Okay so I want to share my experience because I remember how lost I felt when I first started prepping for the PSO exam. First attempt I went in after two weeks of casually reading through the manual and absolutely bombed it — like 62%, nowhere close. I was pretty demoralized honestly.
Second time around I gave myself six full weeks and actually got serious. The biggest change was using a PSO practice test site daily instead of just rereading material. Doing timed practice under real conditions exposed huge gaps in my knowledge around incident command structure and resource management that I kept glossing over when just reading. I probably averaged 90 minutes of focused study per day.
I also picked up a PSO study guide that broke down the competency areas by weight — that was a game changer for prioritizing. Some exam tips I'd add: don't neglect the coordination and communication sections, they show up way more than you'd expect. Anyone else currently prepping? Happy to answer questions about what the question format actually feels like.