How a traumatic brain injury made me a better PM—and person

Amol Avasare, who runs B2B growth at MasterClass, recounts a traumatic brain injury from a sparring session and the year-long recovery that followed. He argues the experience sharpened his approach to energy, emotions, and perspective as a product manager. His central idea is that calming the parasympathetic 'rest-and-digest' nervous system helps both daily work and long-term health. The post matters because it offers concrete, low-cost tactics for managing burnout and sustained performance in demanding product roles.

01Key takeaways

• Map your energy levels across each day and week, then restructure meetings and tasks that drain you most.
• Schedule short structured breaks on your calendar and use them to disconnect from screens and downshift your nervous system.
• Limit daily must-complete priorities to a couple of items and tier the rest, so high-leverage work actually gets done.
• Delegate meaningful ownership to your team members, aligned with what energizes each of them, to reduce your load and grow them.
• Use slow breathing with a longer exhale before tense meetings or after difficult ones to regulate stress in seconds.
• When setbacks feel crushing, zoom out to a multi-month view to check whether the overall trend is still moving in the right direction.

02Key sections

Recovery and the autonomic nervous system

Amol describes the onset and prolonged symptoms of a mild TBI and introduces the sympathetic and parasympathetic branches of the nervous system. He explains how chronic stress can trap the body in fight-or-flight mode.

Managing energy at work

He treats the calendar as an energy tool, mapping daily and weekly energy curves and cutting energy drains like meeting-heavy Mondays and back-to-back meetings. He also schedules structured breaks to disconnect from screens.

Ruthless prioritization and empowering the team

Shorter working hours forced sharper prioritization using p0/p1/p2 tiers and capped daily must-dos. He also handed more ownership to designers and engineers, which relieved his load and developed their skills.

Managing emotions through meditation and breathing

Vipassana meditation, extended-exhale breathing, a fear-setting exercise, and a dedicated 'parasympathetic space' at home were his main tools for staying calm under pressure. He frames these as practices that reduce reactivity.

Physical health and perspective

Graded cardio, weightlifting, an anti-inflammatory diet, and quitting alcohol and caffeine supported his physical recovery. He closes by stressing a joyful anchor activity and a wider time frame when setbacks feel overwhelming.

03From the post

“If you’re getting this post, that means my wife’s due date is very near (😮‍💨), or our kid was just born (🥹). To give my new family my undivided attention, I’ll be taking a month or so of parental leave. To make sure you continue to receive exceptional value from the newsletter during this period, a few months back I put out a call for guest posts. Out of 500+ pitches, I whittled it down to six extraordinary posts. Today’s post is the first of the series and comes from Amol Avasare, who runs B2B growth at MasterClass. Amol was previously an investment banker, chief of staff, and a founder, and last year Amol suffered a serious brain injury. His story of recovery has stuck with me ever since I read the first draft. Enjoy ✨ For more from Amol, make sure to follow him on LinkedIn and Twitter. He also writes a great newsletter, Time to Ship, which is a daily digest of the latest features shipped by your favorite product teams. “The real troubles in your life are…”

04Frameworks mentioned

Summary and takeaways written by PM Atlas; quotes are short excerpts. © the original author.