Customer Reviews

Take Back Your Life!: Using Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 to Get Organized and Stay Organized

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

I was a disorganized mess. My desk was piles and piles of clutter and things (important, time sensitive materials) got lost! It took me about a good year to get where I am now. I started with Michael Linenberger's Total Workday Control. Not a good place to start so I tried David Allen's book 'Getting Things Done'. It was a great start and gave me foundation. I then moved on to Sally McGhee's book Take Back Your Life! for Outlook 2003. Awesome! That helped me integrate everything into my real world computer life. Then I went back and reread Michael Linenberger's Total Workday Control, which now made a lot more sense and I used some of his ideas to create a 'custom' system for myself.
Finally, I bought this updated book of Sally McGhee's because I am using Outlook 2007 now. The material is basically the same, but tuned for Outlook 2007.

Now some people claim this book is a rip off of David Allen's book or that these books are all the same or they are boring. YES! and NO!

What you have to realize is that there are several ways of getting things done. All roads lead to Rome. I prefer the Sally McGhee method because it does not depend upon a plugin or extra software. It works with Outlook the way it is when you buy it and her methods translate over to my desk at home and work and since I am on the road...in my car. YES, the material is dry at times but so is work! lol

David Allen offers custom software as an add in for Outlook 2003 and 2007 that is Windows XP and Vista compatible and his extra software will cost you an EXTRA $70 folks! This could be very nice and efficient for some people. yet, there is a downside...the plug in only works with Outlook. If you use another email client, you have nothing. Another downside, you are now dependent upon that software instead of doing it yourself. If he stops making that software or it causes troubles and you have to remove it, you are now back to square 1 with no method of organizing. In other words, David Allen caught the fish for you, but McGhee wants to teach you to catch the fish yourself.

So, that is why I like McGhee's method. Yes, she basis it on Outlook but since there is no extra custom software involved to integrate into Outlook, you can translate the system to other mail clients. I also run Linux and I can use her methods in Evolution, Thunderbird, Kontact, etc. Also, it is NOT a 'blatant copy' of David Allen. They worked together and she openly discusses, reveals and discloses that info. She even quotes Mr. Allen in her book.

If you have Take Back Your Life! for Outlook 2003 and have been using it and are skilled in her methodology, you can make the transition to Outlook 2007 on your own probably. If you are new to this, and have Outlook 2007, this is a definite buy. Here on Amazon, it is only $17! What a deal! I bought a current copy for myself and to help others in my family.

She will probably come out with a SPECIAL EDITION like she did with her previous book that will include a CD, some pull out charts, etc. I would say, do not wait. Buy this book and get organized. I would also recommend the other books I have listed in my review too. I don't think just 1 book is enough! And this will take effort on your part. It took me a solid year to get really good. I fell off the wagon, got frustrated, reread the book, tweaked, learned, quit, failed, tried again, screwed up but eventually succeeded. I doubt many of you will get it going well in your first month...so don't quit! Keep trying and it will happen!

As I mentioned in my review of Take Back Your Life (TBYL) Special Edition, this book is a derivative work - basically a loosely-gathered compilation of ideas and techniques ranging from David Allen to Stephen Covey. It may be useful for people looking for a friendly, lightweight, introductory text to personal information management (PIM) centered on Outlook.

Since I was disappointed with the first edition, I sat down with this new edition to see if there were any improvements. I will say that a major flaw of first edition, the glaring lack of information concerning Meaningful Objectives (a core part of the system), has been addressed in this edition. This is handled by demoting Meaningful Objectives and adding something called Unifying Goals, which themselves are supported by Areas of Focus. Meaningful Objectives now roll up to Areas of Focus, which in turn support Unifying Goals.

This is certainly an improvement and perhaps it will be useful to you. However, the book does a poor job of helping you define any of these things, so the system kind of collapses under its own weight, in my opinion.

Other than this, and some other updates required because the authors are now working in Outlook 2007, the book is largely unchanged. Therefore, my opinion is largely unchanged. TBYL is a chatty volume with a low signal-to-noise ratio and a variety of vignettes designed to "humanize" the material. More often, they come across like testimonials and contribute more to padding the book than illustrating the point. TBYL also has the irritating habit of taking simple, workable terms (like those from GTD) and renaming them as part of the author's proprietary system. Contexts become Planning and Action Categories, Next Actions become Strategic Next Actions (SNAs) with no real advantage to the reader. Finally, compared to Micheal Linenberger, the authors have a mediocre understanding of how to use Outlook to its full potential.

As I wrote in my previous review, if you are serious about PIM or are a businessperson, I think the source material would serve you better. Start with Getting Things Done (GTD) to get a brilliant overview of how to address the overload in your life, followed by Total Workday Control 2nd edition (for Outlook 2007; use the 1st edition for earlier incarnations of Outlook) to fine tune that understanding. Finally, pick up 7 Habits of Highly Effective People to get the big picture, or as Allen calls it the "50,000 foot view level."

