Take Back Your Life!: Using Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 to Get Organized and Stay Organized | 
 enlarge | Author: Sally Mcghee
Publisher: Microsoft Press
Category: Book
List Price: $24.99
Buy New: $11.96
You Save: $13.03 (52%)
New (31) Used (9) from $9.99
Rating:  11 reviews
Sales Rank: 29141
Media: Paperback
Pages: 368
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.6
Dimensions (in): 8.9 x 7.3 x 1.1
ISBN: 0735623430
Dewey Decimal Number: 005.57
EAN: 9780735623439
ASIN: 0735623430
Publication Date: June 13, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: Expedited shipping available
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: New, never read, may have minor wear from being on a retail store shelf.
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Product Description
If you re bogged down by unrelenting e-mail messages, conflicting commitments, and endless interruptions, it s not too late to reclaim control of your workday and take back your life! By applying the same time management and productivity techniques used by leading companies, you can better manage all of your communications, action items, and interactions. In this book, productivity expert Sally McGhee shows you how to take control and reclaim something you thought you had 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 by using the latest productivity features in Microsoft Office Outlook 2007. Learn the proven methods that empower you to clear away distractions and loose ends and focus on what s really important to you and your business. You will discover what defines, and what limits, your personal productivity and learn how to create your own management system. Examine how you collect and store information, process and organize your e-mail messages for efficiency, and plan and prioritize with the calendar features in Office Outlook 2007. Learn what thousands of people worldwide have discovered about taking control of their everyday productivity, and start transforming your own life today! Includes a tear-out poster of the proven McGhee Productivity Solutions Workflow Model suitable for keeping right next to your desk.
Helps you understand what defines, and what limits, your personal productivity
Demonstrates how to make Office Outlook 2007 part of an effective and highly personalized system for managing the constant stream of information that flows across your desktop
Delivers the same powerful personal organization techniques from a popular corporate training class taught in some of the world s most successful companies
Offers an engaging, easy-to-read style for users of all levels
Applies concepts and models from the fields of behavioral psychology and education
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| Customer Reviews: Read 6 more reviews...
 Take Back Your Copy August 10, 2008
BBlair (Washington State)
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."
 Stopped me from being an email junkie! April 4, 2008
Darin Browning (Dallas, TX)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
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.
 waste of Money February 8, 2008
David S
0 out of 7 found this review helpful
i was looking for a "how to" and tip book. This is a philosophical rambling about how one should look at getting organized. If i could return it, I would.
 Take back you life November 24, 2007
Roberta K. Lee (St Louis, MO United States)
0 out of 5 found this review helpful
This looks like a great idea to assist busy people to maximize their use of MS Office 2007. However, it does take time to get it organized and I have not completed that yet - too busy.
Take back your life October 26, 2007
Janice C. Thielemann (Redding, ca)
5 out of 5 found this review helpful
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
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