Rating: 
Summary: What a helpful book!
Review: If you are like me, you have had a lifelong battle with poor time management, chronic messiness and clutter taking over your life and home. In January 2001 I decided to do something about it and bought this book as a way to conquer these pesky things which have plagued me for so long. I have really enjoyed the way this book is presented. I've owned it for about a year now, and I still frequently refer to it. It's also good to take a few minutes to go over it when you are feeling overwhelmed, especially if you have a lot of "irons in the fire." I find it's reassuring and gets me into the right frame of mind to do my cleaning up, or whatever I happen to be procrastinating on at the moment. I have now read this book from cover to cover and it is truly a wealth of information. This book really is worth your time. But you have to use the methods presented in the book or it won't help. Good luck!
And get organizing!!!!
Rating: 
Summary: Ineffective
Review: It may not be obvious, but a big reason many people are disorganized is they simply don't know a few simple tricks. That's why this author's first book was so good. For me and a couple of friends, that book provided some tricks that were amazing in the effect they had on our lives. I used to keep my brush near the sink in the bathroom, but there's a mirror in the next room where I like to brush my hair. Sometimes I'd leave the brush on a table in that room, while other times I'd return it to the bathroom. Since that's how I "organized" everything, my stuff was often all over the place. Julie's basic trick is to organize according to your activities, so if you brush your hair in the next room by the mirror, why not keep your brush in the drawer of the table next to that mirror? Instead of imposing a system on yourself, she has you look at your activities and keep what you need close at hand. Most people who are not organized actually do have a plan for where things should go. The problem is it's a system they designed without considering their real life activities so it is inconvenient to follow. Then things don't get put away and their place becomes a mess. This simple trick of analyzing every area of your house according to what activities you perform there and then putting everything you need for that activity within arm's reach is a technique many messy people are simply not aware if, and once they use it, surprisingly, they can see big changes. Her other great trick is how to deal with a mess that's gotten big. Many people don't know the best way to do this, so they get caught up dealing with the first thing they grab and don't take care of the rest. Julie's solution is to first sort everything into piles. This goes against the common suggestion to handle every piece of paper just once, but it's brilliant. Even if you have two big boxes of paperwork, if you go through everything first to do a quick sort you can finish with this stage very quickly. Then still resisting the urge to follow through with any one thing, she suggests that next you purge -- throw away as much as you can. Often most old paperwork, or whatever, can simply be tossed, so you're left with a much smaller amount to deal with. Then you decide where you're going to keep things, using her trick of giving them a home nearby where you'll be using them. Only at this point, when you know how much you have and where you'll be keeping it, do you consider getting the right container to keep it in. If you're organizing a couple of boxes of papers, you'll probably find that 2/3's have been thrown away, most of the rest have been filed, and a few things are in a action box. Only at this point -- which doesn't take too long to arrive at -- do you finally start doing the "work" of attending to the things in the action box, which turns out to be a fairly small amount of things. So what's this got to do with this new book on organizing your time? Simple. While many people who are disorganized with their things actually lack knowledge and can benefit tremendously by learning just a few simple tricks, I believe most people who have trouble managing their time are in a different position. If you have too much to do and too little time to do it, you probably already have a pretty good "mental sort" in your head of what you do every day, and you already know that tossing out some activities will free up time, and that getting into some routines will make things run smoother. In short, this book does not appear to contain any tricks or techniques that people don't already know. Instead, it seems like a publisher found an author with a great first book and asked for a second. The first book was based on the author's years of experience in running a business that helps people organize their things. She put all of her tricks and secrets in that book and it was great. But now she attempts to write a book on time management, something unrelated to her core experience of helping people organize their houses and offices. It's not surprising that this book doesn't live up to the first.
Rating: 
Summary: Very similar to her first book
Review: Julie Morgenstern applies the same general principles of ORGANIZING FROM THE INSIDE OUT to time management. This is made possible by seeing time as (metaphorically) space, and using the same SPACE (Sort, Purge, Assign a home, Containerize, Equalize) method to organize time. Though a tad redundant and infused with an icky self-help feel at times, I liked the book. For major procrastinators like me, this is a good reference book to keep on schedule and get things done. If you're going to read it all the way through however, you might want to read it quickly to keep from getting bored. It's not that her writing or her points are boring, but this is a much longer book than it needs to be.
Rating:
Summary: Very similar to her first book
Review: Julie Morgenstern applies the same general principles of ORGANIZING FROM THE INSIDE OUT to time management. This is made possible by seeing time as (metaphorically) space, and using the same SPACE (Sort, Purge, Assign a home, Containerize, Equalize) method to organize time. Though a tad redundant and infused with an icky self-help feel at times, I liked the book. For major procrastinators like me, this is a good reference book to keep on schedule and get things done. If you're going to read it all the way through however, you might want to read it quickly to keep from getting bored. It's not that her writing or her points are boring, but this is a much longer book than it needs to be.
Rating:
Summary: Time Management from the Inside Out
Review: Morgenstern gives good practical advice for managing your time.