As you may know, Sally McGhee and David Allen developed the productivity concepts together, and she decided to adapt it to Microsoft's Outlook. I'm very familiar with both David Allen's and Sally McGhee's work (having seen them both in person) and the main difference and value that I see in "Take Back Your Life!" is that instead of TALKING about what is productive, TBYL actually SHOWS YOU HOW TO USE OUTLOOK--it's akin to the difference between someone TALKING about the different ways you can go fishing (Deep-sea, fly-, bottom-, spear-) and someone ACTUALLY SHOWING YOU HOW TO USE YOUR Fishing Pole (Outlook in this case).

Updated review...Perhaps I am a bit of a dinosaur. It has been two years since I have been using the system and I have recently had a job change. After only 2 months, I found I needed to revisit the basic principles presented by this book. A new office, a new boss, a new computer system and an entirely new group of people seeking to use my skills. I found I needed to completely revamp my meaningful objectives. The reminder was timely. The organizational structure sound. In a single week, I went from mudding about answering every question posed to back on track.

This is clearly is not the answer every person is looking for but if you have been casting about looking for a way to logically approach the massive crush of requirements, taskings and information flow weighting you down each day, I can confirm. This works! It is not magic. It requires work, but it does produce results...

Last comment... this is not the "latest and greatest" but it is a sound methodology. I have applied the exact same principles to a new system and found success.



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This is a better book then first glance would tell you. I have had my copy for 6 months. for 5 of those I looked it over... skipped about and gradually convinced myself that I didn't need the "help" and "solutions" offered. Then I had a major job crisis that forced me to face the fact that my "organization" system didn't work. I had lost one too many threads on my professional life. I was finally ready to face that a change was needed. I forced myself to read the book since I had already spent good money on it.

I could not be more pleased. Yes, it is work. It is time consuming and it isn't easy. However, to make a major change in how you approach your work and life simply won't be easy.

This text gives you a start to finish methodology for organizing your e-mail, schedule and to do list. It can get you on track and ensure that your commitments are properly ranked organized and given the best possible chance to succeed. It does however require that you take the time to learn the system and adhere to the directives it gives. This is an all or nothing game.

On the downside, it also requires that you continue to feed time and effort into the system to keep it on track. However, as the system becomes more familiar this time is minimized. I am down to only 45 minutes of schedule "renewal" per week.

If you are looking for filing methodology- keep looking, However, if you are looking for a method to control the flood of taskings, e-mail and random data that flows your way and disrupts your schedule, this is the best I have found. Career back on track!

I've read them all: Getting Things Done, Seven Habits, Total Workday Control... What sets this book apart is the combination of modern theory and practical application. Finally there's an approach that shows both what AND how. I'm on Outlook 2007, and this is the best book I've found for tieing personal and professional goals, objectives, projects and loose ends all together into one elegant and powerful system. I'm more in control and more productive than ever - and finding more time to spend with my family everyday, too!

Before 1,100 email in inbox with a total Outlook folder size of 500 MB
After 80 or less emails in inbox with a total Outlook folder size of 350 MB.

Even after only reading 1/4th of this book there was an immediate change in my work life. After reading all of the book my personal life started to improve.

The only negative to this book is that it's so simple you'll wonder why you paid money for this information. However it's worth every penny you spend. I was even able to relay the concepts to other people to implement and these people saw an immediate improvement without even reading the book by just listening to what I could recite from my readings.

A friend suggested that I buy Take back your Life (Microsoft), she thought I needed it.
To my surprise, this book isn't just ideas and a "what worked for me" book.
The book uses MS Outlook to really sort out and determine priorities, exactly what I needed.
I recommend this book to anyone who gets tons of emails and is constantly interrupted during the work day. It gives you ideas on how to sort out the important from the trivial. You'll find that there really is time to get it done if you have the right priorities

This book is NOT a Microsoft Outlook book! It lays out a methodology for determining what are truly you're unifying objectives, both personal and professional, and then it helps you get organized around only those things that support those objectives. If it doesn't support a unifying objective, then don't do it (delegate, go back and renegotiate the committment, etc). While I said this is not an Outlook book, it IS a book that will teach you to use all that Outlook has to offer in terms of managing e-mail, your to-do list, your calendar, etc... ALL in the name of accomplishing your unifying objectives.

If you're like me (4,500 e-mails in my inbox when I read this book), it will take a significant investment in time to adopt this methodology. I spent the better part of the week between Christmas and New Years reading, organizing, deleting, etc to put the system in place. Here's the bottom line: IT HAS MADE AN AMAZING DIFFERENCE IN MY PRODUCTIVITY. I spend far more time working on things that support my goals and far less on distractions.

