Book Review - Time Management from the inside out by Julie Morgenstein

Author: Julie Morgenstein
Publisher: Hachette Australia
Publication Date: 2000 (Reprinted second edition, 2007)
Genre: Non-fiction; Self help; Business

I actually picked up this book in early January after an encounter with Ms. Morgenstein's first book: Organising from the inside out . That book helped me out in such a way that I felt the second title was worth a look at. I actually scoured the second hand bookstores looking for it and was thrilled to find it.

I was even more thrilled when I took it home and read it.

Morgenstein doesn't dictate to you what sort of system you should use, she encourages you to start thinking about how you live your life. Rather than dictating a set system to you such as GTD would, she makes you think about what is and isn't working for you and why. Then she gives you a set of steps to create your own system that works for you.

"No matter how out of control your life may seem, there are always some things that work for you in addition to the long list of things that do not. It is invaluable to start by looking at what works." - Chapter 7: Understanding your unique relationship to time, Time Management From The Inside Out.

And she allows you to fail. And she will even give you a list early on in the book as to why you might fail - technical issues such as not having enough space or the right tools, psychological issues such as a fear of failing at it or even other issues such as the possibility that you might be going through a transitional phase in your life. In each case, she makes it clear, let the system you create work as well as it can for you till you have time to address the issue before attempting to recreate another system from scratch. Let things become stable.

Then she hits you with the information that even once things are stable, your system will not always work and that that is quite normal. This takes the pressure off the group of readers who frantically read and implement every organising idea or system only to feel it isn't quite working for them when it does on occasion fall apart. She's not giving you excuses - far from it, since she says that time management, like organisation, is a skill that can be learnt rather than a talent that only a blessed few are endowed with. On top of that, your schedule can change and probably should change on a monthly basis as your interests and goals change.

This is her career - helping people become better organised and more efficient. The book reads like a step by step guided tour through one of her days working with her clients. The first few chapters consist of dealing with all the underlying issues such as identifying goals and priorities, dealing with the issues we mentioned and generally figuring out what works and what doesn't in the client's life.

"It's been my experience that once you overcome the problem pragmatically, the psychological resistance usually melts away." - Chapter 2: What's Holding You Back?, Time Management From The Inside Out

Then comes the issue of paper versus digital, what format the schedule or planner should be in, what kind of time slots work best and so on. And yet again, the only rule she seems to dictate here is that whatever works best for the client is what the best option is.

"No matter what planner you choose, you need to spend at least a week or two customizing your system." - Chapter 6: Choosing the right planner for you, Time Management From The Inside Out.

The advice in the book is practical and while she cannot customise it to each and every reader, she comes close by giving them all the tools and facts they need to customise their own schedule themselves.

The only thing that would make this book better? If she was actually there, prompting you to think about how you could use every piece of information in the book to make your own time management solutions.

But this is a book and you are the reader and that would be your part of the job here.

Rating: 4.5 out of 5.0 (A book I would recommend re-reading every month).