through Prospect Park, though sometimes she prefers lounging around a little longer.

Lily Liu

9 AM

Once we’re back and all paws and hands have been washed, I officially start my work day.

My schedule really varies from day-to-day. Our “pod” (the engineering and product team I’m a part of) does stand-up in our group chat, where we each send bullets on what we did yesterday, what we plan to do today, and any blockers we’re facing. It helps me remember what I did (especially because the days blur together now) and set clear intentions for the day. As a product manager, it also helps me keep a pulse on each teammate without needing another meeting or much time from them.

I like to block off time on my calendar to ensure I have time to do various tasks, so some of the events are just personal ones. Here’s my calendar from last Wednesday.

Product Manager Schedule

10:30 AM

At 10:30, the Product team shares updates on major feature releases with our Sales, Customer Success, and Design teams. We demo each feature on our laptops, so it has been easy to transition to screen sharing on a conference call. Zoom is great for that, especially since it integrates seamlessly with Hive.

Each day is a varying combination of scoping features, talking with users, reviewing designs, testing developers’ work, and coordinating processes to keep stakeholders like our Customer Success and Sales teams updated. This might sound like a lie, but I feel productive the entire day. The fun part of working at a startup is that there is always more to be done than I have time for, and since the tasks I have aren’t all strictly related to product management, switching from one to the other feels like a break. Though, now that I think of it, I definitely stress-eat snacks more so in the afternoon, so perhaps I’m less productive then!

In terms of my workspace, a benefit of working from home is I can switch up my workspace among our dining table, desk, and couch. For a standing desk, I go to our kitchen and stand at the counter.

Product Manager Desk

 

1 PM

At 1, I meet with our designers and our lead engineer to review one of the new components we’re building. For this, we looked at design files and talked through user stories to determine how the component would behave for different user interactions.

Then I grabbed some lunch. Often, I’ll reheat leftovers (usually a curry or stir-fry), or make fresh rice in the rice cooker since we’re home now. Sometimes, if the day is lighter, I’ll cook a fresh stir-fry as a break. I’m used to working through lunch, but now that both my partner and I are working from home, we try to take a few minutes to enjoy lunch together.

3 PM

At 3, I have my weekly one-on-one with John, Hive’s CEO, which tends to run over because it’s our one time to really chat now. In the office, we’d have more spontaneous conversations, but now our interactions are concentrated in this weekly chat.

In terms of how I use Hive myself, my favorite components of the tool are real-time action card updates, Hive Notes, and Hive Mail. I love that we can see changes on action cards in real-time, without needing to refresh our screens. This has been handy when we’re updating cards on a call.

Meeting Notes

As a product manager, I’m often coordinating across several action cards at once, so I love inserting actions in Hive Notes. This allows me to include context and create new actions for any next steps. It’s an efficient place to organize my thoughts and it’s easy to share them with teammates. It’s also super helpful in my one-on-one with John, as it’s a real-time notepad for us.

Finally, I use Hive Mail as my main email interface. It allows me to get to inbox zero quickly because I can create or link actions to anything that has a next step.

4 PM

Later this afternoon our team of engineers, designers, and product managers across pods met to coordinate the next set of components we’re building and details of who reviews what and when. So far, it’s been a very successful day. 

6:30 PM

I try to make sure I stop work by 6:30. We’ll make dinner and watch a 20-minute show on Netflix. After dinner, sometimes I’ll play piano or catch up with friends on a video call, then read. I just started an online creative writing course, so evenings now include writing time.

In terms of WFH scheduling, I find it harder to end the work day, but once I say I’m done, it’s easier to keep my laptop shut. I also feel more focused at home, so it feels like I can better end my day by 6 or 6:30.