IF you read the book and decide to implement the McGhee Productivity Solutions Workflow Model, I strongly suggest you purchase the accompanying $59 Outlook Add-in... it adds some great features to Outlook that make processing e-mail SOOO much faster. I downloaded the add-on trial and used it for 30 minutes before realizing just the Quick-File feature alone was well worth the cost... then I learned how to use the other half dozen features.

GREAT book to get organized... but like any productivity methodology, if you think you can read the book, not make any changes in how you do things, and then expect magic to happen, don't bother.

Are you an email junkie too? This book and system will help you to resolve those "instant replies" and get you back organized in your life.
I come from a highly technical background I used to support Outlook and email systems for years and I was the "king" of instant email replies. I could produce an answer in usually seconds. What I did not realize was that doing that instant reply was pulling me away from focusing on goals and other important areas of life. I remember being at a company meeting when smart phones first came out, I had difficulty in hearing what was being said because there were people doing emails via their little smart phones and not paying attention to the important information being delivered.
The McGhee Productivity System showed me that you focus your goals daily and not on your emails. I remember doing emails during dinners with friends, later at night, and early in the morning. I found I was doing emails at all hours, and not focusing on my goals. I had personal goals for nearly 8 years in my last job, yet never touched a one since I was only focused on work goals and email.
Now, my life is right on target. I shut off my smart phone from checking email after hours; I removed the notice "ghost flags" that shows up while I am working on other projects. I have now been hitting every one of my personal goals on a weekly basis and I have now gone back to college while training for a 1/2 Marathon. I now have each goal being worked on during each week and making advancements on each personal goal, at the same time, I am also hitting each of my business goals too.
"Take Back Your Life", this book has certainly helped me do exactly that. I strongly recommend this wonderful book.

I read David Allen's "Getting Things Done" a few months ago and thought it was a great book. I discovered when implementing it, though, that I was struggling w/ how to best manage my lists in a computerized form. In his book, Allen mentioned using Outlook but didn't give any details. I briefly tried it, but I had an old version of the program and was frustrated by its limitations. I then tried creating Excel spreadsheets which helped in monitoring projects but required manual effort on my part to incorporate the info into my calendar. I recently updated to Office 2007 and decided to give Outlook another try but was still struggling w/ how to manage projects and subprojects. Allen's $75 download would fix this, but I kept thinking that I could manage w/o it if I better understood the intricacies of Outlook.

I first heard about "Take Back Your Life" when researching books on Outlook. While the reviews were mixed, I thought that the comments in the positive ones indicated a good choice for me. There are some good points in the book, but I was disappointed overall.

PROS
- Does give specific steps as to how to use Outlook for managing projects, subprojects, and actions.

- Does give guidance as to how to determine which projects and actions will help
you achieve your goals. Allen talks a little about this in his book, but doesn't describe a process for determining your goals.

CONS
- McGhee's terminology often seems pretentious to me and the book is unnecessarily wordy. You use the Unifying Goal to define Areas of Focus and then create Meaningful Objectives which you accomplish through Strategic Next Actions. While she doesn't repeat large blocks of text, there is frequent repetition of small items. This book could benefit from a good edit.

- McGhee's primary target seems to be an employee in a large corporation. While she does discuss personal objectives, she mostly focuses on professional objectives and a large portion of her book discusses corporate goals, meetings w/ your manager, sharing your information through the company server, etc. Most of this was of little interest to me because I'm starting up my own small business and have no other employees. Even if I did work for a large corporation, though, I found a lot of these sections to be wordy and repetitive.

- Her computer screen figures either need to be larger or to have more contrast. I chose the paperback version over the Kindle version because I was concerned about being able to see the detail but still had difficulty reading some of the information.

- The process of gathering info for input is not as detailed as it should be. I used the GTD method, but someone unfamiliar w/ it might be confused by McGhee's description.

- One of the things that makes GTD more effective than most books on this subject is was that you initially focus on getting outstanding tasks taken care of (from the bottom up) rather than going through the process of first developing goals and objectives (from the top down). Allen says that the latter is better theoretically, but he's found the former to be better from a practical standpoint because it reduces the psychic clutter. I've definitely found this to be true for me. Also, as I've accomplished items on my to do list, I've been able to incorporate some goal setting into my regular planning sessions. While setting Meaningful Objectives can help you focus your energies on accomplishing those things that are truly important to you, I found myself getting bogged down in this much longer process.

Overall, I found this book to be of minimal use. I would still like to be able to use Outlook as is and am going to check out "Total Workday Control" by Michael Linenberg, but I may have to bite the bullet and purchase the GTD add in.