Customer Reviews

Take Back Your Life! Special Edition: Using Microsoft® Outlook® to Get Organized and Stay Organized (Bpg-Other)

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I discovered this book while searching for something to help me manage the relentless flood of email coming at me every day (I had 900 unread emails at the time). I thought if I could become an outlook power user, I might be able to manage that number down. This book helped me learn the ins and outs of outlook, but more importantly, taught me a compelling approach to managing my crazy, demanding, overcommited, multi-tasking life. Mind you, I was a Franklin Planner flunky and a Day-Timer drop out, which made me a motivated learner. I literally devoured this book - read it cover to cover in just a few days (with a highlighter). Along the way I configured Outlook the work way the author recommends. I discussed it with friends. I actually implemented my own "IMS", which I think is what sets this book apart from David Allen's "Getting Things Done". You could read GTD, but the content may just "wash over you" and not make a practical difference in the way you work. This is specific, hands on, step by step instruction that if you're serious, will change the way you work in Outlook for the better. Highly recommended . . .

I am a veteran Franklin Covey planner user and consider myself very well organized and a strong time manager. Our company recently made the move to outlook, and I purchased this book hoping to get some tips on how to make the most of planning with outlook from someone who had a time management orientation. What I didn't expect was to learn anything more about time management. Boy was I wrong! Sally provides some real eye openers about spending more time up front planning tasks to get to "Strategic Next Actions" - tasks you can actually do without any dependencies. She also packs in excellent tips on setting up a reference system, handling email, and using the outlook task categories to their full potential.

I was able to achieve my basic objective with this book. My planning system was one where I used my Franklin Covey Plan Plus for Outlook software to create a daily task list each day with only items I could do that day, and used a collection of spreadsheets and word documents to track more complex "projects." Sally show how to integrate all of this into outlook with both planning and action tasks.

If you are looking for an indepth book on outlook however this isn't it. Instead its what it is advertised to be - a book on organizing first that tells who how to use outlook to implement the organizing system Sally has developed. The outlook information you need to implement the system is provided in a concise fashion and was very helpful to me.

Like a lot of software, Microsoft Outlook is a product that has grown over the years to a feature rich package capable of doing a lot of things. In this book, Ms. McGhee gives a complete description of all that you can do with Outlook. She starts with a several pages long Quick Reference. This is kind of boring, but it does give you a good introduction of the things you will be learning if you read the whole book. Alternatively you can use it to decide which features you want to learn about.

The one problem that I have with book is that Outlook is one of the most common packages attacked by virus programs. I would have expected a chapter on setting up a security system.

All in all, Outlook is a program that you probably already have on your system. It's use may even be required by your company. You just as well learn as much as you can about it. And even if you don't use Outlook, the procedures developed here would still be useful.

I like to be organized because I use clutter to stop my creative process. As I create, I also create paper. Email creates clutter inside my computer. It generates more paper. After Hurricane Wilma I was swamped with emails and didn't know how to manage the process.

I am currently reading Sally's book `Take back your life!' and implementing her methods. In her book is teaching me how to set up and manage my Microsoft Outlook. I so needed her inspirations. I was laughing when I read:

Mary Baker loves her paper. She had papers on her desk, on the floor, and on her credenza. Wherever there was a surface, there were papers. She was having a hard time finding and filing papers with so many of them placed randomly about.(page 53)

Was she standing in my office or what? *sigh* Problem: The blogs and websites I have create traffic. From that traffic I get emails. It's a good thing if I had a system in place to manage the growth. I didn't. Once I got through Sally's lingo (she assigns her buzz words for tasks and actions) the book started to make sense. Common sense. That gave me the courage yesterday to sort through the 500 emails I had left over from 2005, edit and categorize them. Set up a new system. I feel grateful. I feel proud. Oh the relief!

