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The Product Guys

5 minutes of product, every day.

A short lesson each day, a teardown of a real product each week, and a library worth keeping.

TodayMetrics

Reading a Retention Curve

The only question that matters is whether the curve flattens, and at what height.

The team behind this has worked with

ISRO
Government of Punjab
Rishihood University
Newton School
Apollo MedSkills
Lakshadweep Government
Scale AI
Handshake AI
Arizona State University
Progience Technologies
Allen Digital
Scaler
Almabase
Wiom
ETV
Renewlium
Fresheria
New: Duels

Think fast.
Duel a PM.

Seven rounds, ten seconds a question. Take on another reader live or one of six bots, keep your streak alive, and learn from every answer you get wrong.

  • Live one on oneQuick match or challenge anyone online. Rated.
  • Six botsFrom the Intern to the CPO, each with a weak spot.
  • Friends and a leaderboardInvite people you know and climb together.
  • Real-world insightAfter every duel: why it is right, and where it lives.

Six bots, from the Intern to the CPO.

Quick-fire
You 0·0

Product Thinking · Round 1 of 3

In Jobs to Be Done, what does a customer hire a product to do?

10s
Three questions, under a minute.

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Play with friends

Add friends, see who’s online, challenge them in one tap.

Send your invite link and whoever opens it joins your friends list straight away. Then there’s a leaderboard of just you and them.

Your run

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A finished duel banks the day, the same as a lesson.

One lesson a day. The streak does the rest.

0days

Every day you finish something, a mark goes in the ledger. Miss a day and the run resets, which is the only reason the run means anything.

Read it

Five minutes, written to teach one idea properly rather than skim six.

Answer one question

Retrieving the idea is what makes it stick. Getting it wrong still counts.

Bank the day

The mark is yours. Come back tomorrow for the next one in the rotation.

Look it up mid argument.

120 psychology principles and 60 named patterns, another 544 minutes worth of content. Every principle says how solid the research actually is, and every pattern says when it backfires.

Product writing repeats tidy rules long after the research stopped supporting them. The decoy effect and choice overload both have failed replications. Both are marked as such here.

Two ways of valuing a future reward

1007550250HyperbolicExponentialNow1 week1 yearDelay before the reward arrivesPresent value of the reward (% of face value)
Hyperbolic discounting drops steeply over the first days and then flattens, while exponential discounting falls at a constant rate. The steep early drop is why a reward moving from next week to today can overturn a plan made a month ago. The values here illustrate the shapes; discount rates vary enormously between people and between the goods being discounted.

The reading list, kept honest.

Books, tools, newsletters and courses worth your time, each with a line on what it is actually good for. Everything links to the publisher or the author.

resources
95resources
kinds of thing
10kinds of thing
free to start
53free to start
InspiredEmpoweredCracking the PM InterviewThe Lean StartupContinuous Discovery HabitsEscaping the Build TrapSprintMeasure What MattersCrossing the ChasmExponentNotionMiroAmplitude learning resourcesMixpanel learning resourcesDon't Make Me ThinkThe Design of Everyday ThingsLaws of UXRefactoring UIAbout Face100 Things Every Designer Needs to Know About PeopleFigmaFigJamMazeUserTestingHotjarCoolorsAdobe ColorGoogle FontsFontpairStarkWebAIM Contrast CheckerHookedAtomic HabitsDesigning for Behavior ChangeInfluencePredictably IrrationalContagiousNudgeThe Mom TestJust Enough ResearchCompeting Against LuckDesigning with the Mind in MindEmotional DesignThinking, Fast and SlowThinking in BetsMade to StickSwitchDriveDovetailTypeformMicrosoft ClarityLookback