In the workplace, the age of 35 is often seen as a watershed moment, and many people face bottlenecks and anxiety in their career development at this age. However, the real crisis is not age itself, but a lack of awareness of planning ahead and self-improvement. The author of this article is a 30-year-old product manager who shares how to actively evolve from the age of 30 and lay a solid foundation for a career after the age of 35 through personal experience and practical experience.
“Don’t care about other people’s opinions, time never lives up to those who persist. The best age is not the past or the future, but the present. ”
——Wei Jianjun’s “Year 35”
Recently, I saw this video released by Wei Jianjun, which deeply moved me, and I watched the thinking of many excellent bloggers, and after thinking about it for a few days, I gained more calmness and firmness.
But as a 30-year-old product manager, I know very clearly:Many people are not “eliminated” at the age of 35, but from the age of 30, not realizing that it is a “prelude to elimination”.
So I decided to write this article, not to shout slogans, but to sort out the thinking and practical preparations I have made in the past two years in order to “not be anxious at the age of 35”.
Maybe you’re like me and don’t want to wait until you’re surrounded by anxiety to start thinking about what to do – then “actively evolve” from the age of 30.
01 I started betting on “irreplaceability”
I am becoming more and more aware of:Product managers who can go far are not fighting for tools and skills, but whether they can be “replaced”.
In the past, I mostly worked as an executive product manager – fast-paced, mixed demand, and the market depends on luck. What the delivery says, I can only change how I change, and there is not much value. But the more I do it, the more I know that this model is only suitable for “trial and error” when you are young, not for supporting your life after the age of 35.
So I took the initiative to make a choice:Turn the focus to the front end, contact customers, talk about first-hand needs, and try to plan the product direction. Therefore, he participated in more product projects related to business processes and organizational collaboration.
Although it started out slow and difficult to see results, now I can think from the perspective of the business, not just the user experience. This shift is a step in my bet on “more irreplaceable”.
Practical suggestions:
- Find a “not so sexy but very core” project to deeply participate, such as customer service system, process platform, data platform, exercise system thinking;
- Sort out your organization’s “business logic graph” from a product perspective: who are the upstream and downstream? Who influences whom? Where is the ROI? What key points can you add points to?
- Meeting more with people outside of operations, sales, and technology is not for PRD, but to understand “how the organization works” – this is the fulcrum of your value after the age of 35.
02 I see AI as “my thinking sparring”, not a tool
At the beginning, I used AI to help me write materials. Writing plans, preparing reports, and outputting documents is much faster than me, and I don’t get tired.
What does a product manager need to do?
In the process of a product from scratch, it is not easy to do a good job in the role of product manager, in addition to the well-known writing requirements, writing requirements, writing requirements, there are many things to do. The product manager is not what you think, but will only ask you for trouble, make a request:
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But slowly, I became interested in its “way of thinking” – why does it always answer questions with this structure? Why did it prioritize these three directions? Why does it organize languages quickly, from the user’s point of view?
I realized:AI is not my tool, but my thinking trainer, a partner who will not get tired and is willing to accompany me to deduce a variety of possibilities.
Especially in the field of ToG, we are faced with an environment of complex processes, high compliance and multi-party games, and the demand is often not “what users want”, but “policies should be implemented, things should be smooth, and grassroots should be implemented”.
In such an environment, the greatest value of AI to me is not to “help me write a plan”, but to constantly ask me: Have you really thought it through?
In general, there are three ways I can practice AI now:
First, the template training of “thinking first”Instead of drawing conclusions, let it list 3-5 structural ideas, dismantle paths, and let me choose and reconstruct them.
Second, the training method of “rhetorical coaching”Throw my plan to the AI and let it “pick the wrong, ask questions, and push back”, and it can help me find blind spots every time.
Third, the co-creation of “non-human perspectives”Government systems often face the contradiction of “policy priority vs. user experience”, and I will let AI simulate different roles – users/approvers/grassroots personnel/government office leaders – to look at my plan from their perspectives.
This is no longer as simple as an “efficiency improvement tool”, but a new way to build cognition.
I use it not only to do things, but to sharpen my thinking muscles.
Practical suggestions:
- Establish a “rhetorical prompt glossary”: For example, “Which role is this process most likely to hang up here?” “Please simulate the perspective of a government consultant to evaluate this revision”;
- Every time I write a plan with AI, I force it to “reason”: why is it disassembled like this? Are there any counterexamples? You don’t just want the result, but also its “thought process”;
- Use AI to do a “capability review” every quarter: input your project experience and let AI help you summarize the 5 key capabilities that will grow this year, and see if it summarizes more accurately than you.
03 I trained myself from a “doer” to a “directional person”
One of my recent reflections is that in the past, I bet all my growth on “doing things well”, but after the age of 30, I pay more attention to “why do things” and “whether there is a multiplication effect after this thing is done”.
To put it bluntly, it is the transition from the thinking of the executor to a sense of direction and strategy.
One little thing I did was:Review is not a re-work, but a re-judgment.
After the project was done, I stopped writing “what was done”, but wrote:
- How did I judge that this plan was right?
- If it is wrong, is it poor information, poor ability, or poor cognition?
- Which part of the decision can be given early warning?
This habit made me no longer just look at the results, but began to sort out the thinking path behind it.
Practical suggestions:
- Every time a project is completed, not only write a to-do list, but also write a “judgment model”: How do you make decisions? Can it be reused in the future in similar situations?
- Every time the demand review is not only about functional points, but also about “choosing the path” – why did you choose A instead of B, so that the team knows that you have a “sense of direction”;
- Help the team create a “business ROI map” – you save money/time/bring user growth to the team, which is your reason for existence.
Final words
Wei Jianjun said:35 years old is not a crisis, but a starting point.
But what I want to say more is:30 years old is the key point that determines whether you can win at the age of 35.
I know that at our age, it is easy to be kidnapped by anxiety: big models are coming, young people are cheaper, and opportunities are getting fewer and fewer…… But instead of spending time anxious, it is better to use every plan, every judgment, and every rhythm to practice the confidence of “I am not easy to be replaced”.
I am writing this article to tell myself that maybe you are also a product manager and 30 years old, don’t wait for the crisis to come.
Now, you can do it and lay a wider, more stable and more confident future for yourself in five years.
I hope it will inspire you, come on!
