Product marketing is how Aditya tells stories for a living. Improv, MMA, hiking, weightlifting, and cooking are how he stays sharp, grounded, and genuinely himself. This is that side of the story.
"Yes, and..." always learning ↗The best product marketers I know are students of human nature — and nothing teaches human nature like standing alone on a stage with nothing but your instincts and a room full of strangers.
— Aditya, on why improv made him a better PMM
Aditya teaches improv at Mettlesome Theater in Durham, NC — and it's not a hobby that happens to be fun. It's a discipline that sharpens every skill product work demands: active listening, reading the room, building on others' ideas, and failing gracefully in front of an audience.
In improv, you never know what's coming next. You accept what's offered, build on it, and trust the process. Sound familiar? It's the same as a stakeholder meeting that goes sideways, a sprint that needs replanning, or a customer who changes everything you thought you knew.
"Yes, And" — accept what your scene partner offers and build on it. In product: accept the constraint, then find the opportunity inside it.
Great improv isn't about being the funniest person on stage. It's about making everyone else shine. Same for product leadership — the goal is the team's success.
The best improv moments come from the biggest swings. Fear of failure makes scenes (and products) small and safe. Swing. Adjust. Repeat.
"A customer discovery call is just improv with stakes. You walk in with a message you think will land, and leave with a completely different understanding of what your audience actually needs to hear."
MMA isn't chaos — it's chess at speed. Every training session is about solving problems under pressure, staying calm when things don't go to plan, and finding the opening your opponent didn't see coming.
It teaches humility fast. The mat has no ego. You either execute or you don't. That kind of honest feedback loop is rare — and invaluable when you take it back to the product room.
The gentle art. Ground game, leverage, patience. Surviving uncomfortable positions until the opening appears.
Footwork, timing, reading telegraphs. Most of the game is what you don't do.
Control the position, control the fight. The basics, done with ruthless consistency, win.
The meta-skill. Reading patterns, adjusting mid-round, making decisions when tired and under pressure.
The best product thinking doesn't happen at a desk. The trails around North Carolina, the Appalachians, and beyond are where the noise drops away and the real questions rise to the surface. Hours without a screen. Just terrain, elevation, and thought.
A local favorite. The summit gives you the full Piedmont panorama — and the climb is just hard enough to earn it.
Above the treeline. The kind of barren, windswept ridgeline that makes you feel very small and very alive simultaneously.
The home trail system. Early morning runs here are how Aditya starts most weeks — river crossings, roots, birdsong. The opposite of a standup call.
"I solve more product problems on a steep climb than I ever do staring at a Miro board. Something about putting your body under stress quiets the mental clutter and surfaces what actually matters."
The barbell doesn't care about your title, your roadmap, or your stakeholders. It only cares whether you showed up and did the work. That's why Aditya keeps coming back — it's one of the few spaces where feedback is immediate, honest, and unambiguous.
Compound lifts, progressive overload, consistency over intensity. The same principles that make a good training program make a good product strategy.
"Progressive overload is just compounding. You can't deadlift 400 lbs on day one — and you can't build a product used by millions in your first sprint. Add weight slowly. Show up anyway. The numbers move."
Miss a workout. Life happens. But missing two in a row is where habits go to die. One day off is rest. Two is a pattern.
Cooking is the hobby that most directly mirrors product work — you're always working within constraints, iterating on a recipe, balancing competing preferences, and shipping something that has to work the first time it hits the table.
Aditya leans toward bold flavors: South Indian, West African, and whatever requires the most interesting technique. The goal is never just "edible." The goal is memorable.
Spice isn't about pain — it's about dimension. A well-calibrated heat builds slowly, adds complexity, and leaves you wanting more. Like a good product hook.
You can't dump everything in at once. Aromatics first, then proteins, then liquids, then finish. Every element has its moment. Rushing kills depth.
The best dishes — braises, dals, stews — can't be rushed. Time is an ingredient. The things worth eating (and building) take patience.
Dumping salt at the end is a bandage. Proper seasoning throughout is architecture. Same with product feedback — don't wait for launch to find out it's bland.
Improv demands total presence. You can't be in your head — the scene only exists in the moment you're in. Train it on stage, use it everywhere else.
→ Listen more than you speak.No one becomes good at MMA without getting submitted hundreds of times first. The willingness to sit in discomfort and keep showing up is the entire game.
→ Hard things make you better.Progressive overload works — but only if you show up consistently. You don't see it happening day to day. You see it six months later when the weight that crushed you feels light.
→ Compound everything.Every dish is a hypothesis. You season, taste, adjust. You never finish a recipe — you just keep refining it. Good food and good products are never truly "done."
→ Taste as you go.The summit is just a byproduct of doing the hard miles. Good products, like good summits, aren't shortcuts — they're the result of sustained effort and honest work.
→ Process over outcome.