The POSEC Method Is a Better Way to Structure Your Time | Lifehacker

Managing your time all through the day is essential to getting the whole lot completed, but it surely’s simpler stated than achieved. Try the POSEC technique, which mirrors Maslow’s well-known hierarchy of wants to provide you a every day define that leaves room for achievement—which, in flip, will preserve you motivated. 

What is the POSEC technique?

First of all, the traditional knowledge of the web claims that this technique was invented by a person named Steven Lam—however from what I can inform, there are not any books or hyperlinks to again that declare up. What there are hyperlinks to are weblog posts and first-person accounts of how effectively the tactic has labored for some folks, no matter who made it up. 

POSEC stands for prioritize, set up, streamline, economize, and contribute. It’s not an ordered record of what it is best to do, however a technique by which it is best to study what you want to do, and it depends on Maslow’s hierarchy of wants as a guidepost. The hierarchy of wants is that pyramid-shaped chart that outlines the way you want your physiological wants (air, water, meals, and so on.) met earlier than you may attain actual achievement, which has all kinds of purposes, together with measuring your job satisfaction. With POSEC, you may have the identical understanding: The concrete issues have to be taken care of, however your purpose ought to all the time be achievement, too. It’s the identical pondering that guides work-structuring strategies like Pomodoro, which requires you to take timed breaks between focus classes, so you may chill out and keep motivated. 

How to make use of the POSEC technique of time administration

Prioritize

The first POSEC precept is prioritization. Write down the whole lot you want to do, like end an enormous work mission, examine for a take a look at, clear the home, or handle your children’ after-school actions. Don’t overlook duties like calling your mother, making time for espresso with a buddy, or watching your favourite present, both. Then, break your entire obligations down into smaller chunks and get rid of something that strikes you as actually pointless, like responding to previous emails that aren’t associated to the work mission or deep-cleaning the espresso machine when you’ve got greater, extra urgent cleansing wants. If you want to end a piece mission, what little steps will it entail? Prioritize the whole lot that should get achieved, ideally utilizing a system just like the Eisenhower matrix, which helps you to kind your duties by urgency and significance.

Organize

That leads you into the second a part of POSEC, which is organizing. Once you’ve written down all of your priorities and sorted them into some type of order, the day’s duties begin to develop into apparent. From there, make a to-do record, like a 1-3-5 record that offers you house for one main job, three medium-sized ones, and 5 littler ones. 

Streamline

When you progress on to streamlining, you’ll re-engage with the non-essential duties you initially eradicated for being pointless. Reconsider them. Can some be delegated to a coworker, member of the family, or employed skilled? Can some be automated? Or ought to some keep eradicated utterly? Then, take into account the opposite duties you didn’t get rid of. Can any of them be streamlined, both by delegation, automation, or combining them with one thing else? 

Economize

Next, economize by making a schedule round the whole lot that’s left on the record. Use timeboxing right here, dedicating time in your day to every accountability, from huge to small, and the to-dos that deliver you pleasure, like listening to a podcast or modifying a photograph for Instagram. The purpose is to create house within the day for the whole lot from the mundane, crucial evils to the fulfilling issues that offer you some which means.

Contribute

That leads you to the fifth step, contributing. Not solely do you have to embody the actions that deliver you just a little dopamine, however it is best to incorporate duties that deliver some worth to the folks round you. Volunteer, purchase Girl Scout cookies, assist a buddy with their transfer, or reply to that ridiculous chain e mail out of your grandpa. Giving your time to others is a vital technique to keep engaged along with your neighborhood and provides your self one thing else in life past your most concrete obligations, which may put on you down and result in burnout in case you don’t complement them with different issues. 

With POSEC, you prioritize your personal targets and obligations on the backside of the pyramid, however preserve shifting towards the highest, the place you are able to do as you please and even improve the day of another person. Leaving house for private pursuits and common goodness helps you keep motivated to get the work on the backside of the pyramid achieved.