# You Are Not Your User
Core PM discipline: product decisions must be grounded in actual user input and data, not the product manager's own taste, instinct, or "gut feeling." Stated plainly in children's-book form as "we all have learned you are not your user" — a PM who assumes their own preferences represent the target audience (e.g., an adult designing for kids) has to go ask the actual users directly rather than project onto them.
This is the same discipline as "Talk to Normal People, Not Freaks" Heuristic and Stated Preference vs. Revealed Behavior: personal instinct is treated as an unreliable substitute for validated signal, aligning with Customer Obsession Over Stakeholder Deference and the broader practice of Product Sense.
Framed in "What Do Product Managers Do?" (a children's-picture-book reading) as the PM's answer to "how do you know what a kid actually wants" — ask the kids, don't guess.
A children's-book-format PM glossary (read aloud at a Lean Product Meetup to explain the PM role to kids and non-PM relatives) restates this principle concretely: rather than trusting personal taste, ask the actual users — in its example, asking kids what they'd suggest — since "to be the best idea chooser, we all have learned you are not your user."