Job Hunting : Take Back Your Life!: Using Microsoft® Outlook® to Get Organized and Stay Organized: Using Microsoft Outlook to Get Organized and Stay Organized (Bpg-Other)

Take Back Your Life!: Using Microsoft® Outlook® to Get Organized and Stay Organized: Using Microsoft Outlook to Get Organized and Stay Organized (Bpg-Other)

£7.24


Get the add-in instead - If you were to try to implement Getting Things Done using only the features available in Outlook, this would be a good book. If you haven t read Getting Things Done, this is a worthwhile introduction.However I stopped reading in chapter 7, where the suggested method of hierarchically organising all your objectives, projects and tasks by manually inserting headings and subsections into the bodies of the tasks - well it just looked labourius to the point of undoable. And that s the point - plain Outlook just isn t up to the job. I m trialling the add-in instead, and it looks a sight easier - in fact that s the point, you need something that does the chores for you instead of having to internalise the procedures till they become second nature.Or am I just lazy?

Better than GTD for managing complex tasks - Having read both Getting Things Done by Dave Allen and Take Back Your Life Using Outlook, I found that Sally McGhee s approach to Task Management is a lot easier to work with than Dave Allens - albeit they are very similar in concept.I like in particular her explanation and discussion and the way she uses Outlook to manage the realationships between Meaningful Objectives, Supporting Projects and Significant Next Actions. If you are using Outlook for email, calender and task management, and lets face it many of us do, this book illustrates a practical way of implementing a day to day personal management system that can provide huge personal productivity gains.If you are a Dave Allen fan, then use this book to implement GTD in Outlook rather than the using outlook pamphlet that is available from GTD and the outrageously complicated (it screwed up my Outlook big time)Outlook Add In from an associated company of GTD.

Get GTD instead - I read this book after reading David Allen s Getting Things Done.Sally takes the ideas from GTD, distorts them slightly and maps them to Outlook, however she fails to notice that a task in Outlook can have multiple categories, which makes tracking via project, and doing via context very easy. If you ve read GTD, this one doesn t add much more value.There are some tips in there for the Outlook novice, and I do like the dashboard idea, plus the concept of adding objectives as tasks in an .Objective category. (i.e. it s not all bad...)Andy.

Don t do it - I recommend you consider Getting Things Done before this book. There are some glaring gaps such as the section on getting your in basket to empty. In this book there is about one page on this, in GTD there are 20! I felt completly out on a limb once I d taken all the advice to fill my in basket and then found little in the way of advice on emptying it.I would say in it s defence that it goes into more depth when using outlook than GTD but then you would hope so, given the book s title!I wrote to the author to give my feedback and she explained that the section had been taken out at Microsoft s behest to make the book smaller - not very helpful if you re looking for a holistic system to organise your life!By all means get this as an expansion on GTD - but it s not a complete substitute.

At last - a book which helps you use a computer wisely - If like me you re forever writing to do lists and hatching plans for the future, which rarely come to anything, this might help.I ve read a number of these books, and they all make the same promise: a new, organized you, wealthier, more productive etc. My question is: if it s such a fantastic system, why bother to write a book on it? Why not keep the secrets for yourself and go for complete global domination if you re that organized and focussed?Well, thank goodness Sally McGhee isn t selfish! This is a useful book, which I m gradually getting through, and the principles of which I m trying to incorporate in to my lifestyle.It s all based on Microsoft Outlook, which turns out to be a really powerful tool! Realistically, you need to own a PDA or laptop computer which you can synchronise with Outlook to make the most of this book, as she advocates doing away with paper based systems.It is a bit American, and it s also too aimed (like most of these books) at senior executives (or wannabes). It also relies on having more or less constant access to a computer, and there s too much emphasis on email, rather than handling bits of paper. However, her filing ideas for paper are really well thought through.Any reader will need to adapt this book to their circumstances, but, having now read several books of this genre, I ve found this one of the most helpful. It won t solve everything, but I do recommend it!




Take Back Your Life!: Using Microsoft® Outlook® to Get Organized and Stay Organized: Using Microsoft Outlook to Get Organized and Stay Organized (Bpg-Other)