"The answer is not in doing more. It's in slowing down so you can make better decisions and produce better results." --SALLY MCGHEE

To summarize, Take Back Your Life (TBYL) is a derivative work - basically a loosely-gathered compilation of ideas and techniques ranging from the David Allen to the Stephen Covey. It may be useful for people looking for a friendly, lightweight, introductory text to personal information management (PIM) centered on Outlook. Check it out at a library or bookstore first to avoid disappointment. One bright spot is that is does have a CD with an digital version of OneNote 2003 Step-by-Step, links to web resources, and chapters from other books on things like managing contacts, calendar, and email.

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."

Basically, TBYL is a chatty volume on PIM with a low signal-to-noise ratio, filled with 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.

One of the largest flaws in TBYL is the handling of Meaningful Objectives, which the author states several times is the "North Star and guiding light" of the system. I felt this was a useful addition to the GTD model but it is poorly handled, providing no useful organizational power to the reader. For example, the Workflow Model is introduced on p. 113, but there is no direct connection between Meaningful Objectives and SNAs. This error is corrected in the newer, 2007 version. Likewise, on p. 21, the author promises that this topic will be addressed in chapter 10 which it is not - apparently it was completely forgotten. But even if it was, why wait until the last chapter to introduce the core of the system? In fact, while Ms. McGhee spends a whole chapter kibitzing about "Approved Collecting Points," maybe 5 pages is spent on Meaningful Objectives. This glaring oversight is addressed in the in the 2007 edition, but not to any satisfying effect. To really provide Meaningful Objectives to this system, you would need something like Zen and the Art of Making a Living or the Stephen Covey materials.

Another large flaw is that the author's grasp of using Outlook seems mediocre, especially in comparison to Micheal Linenberger (the author of Total Workday Control - the real Outlook on Steroids). As another reader pointed out, Ms. McGhee uses the Note's field to link projects and next actions, instead of the more powerful Task Folder's hierarchical capabilities. Another solution, which I prefer, is to link Outlook 2007 tasks to "project pages" prepared in OneNote 2007 - the two programs have options that make this linking fairly easy. Many observers have noted the inherent weakness of Outlook's project management abilities and the author offers little to address these.

One last example of how concepts are gathered together but poorly organized to perform together. The author makes a good case for including metrics as part of one's PIM. She then spends only two pages on this topic, most of which is a discussion on how to link to an already prepared metrics document.

I bought this book (fortunately used) at the recommendation of an Amazon reader. Hopefully this review will help you avoid a similar fate.

I'm not even to the end of the book and I already have my e-mail box emptied to zero, all my documents and files organized on my computer into an easy reference system so I know what information I already have. I am going to apply the same principles to my paper files this week. I had so much information stored and coming in that it is a huge relief to gain control over it all! All because I applied what I learned from this book.

A good book on "Getting Your Life Back". It helps me to understand and read "Total Workday Control" faster. I am a novice on using "Outlook".

The TBYL book was a real eye opener and the solution to my constant frustration with trying to tame my email and stay organized at work. Like so many others, I first read Getting Things Done by David Allen. Allen's book provides you with the whole GTD concept but it fell short for me on implementation of GTD. Along came the answer, Sally McGhee's book on Take Back Your Life! It provided the level of detail I craved on how to make GTD work for me using the one and only tool I was already using at work--Microsoft Outlook. TBYL shows you how to maximize the functionality and integrate all of Outlook's features--email, calendar, contacts and tasks --to get things done! I do have one suggestion on improving the D's of decision making regarding emails, which is to add a 5th D for "Deposit it" to capture the non-actionable step to archive/file the email in your Reference System or add it to your Someday/Maybe category. Believe McGhee make reference to this step under "Do It" but it really should be made to stand alone so it aligns with the MPS Workflow model. TBYL is definitely a must read and I found Amazon to have the best price.

This book gives you great ideas about how to get organiazed and get things going. The only thing is that you will really need to use and get along MS Outlook pretty well, else you'll miss some of the tips and tricks in the book.
Pretty good start-up place for those who need some pointers at how to classify and prioritize tasks, events, items, and almost everything.

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

This is a great buy (either edition)