Take Back Your Life!: Using Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 to Get Organized and Stay Organized [With Quick Reference Poster]

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.

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.

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

As you may know, Sally McGhee and David Allen developed the productivity concepts together, and she decided to adapt it to Microsoft's Outlook. I'm very familiar with both David Allen's and Sally McGhee's work (having seen them both in person) and the main difference and value that I see in "Take Back Your Life!" is that instead of TALKING about what is productive, TBYL actually SHOWS YOU HOW TO USE OUTLOOK--it's akin to the difference between someone TALKING about the different ways you can go fishing (Deep-sea, fly-, bottom-, spear-) and someone ACTUALLY SHOWING YOU HOW TO USE YOUR Fishing Pole (Outlook in this case).

I've read them all: Getting Things Done, Seven Habits, Total Workday Control... What sets this book apart is the combination of modern theory and practical application. Finally there's an approach that shows both what AND how. I'm on Outlook 2007, and this is the best book I've found for tieing personal and professional goals, objectives, projects and loose ends all together into one elegant and powerful system. I'm more in control and more productive than ever - and finding more time to spend with my family everyday, too!