Customer Reviews

Time Management from the Inside Out: The Foolproof System for Taking Control of Your Schedule and Your Life

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Ms. Morgenstern's first book, Organizing from the Inside Out, was tremendously helpful because of its ease with which I could apply the principles to my life. Her kindergarten model of organizing space -- to create activity zones -- totally resonated with me the first time I read OFIO, and her use of it again in relation to time management is so great!

She advocates a goal-oriented approach to scheduling time and actually helps her readers think through their goals. In the second part of the book, which I found particularly helpful, she brings the kindergarten model back and applies it to mapping out time. Morgenstern also provides specific instructions about how to zone your own calendar so that you can make really effective and informed decisions about your time.

The most appealing part of Morgenstern's approach -- and the part that separates her from other self-help authors -- is that she never IMPOSES anything on her readers; rather, she teaches us _how_ to discover what's going to work in our own lives. She gave me freedom to figure out what was going to work for me, rather than making me learn a new, complicated system to impose on myself.

I found Julie Morgenstern's first book, Organizing from the Inside Out, so helpful, that I was happy to buy this one (and this from someone who rarely buys books when I can just check them out of the library--I never actually bought the first book!). It uses the exact same principals as the first book, only geared towards time management. The principals are organized and logical, and really help you make sense of your schedule. And it will help you create a schedule that will help you achieve your goals and achieve balance in your life.

She covers time management briefly in the first book. (In fact, she highly recommended using a planner and so I bought one and have found it extremely helpful). Here she gets into more detail, and I found the extra detail on how to create a time map especially helpful. I am working on my own time map now. It's too early to say that I have mastered time management (it does take time, after all). But I am starting to feel a sense of control over my time and space and that is more valuable than I had previously realized.

She recommends reading the first book first, because working with the space in your home is more tangible than working with time. I agree.

I was anxious to read Julie Morgenstern's brand new book on time management since I found her "Organizing" book very interesting and useful. This book provides lots of insight into better time management, something we can all use. We've all tried various methods and systems to help us succeed in time management. Some helped, some didn't. It's something I've always had difficulty in dealing with, and although I read various books on the subject, they didn't seem to help very much. Julie's new book really seems to help me balance my time so I can get more things done. She brings to light some of the things that hinder good time management and shows you how to improve on them by using the skills that you already have. Her goal is to help you manage your time better to allow you to do the things you must do, providing you with more time to do what you really want to do. She shows you how to determine how much time tasks really take, avoiding being late, keeping you to your required schedule, and how to cope with things that go wrong. This book offers her expert advice to guide you in establishing a plan or system that works best for you as an individual. It's NOT all work and no pleasure, either. Everyone can benefit by what this book has to offer. It will help you accomplish more in your work life as well as your home life. This will surely become a best seller, as it's a subject EVERYONE must deal with. Well worth reading !!

I had high hopes for gaining some clear techniques on time management from this book. However, I found it extremely confusing once I got to the Time Mapping section. The segments (activities, goals) melded into each other and I found Morgenstern's explanations less than clear as to what exactly to do. I consider myself fairly intelligent but she lost me.

I did find value in identifying major life categories and big picture goal - but again - that entire section of the book that explained how to utilize that information was confusing. I went to her website to try to gain some insight and found going through message boards that it seemed as though many people who logged in were also still struggling.

I have to say I'm disappointed as well as out $15.00.

The Monday after Thanksgiving I set out on a new career adventure. To partake of the training I need for this new career, I'm studying my new trade by correspondence course (the old-fashioned kind where you receive lessons in the mail). The course will go for six months, so I'll need to be self-motivated to get through all the material, learn the underlying wisdom and techniques, and complete the exercises.

Fortunately, I found Ms. Morgenstern's book during a visit to my local library. This came at the perfect moment for me and I began incorporating 30-minute sessions with Julie's book into my daily study periods.

With the help of Time Mapping, I've used the book to structure (and make ongoing adjustments to) my study goals. With the help of chapters such as Sort, Containerize, and Purge, I've become better at focusing my time to get through my to-do list and thus make better use of my leisure time.

I *feel* better about how much time I have, even though I've just added a big commitment in the form of 22 hours of study per week. I've been able to schedule realistic time slots for my other tasks as well as plenty of down-time. It's amazing how this book has helped me expand my concept of available time.

Using the visual aids in the book, and also researching more options online, I've finally chosen a planner that really works for me. This was a liberating step as I had not even realized I'd chosen a planner that wasn't right for me. I'd been subconsciously blaming myself for not making proper use of my old planner, but Julie's book helped me see through that defeatist thinking and find the solution. She works that magic in other areas also, helping demystify foggy habits such as procrastination and chronic lateness.

[Incidentally, since you're considering tools for better use of time, you might enjoy a little tip on planners that I stumbled across. While searching for your perfect planner (or, as I am, while getting through the final weeks of a waning year), you can supplement by using At-A-Glance QuickNotes Daily Planner. It comes as a tear-off pad with undated pages (you fill in the dates yourself) and each page has hole punches for optional storage in a ring binder. The cost is approx. five bucks for a pad of 50 sheets - which makes it an affordable way to experiment. It's a great way to practice structuring your day in a large format where you can spread out and really go ballistic.]

I've checked TIME MANAGEMENT FROM THE INSIDE OUT out of the library twice in a row so I could finish it. I now plan to buy my own copy from Amazon so I can go back over it and highlight the methods I didn't quite incorporate the first time around.

