Story

most product managers operate like they're perpetually starting from scratch. every quarter brings new frameworks, fresh priorities, and pivot-ready roadmaps. after shipping dozens of features with claude and cursor over the past year, I've noticed something: the PMs who consistently ship meaningful products aren't the ones with the most creative ideas; its super boring:

they're the ones who've developed core product principles and can defend them.

early in my career, I'd enter planning meetings armed with the latest product blog post wisdom, ready to ship whatever seemed compelling that week. my roadmaps looked like whatever was trending.

the breakthrough came when I started treating core beliefs like compiler optimizations rather than configuration files. instead of swapping out my entire product philosophy quarterly, I began iterating on a small set of principles.

now when someone proposes a feature that "users are asking for," I don't scramble for ad-hoc justification. I can immediately connect it back to principle #3: "Optimize for user agency over engagement." when engineering pushes back on scope, principle #7 kicks in: "Shipping incomplete solutions beats perfect vaporware."

the technical parallel is obvious. you don't rewrite your entire codebase every sprint. you refactor, optimize, and build on stable foundations. product strategy should work the same way.

what's counterintuitive is how much this constraint actually increases creative output. when you're not burning cognitive cycles on philosophical debates, you can focus on execution nuances. the best product decisions emerge from deep principle iteration, not principle innovation.

most PMs treat their product beliefs like New Year's resolutions. the ones who ship treat them like algorithms worth optimizing.