Lifehacker: Managing your time throughout the day is key to getting everything accomplished, but it’s easier said than done. Try the POSEC method, which mirrors Maslow’s famous hierarchy of needs to give you a daily outline that leaves room for fulfillment—which, in turn, will keep you motivated.
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I always kind of enjoy reading all of these things about time management, how to schedule your life and manage all of your tasks. There seems to be a never ending stream of the new best way to manage your time. And honestly, some of them seem like a good idea. My initial reaction upon reading about this strategy though was simply wow, that’s way too many words and things. For me personally, I feel like having to POSEC all of my various tasks and deadlines would almost be an entirely new task and thing to do itself (and my personal rule of thumb with general organization is that it should be making my life easier, not more difficult). POSEC seems like the massive final boss of time management. I think that individually, some of the steps are fairly helpful (for example, prioritization is a great way to start to break down a list of things), but when all combined, this feels unnecessarily complicated. Especially when the more complex steps come in, like reconsidering the things with a lower priority and possibly adding them back in, it just seems like a lot to do, wasting valuable time that could be spent doing the things.
I had not heard of the POSEC method until coming across this article, but as someone who is very type A and maybe slightly psychotic when it comes to planners and to-do lists I was curious to see how similar this method is to things I am already doing, or if there is something I might want to try to adopt to my life style. This method seems easy enough, Prioritize, Organize, Streamline, Economize, and Contribute. I feel that in my day to day usual organization time, I use the first three. I find that I write everything that I know I have to get done down somewhere, then I rank the necessities that have to get done first, and then organize those and the rest of things that need to be done where I see fit. What I don’t enjoy doing though is planning out every single part of my day. I like having general estimates of how long something will take, but it stresses me out too much if I try and say “for two hours I’ll do this paper, then one hour I’ll do this project, and then for thirty minutes I’ll eat, and then for an hour I’ll have fun time”.
The first time I read the title of this article, my initial thought was “hey, maybe implementing this method will help me economically structure my time to the point of achieving my goal of more than 5 hours of sleep every night, you never know” - and I think that inspiration really led me to click on the article itself. There are so many different articles and methodologies about the “best” way to manage your time, and while this one does seem like one of the better ones, the “best" way is highly dependent on how you function as a person. Overall, this does seem like a decent general framework to try and streamline some aspects of productivity and workflow and a method I might try and use aspects of in my own life. It takes a certain amount of time and work to try and mess with any kind of productivity setup you have, but in the attempt of more sleep and less time working and procrastinating I feel like it’s a worthwhile goal.
I understand what this article is getting at but from the multi-step process they describe I feel like it would just become another thing on my to-do list to make. Like it’s just generalizing the process of making a list of tasks by importance and urgency and remembering to not overload yourself with all the big things first. I like the idea of adding fun things into your calendar that are just for you like watching a movie but personally I wouldn’t mix my home-chores and self-care activities with my work list because it turns them into another task to check off and mingles two worlds I like to keep separate. I like the concept of the POSEC method that you’re supposed to feel fulfilled at the end of every day because working on one long-term assignment all day and not being able to check if off your list can be disheartening.
This was an interesting read, I often find it cool to hear about new systems of organization or scheduling, and how they could help me better stay on top of my work. I haven’t gotten to one better than the paper planner + google calendar combo myself however. I appreciate how thorough this article was laying out everything step by step. I think for a lot of people the POSEC method could be super helpful, so I’m glad it’s being shared as an option of organization. One of the challenges of organizational or scheduling systems is that it only works for some. Everyone thinks about things differently, so will approach tackling tasks differently. A friend once said to me “oh I need to make plan A, because without it I won't then be able to make plans B through Z” which I thought was interesting as I don’t always make super thought out A through Z plans, (I kind-of just listen to my brain nagging me to get something done and then in the moment decide the most optimal way of accomplishing it) though often I do like a clear schedule.
Yet again, another how to maximize your time management skills article, and yet again, I will click on it. I think it's interesting to give a time structure philosophy an acronym. As I went down the list of words in the acronym I will use this text to document what I am currently doing and what I lack. I think I did the first part of prioritization pretty well. I write down all of the little tasks and bullet the smaller tasks it will take to complete the big task. I do not often sort them in a specific order, as I feel the priority of the task truly depends on what I can get done, when I am in the studio and when I am home. This whole thing really does seem a little overkill to me. This is quite interesting coming from me, someone who is all about budgeting time.
I think that this article about the POSEC method was really interesting. It’s always interesting to read about how people break down how best to live your life in an organized method, and I liked this one because it did focus more on how to live happily rather than the constant shuffle between work and sleep that often is suggested. However, I’m not sure if the pyramid structure works the best in reality, as people often have so many responsibilities that they forget to focus on themselves, and these people are the people most likely to look for life organization tools, or the people most likely to need them. I think there needs to be a way to give yourself grace to take a pause, even in the midst of your other responsibilities. I don’t mean to let yourself shirk responsibilities, but allowing yourself the grace to relax can be hard for some people in systems like this.
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