When I first started as a product manager, I quickly realized how consuming the role was. The job didn’t just demand my time; it absorbed it entirely. My calendar overflowed with meetings, product discussions, and late-night calls with the US, leaving little room for anything else. At some point, I had to acknowledge a hard truth—work was invading my personal life. And if I wanted any sense of balance, I had to let life invade my work.

Instead of trying to create artificial boundaries, I blended the two. I scheduled doctor’s appointments in the middle of the day. I met friends for breakfast instead of dinner, arriving at the office a little later but staying late into the night to accommodate my US-based customers. It worked because it aligned with the reality of my job rather than fighting against it.

The same is true for strategy. Too many product leaders treat strategy as something separate from execution—something they’ll get to when they “have time.” But just like I had to integrate my personal life into my work, strategy needs to be part of your everyday thinking. It’s not just a once-a-quarter offsite or a slide deck. It’s a mindset. And if you’re not practicing it daily, you’re not really doing strategy at all.

Here are the things you can do today to start practicing strategy the right way, every day.

Don’t Wait Till You Have Time

One of my clients, a VP of Product in a successful scaleup, recently told me that his team didn’t have time for strategy. “We’re spread so thin, they are always so busy,” he said. “They barely have time to think.”

I’ve actually heard this from a number of clients in the past weeks. My response is always the same: strategy is not disconnected from what you do anyway. If you’re treating strategy as something you need to clear time for, you’re already thinking about it the wrong way.

Yes, you need to make time for strategy, but not in the way you think.

Here’s the hard truth: execution will consume whatever time you give it. There’s always a sprint to complete, a backlog to refine, stakeholders to update, and endless messages waiting for you. The R&D beast is always hungry. And yet, you’re not clearing your inbox to zero every day, are you? No matter how hard you try, you can’t get to everything that’s on your plate.

So it’s a matter of priorities and boundaries.

Instead of waiting to have a huge chunk of free time (that never comes) to work on strategy, just start doing it – weaving strategic thinking into your daily work (more on how in the following section). 

It will feel like you’re slowing down initially, but your overall speed won’t be impacted or will get faster. Strategy requires that you take the time to think, but the tighter your thoughts are, the faster you can make decisions and align everyone later on.

Practice Strategy at the Feature Level

Strategy is often seen as this high-level, long-term thing – setting vision, aspirations, and how we’ll change the market. But real strategic thinking happens at multiple levels, including at the feature level. It’s not just about defining where the company is going; it’s about making sure every step you take is intentional.  

Practicing strategy at the feature level means having a deep understanding of the “why” behind everything you do. When you’re asked to deliver a specific solution, don’t jump into execution immediately. Connect the dots first. What’s the real goal? Is this solution the best way to achieve it? What alternatives did you consider? How will you know if you’ve actually met the goal?  

This isn’t extra work – it’s the work. It’s you organizing your thinking so that when you start building, you know exactly what you’re doing. And more importantly, so does the rest of the team. If everyone understands the goal and reasoning behind a feature, they can make better decisions along the way without constantly checking back for direction, or worse – not checking back and taking a wrong turn.  

Take competitive analysis, for example. It’s one of those strategic tasks that you never have time for. But if understanding the competition is relevant to a feature you’re working on, research them as part of that feature’s development. Do it enough times, and over time, you’ll build strong competitive intelligence without having to “find time” for it separately.  

Don’t Be Tempted by False Clarity

One of the biggest enemies of strategy is the illusion that everything is already clear. I often hear product leaders dismiss strategic discussions with, “That’s obvious. Everybody knows that.” They couldn’t be more wrong.

Having a vague, unstructured thought in your head is not the same as having a clear strategy. A good strategy is explainable. And the only way to truly explain something is to write it down. Thinking, speaking, and writing each activate different parts of our brain. When you put something in writing, you’re forced to confront the gaps, inconsistencies, and assumptions that felt “obvious” before.

More importantly, writing things down forces alignment. If you assume everyone is on the same page without actually verifying it, you’ll end up with scattered execution. When you put your strategy into words, people will react – and that’s exactly the point. If they argue, that’s a good sign. It means they’re engaging. It means they see things differently, and their perspective might reveal something you missed.

These discussions aren’t distractions – they are the process. Strategy isn’t about convincing everyone you’re right; it’s about refining your thinking through feedback. If you skip this step, you risk leading a team that believes they’re aligned while actually working toward different goals.

So don’t assume clarity. Write it down. Challenge yourself to explain it. If nobody argues, you probably haven’t gone deep enough yet.

Commitment. Habit. Addiction.

Practicing strategy with everything you do requires commitment. You need to make a commitment to yourself that before you build anything, you’ll make sure you understand exactly what you’re doing and why. This mindset shift is the first and hardest step. You’ll have to fight your instinct to jump straight into what’s perceived as action. Delivering requirements, planning sprints, and so on. You might need to reassure others that, yes, you’re working on what they asked for, but you’re doing it in a way that creates a higher chance to succeed. 

Over time, your commitment will turn into a habit. At some point, you won’t even think about it – you’ll just naturally start by clarifying goals, questioning assumptions, and defining a clear path forward. As a team, you can formalize this by creating a set of strategic questions that must be answered before anything moves into development. The moment this becomes routine, everything starts running smoother.

But beware because, at some point, strategy becomes an addiction. Once you’ve experienced the power of clear strategic thinking, you won’t be able to work without it. The thought of moving forward without a strategy will feel just as reckless as driving blindfolded. What once felt like an unnecessary step will now feel like a non-negotiable one.

If You Don’t Do It, No One Will

Strategy might sound like someone else’s job, but it couldn’t be farther from the truth. Much as it is hard for you, it is hard for everyone else. But product leadership is a unique role in the sense that that’s where strategy is translated into action, and if the strategy wasn’t articulated before, you don’t have the luxury of just going with this unclarity. You’d be wasting the company’s most expensive resource – development time – for nothing.

Your role isn’t just to execute – it’s to think. It’s to take the loosely defined ideas floating around and turn them into something concrete. To translate vague goals into clear, actionable paths to success. To make sure that before anyone builds, sells, or launches anything, there is a clear understanding of what success looks like, how to get there, and why it’s the best route forward.

At first, this might feel like extra work. But over time, people will start to rely on you for clarity. They’ll expect you to ask the right questions, to connect the dots they didn’t even realize needed connecting. And eventually, you won’t just be practicing at the feature level – you’ll be influencing the overall strategy.Strategy isn’t something you find time for, because there isn’t any. Strategy is something you bring into everything you do. Start practicing it every day, and soon, you won’t be able to work any other way.