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

Amazon.com® Reader Reviews (Ranked by Helpfulness)

Average Amazon.com® Rating:  Based on 14 Ratings

Take Back Your Copy - 2008-08-10
Reviewer Rating:
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."

you get what you put into it. - 2008-08-25
Reviewer Rating:
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!

Stopped me from being an email junkie! - 2008-04-04
Reviewer Rating:
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.

It works - 2008-09-13
Reviewer Rating:
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 valuable book on time management and organization - 2009-10-23
Reviewer Rating:
This is a great book on time management and application of the GTD "philosophy" with the MS Outlook e-mail application.
The authors do not limit the discussion to MS Outlook configuration. In this sense, this is not a technical book, which is good.
Time Management (and for that matter, GTD) is a much broader approach and is not limited to specific tools.
So the authors discuss how you should organize and plan yourself first from a higher perspective. For example, how to manage interruptions (and, yes, that includes the automatic new e-mail alerts), how to manage your (several) collecting points (inboxes, if you will), etc.
Along the discussion the use of MS Outlook is explained. Note that if you don't use MS Outlook this could still be a useful book, because you could easily adapt the concepts to any other e-mail system.
Things like the Weekly Review, which was always a mysterious concept to me, become much clearer with the authors approach.
This may not be "the definitive guide" to getting organized and time management, but I have gone back to the book several times to check steps and reinforce some concepts. Hence, it is a valuable book to have, if you have not decided for one yet.
Good reading.

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