Julie Zhuo on accelerating your career, impostor syndrome, writing, building product sense, using intuition vs. data, hiring designers, and moving into management
with Julie Zhuo · Jun 2022
Julie approaches her writing as 'letters to myself'—advice she needs to give herself. The act of writing clarifies her thinking and organizes threads of thought running through her head. The primary audience for her writing is herself; the fact that others resonate with it is a secondary benefit.
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Julie Zhuo on accelerating your career, impostor syndrome, writing, building product sense, using intuition vs. data, hiring designers, and moving into management
Jun 2022Julie switched from long-form essays to Twitter threads to work on being more concise and clear. Constraints force you to strip away ornamentation and focus on the core idea. The medium you choose can be a tool for developing a specific skill, not just a channel for distribution.
Julie Zhuo on accelerating your career, impostor syndrome, writing, building product sense, using intuition vs. data, hiring designers, and moving into management
Jun 2022Don't write for your audience or for likes—write because you're working on a specific skill you want to develop. If you write to solve a problem you have (clarity, vulnerability, conciseness), the intrinsic motivation sustains the habit far better than external validation ever could.
Julie Zhuo on accelerating your career, impostor syndrome, writing, building product sense, using intuition vs. data, hiring designers, and moving into management
Jun 2022Instead of aiming for quality, Julie set a word count goal (500 words in 30-45 minutes) to force herself past the blank page. This removes the perfectionism barrier that prevents people from shipping. The hardest part is getting started; quality comes in revision, not in the first draft.
Where Great Product Roadmap Ideas Come From
Jun 2019Quiet thinking time is as essential as customer research for generating great roadmap ideas. The contrast between 'staying heads down too long' (bad) and 'thinking in a quiet place' (good) suggests that focused reflection—distinct from isolation—unlocks insights that collaborative noise cannot.
The Power of Performance Reviews: Use This System to Become a Better Manager 🤝
Jul 2019The bulk of your time should be spent in preparation—gathering peer feedback, soliciting self-assessment, and crystallizing your own opinion before the conversation. This stage sets up everything that follows and reduces bias.
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