What Is Your Purpose? — Issue #10: Elena Calvillo
How self-awareness becomes the first step back
Hello everyone,
Welcome to a new edition of What Is Your Purpose?, our biweekly series where we invite a guest to share their “why.” Here, we pause to ask the questions that often get overlooked in our daily routines: What motivates us? What keeps us moving when things get difficult? Where does our spark come from?
This series is where we not only learn about our guests but also learn from them. Through their stories, we’re able to connect more deeply, both with them and with ourselves.
Today, I’m excited to introduce our next guest: Elena Calvillo.
I first met Elena earlier this year through a mutual friend, Colette Molteni, and our conversation quickly resonated with me. It felt natural to invite her to share her story here.
Elena is a product manager turned AI advocate, helping more than 1,000 PMs transition into AI-powered roles. For over three years, she has been publishing Product Release Notes, a newsletter filled with weekly insights, templates, and frameworks for modern product leaders. In it, she explores the beautiful — and often messy — world of product management: strategy frameworks, processes, tools, career advice, and much more.
But how does her journey connect to our theme of purpose?
Once you read her story, you’ll see. It mirrors many of the themes I’ve written about in Self Disciplined: growth through uncertainty, clarity after transition, and the courage to realign when needed. Her path isn’t identical to yours or mine, but the stages she’s moved through will feel familiar.
I’ll let her tell you the rest.
Let’s dive in.
Finding My Way Back After Breaking Point
I've had two major breaks in my career that completely changed my trajectory. The first one felt like freedom. The second one nearly broke me.
The first break happened early in my career when I left mechatronics engineering to chase a dream of building web apps with Flex 4.0. Looking back, Adobe Flex seems almost quaint now (I know!), but at the time it felt revolutionary. That decision was pure self-clarity. I knew I belonged in tech, just not where everyone expected me to be.
But the second break? That was different. It was necessity. It was life hitting me so hard in the face that it turned me into the person who is writing to you now.
When Everything Fell Apart
I was working as a product manager at a semiconductors company, and on paper, everything looked fine. I was performing well, hitting targets, doing what was expected. The team was amazing, I was supported and I was learning a lot there, especially communication in English. But inside, I felt like I was drowning.
I had become a hamster on a wheel, running full speed all day, every day, completely immersed in work and study with no breaks. When my boss suggested I might need some time off after years of full steaming, I actually told him I didn't need a break.
Obviously, I could not have been more wrong.
I was burnt out as hell, but I couldn't see it. Or maybe I could see it, but I had convinced myself that stopping meant weakness. That taking a break meant I wasn't cut out for product management. That admitting I was struggling meant I had failed.
It didn't end well. I quit suddenly, without a plan, without clarity, without knowing what came next.
The Year That Changed Everything
I took a sabbatical year. Not by choice, at first it was only going to be a couple of months, but because I had to. I was completely lost. I didn't have a north star, and I wasn't even sure if product management was for me.
That year taught me something crucial: the problem wasn't product management. The problem was how I was approaching life.
During my break, I focused on the basics I had neglected for years. My health. My confidence. My wellbeing. I read books that had been sitting on my shelf. I took courses that interested me instead of just what I thought would advance my career (like a lot of product management stuff). I worked on my communication skills and how I presented myself, especially on social media.
Slowly, something shifted. I started to remember who I was underneath all the hustle, the pressure and my perfectionism.
The Moment Everything Clicked
When I returned to product management at a different company, something had changed inside me. I wasn't just going through the motions anymore. I had perspective. I had boundaries. I had learned the difference between productive work and busy work. Now I was the one setting the pace!
But more importantly, I remembered what it felt like to struggle in silence.
That's when I decided to start writing. I realized that my experience, the confusion, the burnout, the recovery, actually wasn't unique. Product management, especially when you're new to it, is really scary and complex. Even when you gain experience, it's still complex, but you develop the confidence to make it less scary.
Does that make any sense? 😅
What Drives Me Now
My purpose became clear: helping others who are struggling with similar paths in the tech industry. When you step into a product management role for the first time, it can feel overwhelming. There's so much you don't know, so many decisions to make, so many stakeholders to manage.
