This is a YouTube video titled "Nan Yu is the Head of Product at Linear" containing a monologue or single-speaker talk recorded on March 30, 2025. The speaker discusses challenges in competitive industries, focusing on identifying emotional pain points in product usage and the concept of "Schlep Blindness" as described by Paul Graham. The content is reflective and centered on product management insights.
I've worked in very, very competitive industries. And I think the more competitive your industry is, the more the sort of like low-hanging goal-oriented stuff is already picked. Right? Because every PM from every one of these companies has been asking like, what's your goal? Like, what is your job to be done? And all this kind of stuff. So you have to kind of look at things from an angle that other people might not have seen. And for us, it's the angle of like, where are the emotional hooks that you're experiencing as you go through your workday, as you use our product, as you use like competitors products. It's probably under explored because I don't know, I feel like PMs and engineers were very thinky people. We kind of avoid the touchy feely stuff. So I think that's the opportunity. You can sort of see where are you feeling bad through a day where you don't even know. You might think, I hate Mondays. Why do you hate Mondays? Well, on Mondays, I have to go out and gather a whole bunch of stuff to write this report that it's really annoying. Oh, so if I gave you a button that made the report, that helps. Yeah, then I might not hate Mondays so much. I think Paul Graham has a word for this. he calls it, he calls it Schlep Blindness, right? It's like, I'm like Schlepping through life and I'm just completely blind to it. And it's true, right? You kind of have to have an outsider come in and sort of see what the rhythm of your feelings are throughout the day, throughout the week and note the spots where, you know, you could really use a lot of improvement.
