From solopreneurship and management to deep work

Having spent time as both a manager and a solopreneur, I recently returned to an Individual Contributor (IC) role as a Product Manager.

Instead of feeling like a step back, it has felt like a rediscovery of deep, meaningful work.

Reflecting on my first few months back in this world, here is how I have been thinking about productivity, collaboration, and the value of my past experiences.

The joy of deep work and focus time

One of the things I have realized is how much my brain missed spending continuous hours on a single topic. In management, your day is often fragmented into 30-minute blocks of decision-making and context-switching. As a solopreneur you’re panicking about posting in Instagram while preparing a script for your next masterclass.

As a PM, even in a role that inherently involves cross-functional alignment, I’m fortunate to operate in an environment where I can afford several uninterrupted hours of focus.

For instance, scoping a new feature recently meant spending dedicated hours untangling precision agriculture, mapping out where universally available satellite data ends and where field-specific tools are needed for personalized farmer recommendations. Trying to map those boundaries in 30-minute meeting bursts would have been impossible. It required pure, uninterrupted deep work, followed by a quick 30-minute call with an expert colleague to validate my assumptions.

This experience made me reflect on how I structure these focus windows. Recently, when workmates were commenting whether they preferred morning or afternoon focus blocks, I realized the time of day doesn’t matter to me as long as two conditions are met:

1. Sustained time: At least 3 continuous hours on one topic.
2. Intentional transition: When context-switching is unavoidable, taking deliberate breaks is non-negotiable. Moving seamlessly from one complex topic to another without a breather just leaves me lost in a mental maze.

High-Impact Asynchronous Collaboration

I love collaborating with a team, but returning to an IC role made me re-evaluate how we collaborate. Solopreneurship taught me the extreme value of asynchronous efficiency. When you run every function yourself, you realize a lot of the work happens without any meeting (albeit without feedback). Working closely together in a team doesn’t mean sitting in real-time meetings all day.

We can achieve incredible velocity asynchronously (and still get feedback) if we master light-touch communication:

Low formality and minimal documentation: not sticking to strict meeting formats, but respecting the meaning and value of why they exist, and having a decent amount of documentation to keep everyone on the same page goes a long way (yes, that expression of the page makes so much sense when you think about good and clear non-comprehensive documentation). 

Visuals first: Using diagrams and visual flows to quickly align on complex ideas.

Multi-format communication: Recognizing that an engineer, a designer, and a marketer process information differently. Translating the same core idea into formats that suit different minds unlocks progress without endless sync meetings.

Leadership skills still add value

There’s a misconception that if you’re no longer running quarterly planning or sitting in executive leadership meetings, your strategic experience goes to waste.

In reality, having been on the other side makes me a much better IC today:

Big-picture empathy: I can look beyond my immediate feature or team.

Selfless prioritization: If a designer I work with is split across three projects, I can easily recognize when my task should take a backseat to something more critical for the company’s broader goals.

My strategic experience isn’t lost, instead I apply it locally. And honestly? I’m completely fine not being in those leadership meetings.

So far so good

I still have so much to learn and give as a product manager. Right now, my brain is thriving on the simple joy of diving deep while learning about precision agriculture, navigating the carbon credit landscape, and finally being able to name (some) of the machinery driving down countryside roads.

Sometimes, stepping back into the details is the best way to move forward.

Happy Monday,
Maria 🌺