I write every week at productreleasenotes.com because I remember what it felt like to have no guidance, no roadmap, no one telling you that it's normal to feel lost sometimes. I do mentorships about design, management, and career transitions because I've been on both sides, as a developer with UI/UX knowledge and as a product manager.
Going from developer to product manager taught me that career transitions aren't just about learning new skills:
They're about learning how to navigate uncertainty, how to ask for help, and how to trust yourself even when you don't have all the answers.
How I Stay Aligned
I've learned to recognize the warning signs of falling back into hamster-wheel mode. Some cues for me are:
When I catch myself working without pauses
When I stop reading for pleasure and only do so for work or projects
When I feel I need to take a walk or go out with friends
When I feel obfuscated and stare into the abyss
That's when I know I need to take a break, and this can be on the same day, or throughout the week.
I can't be sure what tomorrow will bring, the only certainty I have is that I will try to flow with it.
My discipline now comes from remembering that taking care of myself isn't selfish. It's necessary. I can't help others navigate their careers if I'm burning out in mine.
What I Want to Leave Behind
I want to build a resource that helps people skip some of the mistakes I made. The ones that come from not knowing it's okay to ask questions, or that it's normal to feel overwhelmed, or that taking breaks actually makes you more productive, not less.
I've accumulated so much knowledge through my experience that I want to give back to the community. Every week when I sit down to write, I think about the person who's where I was five years ago: confused, overwhelmed, even tired but determined to figure it out.
That's what keeps me writing even when I don't consider myself an expert in everything and still struggle in life. That's my purpose: helping people navigate the complex, scary, beautiful world of product and tech careers, one honest story at a time.
Because sometimes the most helpful thing you can hear is that someone else went through the same struggle and made it to the other side.
Elena Calvillo is a product manager and writer who helps people navigate tech careers with confidence. After transitioning from software development to product management, she shares practical advice and tips at productreleasenotes.com. She also provides mentorship in design, management, and career transitions, drawing from her experience on both sides of the developer-to-PM journey.
Thanks so much, Elena, for sharing your story.
First, I have to say, I loved that you included images throughout your reflection. I don’t know if our readers feel the same, but I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments. Personally, I could see myself in so many parts of what you shared.
One line especially stayed with me:
I was performing well, hitting targets, doing what was expected. The team was amazing, I was supported and I was learning a lot there, especially communication in English. But inside, I felt like I was drowning.
That hit hard, because I’ve lived it too. And in today’s grind culture, I think many of us have. It’s become so common that we almost accept it as normal. We normalize drowning in pursuit of goals that aren’t even ours, whether they belong to our parents, our workplace, or even an influencer we’ve never met.
The good news? There’s a way out. Elena puts it beautifully:
I've learned to recognize the warning signs of falling back into hamster-wheel mode.
That’s self-awareness in action.
Those cues she describes are exactly what allow us to build systems that keep us aligned. In Adaptable Discipline, I often return to four traits that matter most: self-awareness, responsibility, adaptability, and self-compassion. They form the mindset shift that makes sustainable discipline possible, the one that helps us get back on track faster without compromising our identity.
So here’s my unsolicited advice:
If you ever feel like you’re drowning, remind yourself you can — and will — be better.
Learn your cues. Pay attention to how you feel and what pulls you off balance.
Ask for help. Talk with family, friends, or professionals. Asking for help is not weakness; it’s the ultimate hack.
Give yourself time. Real change doesn’t happen on a deadline.
Hold on to these, and you’ll be that much closer to practicing a discipline rooted in alignment: one that not only helps you stay afloat but also equips you to become an agent of change. Just like Elena.
Have a wonderful week!
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Thank you Camilo for sharing my story.
We often share success stories but don't talk too much about the struggles and sacrifices we do along the way.
I hope this piece is helpful to other professionals struggling to find clarity in their path too. 🙏
I love how you turned that breaking point into a turning point. Burnout is real, but so is resilience. This story proves that taking care of yourself doesn’t end your career it saves it.