Rating:
Summary: Another Victory for Ms. Morgenstern
Review: Ms. Morgenstern's first book, Organizing from the Inside Out, was tremendously helpful because of its ease with which I could apply the principles to my life. Her kindergarten model of organizing space -- to create activity zones -- totally resonated with me the first time I read OFIO, and her use of it again in relation to time management is so great! She advocates a goal-oriented approach to scheduling time and actually helps her readers think through their goals. In the second part of the book, which I found particularly helpful, she brings the kindergarten model back and applies it to mapping out time. Morgenstern also provides specific instructions about how to zone your own calendar so that you can make really effective and informed decisions about your time. The most appealing part of Morgenstern's approach -- and the part that separates her from other self-help authors -- is that she never IMPOSES anything on her readers; rather, she teaches us _how_ to discover what's going to work in our own lives. She gave me freedom to figure out what was going to work for me, rather than making me learn a new, complicated system to impose on myself.
Rating:
Summary: Great method for getting time under control for once!
Review: One of the worse problems I have had with time management was the physical act of deciding what was more important to put inside my dayplanner...Julie Morgenstern has given me the tools I need to make my life a whole lot easier to see on paper. And believe me, before I purchased this book, my dayplanner hardly got touched because I would feel overwhelmed with deciding what to put onto the blank pages. Now I have my life somewhat in a more controllable realm of understanding.
Rating:
Summary: Very Helpful
Review: The audiocassette give you the chance to listen many times without having to find a page to refer to in a book. This tape helped me more than I can say. I bought it several months ago and listen to it anytime I feel I am getting bogged down with all I have to do. This and the organization book were extremely helpful in getting by busy life in better control.
Rating:
Summary: Now that you've cleaned up your home, clean up your schedule
Review: The book is filled with the same gracious, level-headed prose that distinguished "Organizing from the Inside Out." People familiar with the first book will recognize some repetition of ideas, but as Martha Stewart would say, that's a good thing. Morgenstern starts you off with some brief, but very usual, self-evaluating quizzed, boiling down to: what's working? what's not? Smart, smart, smart. Unlike a lot of time management books, Morgenstern does not offer a one-size-fits-all schedule. Some people need PDAs, some people need index card-sized schedules--and Morgenstern thoroughly runs through the ups and downs of both. She is blunt about targeting the biggest issue most people face: deciding what it is that you really want. Once you know that, organizing and/or time management is much easier. But it really is an inside job.
Rating:
Summary: Morphed me from scattered adult into effective student
Review: The Monday after Thanksgiving I set out on a new career adventure. To partake of the training I need for this new career, I'm studying my new trade by correspondence course (the old-fashioned kind where you receive lessons in the mail). The course will go for six months, so I'll need to be self-motivated to get through all the material, learn the underlying wisdom and techniques, and complete the exercises.
Fortunately, I found Ms. Morgenstern's book during a visit to my local library. This came at the perfect moment for me and I began incorporating 30-minute sessions with Julie's book into my daily study periods.
With the help of Time Mapping, I've used the book to structure (and make ongoing adjustments to) my study goals. With the help of chapters such as Sort, Containerize, and Purge, I've become better at focusing my time to get through my to-do list and thus make better use of my leisure time.
I *feel* better about how much time I have, even though I've just added a big commitment in the form of 22 hours of study per week. I've been able to schedule realistic time slots for my other tasks as well as plenty of down-time. It's amazing how this book has helped me expand my concept of available time.
Using the visual aids in the book, and also researching more options online, I've finally chosen a planner that really works for me. This was a liberating step as I had not even realized I'd chosen a planner that wasn't right for me. I'd been subconsciously blaming myself for not making proper use of my old planner, but Julie's book helped me see through that defeatist thinking and find the solution. She works that magic in other areas also, helping demystify foggy habits such as procrastination and chronic lateness.
[Incidentally, since you're considering tools for better use of time, you might enjoy a little tip on planners that I stumbled across. While searching for your perfect planner (or, as I am, while getting through the final weeks of a waning year), you can supplement by using At-A-Glance QuickNotes Daily Planner. It comes as a tear-off pad with undated pages (you fill in the dates yourself) and each page has hole punches for optional storage in a ring binder. The cost is approx. five bucks for a pad of 50 sheets - which makes it an affordable way to experiment. It's a great way to practice structuring your day in a large format where you can spread out and really go ballistic.]
I've checked TIME MANAGEMENT FROM THE INSIDE OUT out of the library twice in a row so I could finish it. I now plan to buy my own copy from Amazon so I can go back over it and highlight the methods I didn't quite incorporate the first time around.
Unlike some of the other reviewers, I had not already read Morgenstern's book ORGANIZING FROM THE INSIDE OUT, so I did not find the material repetitious. I found it inspiring and very helpful. I would go as far as saying this book has changed my life. Time eating me alive has always been one of my biggest issues. Time now feels like less of a taskmaster and more of a personal tool.
I can't wait to see how I feel about time (and my accomplishments) once I've been practicing my new schedule for six months or longer.
P.S. I just found out there's a second edition, so I'll probably buy that one to get the updated features.
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