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

by Sally McGhee (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
Unrelenting e-mail. Conflicting commitments. Endless interruptions. In Take Back Your Life! Special Edition, productivity expert Sally McGhee shows you how to take control and reclaim something that you thought you'd lost forever--your work-life balance. Now you can benefit from Sally's popular and highly-regarded corporate education programs, learning simple but powerful techniques for rebalancing your personal and professional commitments using the productivity features in Outlook. Learn the proven methods that will empower you to:

*Clear away distractions and loose ends and focus on what's really important to you and your business. *Take charge of your productivity using techniques and processes designed by McGhee Productivity Solutions and implemented in numerous Fortune 500 companies. *Customize and exploit the productivity features iOutlook to help you create balance at home and on the job. *Special Edition features: Get even more on-the-job resources with an easy tear-out card of Sally's workflow diagram, a quick guide to key Outlook tasks, and great articles on the CD to help you save even more time.

When you change your approach, you can change your results. So learn what thousands of Sally's clients worldwide have discovered about taking control of their everyday productivity--and start transforming your own life today!

About the Author
A recognized thought leader and innovator in the field of productivity management, Sally McGhee has trained thousands of people in the corporate environment. She has 25 years' experience as a consultant and an executive coach, and is the founder and managing partner of McGhee Productivity Solutions.

Product Details

• Paperback: 316 pages
• Publisher: Microsoft Press (June 22, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0735622159
• ISBN-13: 978-0735622159
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 7.2 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #241,168 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

  Popular in these categories: (What's this?)

  #32 in	Books > Computers & Internet > Microsoft > Applications > Outlook
  #46 in	Books > Computers & Internet > Microsoft > Scheduling & E-mail
  #68 in	Books > Computers & Internet > Microsoft > Applications > Office

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

45 of 45 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Outlook on Steroids, April 1, 2006

By	Scott Barentsen (Pleasant Hill, CA United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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 . . .

50 of 52 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Author completely misses Outlook's powerful heirarchical capabilities., November 7, 2006

By	Len at Amazon (Massachusetts) - See all my reviews

The result of using Outlook the way this author recommends is that you'll essentially have two separate lists: one list of all your projects and another list of all your "next actions". Since you'll be able to sort your next-action list according to the context in which each action will be done, this arrangement is better than nothing. But the problem with this arrangement is that with it, Outlook maintains neither project-to-next-actions connections nor next-actions-to-project connections. The author would have you list "next actions" within each project's Notes field to link the project to its next actions, and the author offers no link of each next action back to its project.

The author has missed a simple, powerful solution to this problem. When using Tasks in Outlook, the Tasks folder offers a heirarchical directory structure in which it's very easy to add folders and subfolders, just as one might do in Windows Explorer. Each of these folders that you create can be named to represent a project, and the next actions for each of these projects can be stored within the project's folder. Then all you have to do to see a list of all your next actions (across all projects) is to run a quick "Advanced Find" on your Outlook Tasks folder. Once you get the criteria of your search the way you want them, your search criteria can easily be saved, allowing you to recreate your "next actions" list with current data whenever you want it. If you include the "In Folder" field to display in your search results, then this field provides your next-action-to-project connection; and when you're reviewing your Outlook Tasks folder, the directory list of folders is essentially your project list, and within each project you see only the next actions associated with that project, so it's easy to maintain a project focus when planning your projects. Also, when using Outlook this way, many additional Outlook features can be used as well.

This book offers a few good ideas, but by failing to describe a simple and powerful way to have Outlook itself maintain the association of each project to its next actions, this book cannot be strongly recommended.

22 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Stong Emphasis on Up Front Planning, July 3, 2006

By	C. T. Everett (Charlotte, North Carolina) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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.