Unlike some of the other reviewers, I had not already read Morgenstern's book ORGANIZING FROM THE INSIDE OUT, so I did not find the material repetitious. I found it inspiring and very helpful. I would go as far as saying this book has changed my life. Time eating me alive has always been one of my biggest issues. Time now feels like less of a taskmaster and more of a personal tool.

I can't wait to see how I feel about time (and my accomplishments) once I've been practicing my new schedule for six months or longer.

P.S. I just found out there's a second edition, so I'll probably buy that one to get the updated features.

I found this book a lot less helpful than her first book- Organizing from the Inside Out. That was a great book.
This book, however, was not that helpful to me. I read the whole thing in about one hour because I could skim most of the sections which repeated or paraphrased previous ideas. I think there were some excellent ideas in the book- maybe 8 key points that could have been summarized in an article or very short piece. She provided some questions that were helpful (such as "do you like to work on a tight deadline?"; "do you like to work with music on?"; do you prefer to work by yourself," but she left the reader hanging-did not help to use the answers to determine time management preferenecs. What are ways that one should manage time if you prefer working alone as opposed to working with others? Lots of questions went unanswered and information provided was mostly common sense. The book fell into the category of descriptive (providing the usual mantra) rather than instructive.

This book is both for those who wish to improve their time management skills as well as those who just cannot figure out why they never get to do all the things they wanna do it life.

One of the best things about this book is how it makes you realize that time is something that you can manage and control. It teaches you how to identify the tasks you should focus on and how to divide your limited time among seamingly unlimited list of things you must do and thing you want to do. It also discusses how to analyze where our time is being wasted or why certain things are not getting done.

I really liked the Time Map technique which gives a big picture view of how time allocation.

Definitely recommended

It may not be obvious, but a big reason many people are disorganized is they simply don't know a few simple tricks. That's why this author's first book was so good. For me and a couple of friends, that book provided some tricks that were amazing in the effect they had on our lives.

I used to keep my brush near the sink in the bathroom, but there's a mirror in the next room where I like to brush my hair. Sometimes I'd leave the brush on a table in that room, while other times I'd return it to the bathroom. Since that's how I "organized" everything, my stuff was often all over the place.

Julie's basic trick is to organize according to your activities, so if you brush your hair in the next room by the mirror, why not keep your brush in the drawer of the table next to that mirror? Instead of imposing a system on yourself, she has you look at your activities and keep what you need close at hand.

Most people who are not organized actually do have a plan for where things should go. The problem is it's a system they designed without considering their real life activities so it is inconvenient to follow. Then things don't get put away and their place becomes a mess. This simple trick of analyzing every area of your house according to what activities you perform there and then putting everything you need for that activity within arm's reach is a technique many messy people are simply not aware if, and once they use it, surprisingly, they can see big changes.

Her other great trick is how to deal with a mess that's gotten big. Many people don't know the best way to do this, so they get caught up dealing with the first thing they grab and don't take care of the rest.

Julie's solution is to first sort everything into piles. This goes against the common suggestion to handle every piece of paper just once, but it's brilliant. Even if you have two big boxes of paperwork, if you go through everything first to do a quick sort you can finish with this stage very quickly. Then still resisting the urge to follow through with any one thing, she suggests that next you purge -- throw away as much as you can. Often most old paperwork, or whatever, can simply be tossed, so you're left with a much smaller amount to deal with. Then you decide where you're going to keep things, using her trick of giving them a home nearby where you'll be using them. Only at this point, when you know how much you have and where you'll be keeping it, do you consider getting the right container to keep it in. If you're organizing a couple of boxes of papers, you'll probably find that 2/3's have been thrown away, most of the rest have been filed, and a few things are in a action box. Only at this point -- which doesn't take too long to arrive at -- do you finally start doing the "work" of attending to the things in the action box, which turns out to be a fairly small amount of things.

So what's this got to do with this new book on organizing your time? Simple. While many people who are disorganized with their things actually lack knowledge and can benefit tremendously by learning just a few simple tricks, I believe most people who have trouble managing their time are in a different position. If you have too much to do and too little time to do it, you probably already have a pretty good "mental sort" in your head of what you do every day, and you already know that tossing out some activities will free up time, and that getting into some routines will make things run smoother.

In short, this book does not appear to contain any tricks or techniques that people don't already know. Instead, it seems like a publisher found an author with a great first book and asked for a second. The first book was based on the author's years of experience in running a business that helps people organize their things. She put all of her tricks and secrets in that book and it was great. But now she attempts to write a book on time management, something unrelated to her core experience of helping people organize their houses and offices. It's not surprising that this book doesn't live up to the first.

Julie Morgenstern applies the same general principles of ORGANIZING FROM THE INSIDE OUT to time management. This is made possible by seeing time as (metaphorically) space, and using the same SPACE (Sort, Purge, Assign a home, Containerize, Equalize) method to organize time. Though a tad redundant and infused with an icky self-help feel at times, I liked the book. For major procrastinators like me, this is a good reference book to keep on schedule and get things done. If you're going to read it all the way through however, you might want to read it quickly to keep from getting bored. It's not that her writing or her points are boring, but this is a much longer book than it needs to be.

I bought the CD audiobook edition. It has the same info as the print edition to the best of my knowledge. I read her book, Organizing From the Inside Out, first. I am still reaping the benefits of a much better organized workspace several months later. The same ideas are retrofitted to deal with time management. I found the book worthwhile because it gives a fresh perspective on time management by borrowing ideas from organizing principles. But they are separate challenges. Some ideas from the book are likely to have a positive impact, but not the transformational impact that can be achieved from the other book. So, expect about as much from this as the other decent books on time management, no more, no less.