Design for Tomorrow, Build for Today.

A simple mantra, but one that drives every decision I make as a Product Manager. Every business has pain points they are trying to solve today — customers complaining or asking for new things. It is so easy to get caught up in fighting the fires of the everyday, losing sight of why you might be battling fires in the first place, or of ways in which you can make firefighting easier in the future.

Solve today’s problem, then move on — solving tomorrow’s problem when tomorrow becomes today.

It’s a simple but effective exercise to stop and ask, before solving a today problem, how that solution might benefit a better tomorrow. There is almost always more than one way to find a solution. It’s best not to take the first one that comes along, and to weigh a few solutions against both the current need and a future vision.

Sometimes this means there will be a short-term workaround and a longer-term effort in parallel. But without keeping tomorrow in mind, the short-term workaround becomes business-as-usual, and you risk being mired in operational overhead instead of continuing to innovate.