Never Check E-Mail In the Morning: And Other Unexpected Strategies for Making Your Work Life Work

Lets start with the bad. The book is mostly stuff you've already heard or is completely obvious to you. Morgenstern's advice for organizing information is to 'do what works best for you'. Gee, thanks for the hot tip.The book starts with an address to those who work far too many hours. I work an average number of hours but if I can be more efficient I'd like to see if I can make that number smaller. So I read the first part and didn't really get anything from it. As the book progresses she gets into how time is wasted and how to avoid the things and people that waste your time. This is the heart of the book's message because time is our most precious commodity. That's why I found it counterintuitive that the author's language was... far from concise; I was surprised by the amount of text devoted to the biographies of her clients. When you say something like, "meetings can be a large waste of time," we understand what you mean. You don't need to illustrate that point by telling us about someone who worked a lot of hours and attended many pointless meetings. Remember, our time is precious and this isn't exactly Literature; you would think Morgenstern would be more conscious of how much of our time she's taking.Toward the latter half of the book Morgenstern meanders into a topic that begins to contradict her earlier ideas. When she was describing situations that waste your time she hit on the idea of other employees wasting your time. But towards the end she gives us examples of people who don't make enough time for other employees and so one can only conclude that the unifying message is don't give too much time but also not too little. This is in all capacities the same advice for how to organize your data: 'do what works best'. So in the end Morgenstern hasn't really come up with solutions. She addresses a variety of different problems people have but her advice in the end is always the same: pick your head up, figure out what's important and do it without wasting your time. Again, not a very profound message and not one that should take 272 pages to explain.Now on to the slightly more positive. The title of the book is quite provocative and an excellent advertising scheme. Sorry to those of you who didn't realize it's the same book and now own two. The title can be explained as follows: If the first thing you do in the morning is check your email then there are any number of ways that you'll be diverted from your critical tasks to deal with all the little things your inbox has for you. Email creates a false sense of accomplishment for people because in the span of an hour or so you're likely to deal with a large number of different issues (likely half of them are personal) and so you feel like you've accomplished quite a bit but now that it's almost time for lunch you really haven't done much at all (including writing a review for this book on amazon). You've been in the office but you probably haven't done anything that makes money for your company - anything worth telling your boss about.Lets face it. For a number of jobs not checking your email in the morning is absurd. The underlying idea, however, is that at work you spend too much time multitasking and not enough time getting that really important job done. Multitasking slows total productivity and it hurts the quality of each individual piece of work. The real skill to learn is to avoid clicking that forwarded link for a youtube video.So Morgenstern recommends that you do one thing at a time and that you plan when to do these things based on when you have energy during the day. She also tells you to let others know your schedule so they'll be more accommodating. This again, depending on the job may be totally unrealistic but I guess if you're in charge you can set whatever rules you like.If anything in this review is unclear to you then perhaps you should buy the book but if it all makes sense to you then you're better off looking elsewhere. You're welcome.

"Never Check E-Mail In the Morning" is not about e-mail, it is about time management, self-discipline and productivity in general. The book helps you in self-assessment, helps to embrace your work/life balance, to develop entrepreneurial mindset, to choose the most important tasks, to create the time to get things done, to control the nibblers, to organize at the speed of change, to master delegation, to work well with others and to leverage your value.Like other popular self-help books, "Never Check E-Mail In the Morning" has no "references" section, which I don't like. Once you have completed this book, you have no direction what to read next. Julie Morgenstern, the author of many time management books and a monthly columnist for O, The Oprah Magazine, and a guest on television and radio programs, probably supposes that you will continue with her further publications.When the author writes about e-mail and the productivity issues that relate to e-mail, I fully agree with the author. She offers to break counterproductive habits and stereotypes related to our way of emailing. She covers the problems related to e-mail much better that "Hamster Revolution" by Mike Song.I highly recommend "Getting Things Done" by David Allen and "Time Drive" by Gleb Arkhangelsky in addition to this book.

Small or large, the tasks and responsibilities every organization must complete to be successful are pretty much the same. But employees of smaller businesses have a wider range of responsibilities than the more specialized staff of larger firms. Small business employees--and their owners--continually are confronted by many more types of tasks requiring attention. Additionally, smaller businesses tend to "run lean" with limited back up if someone is absent. These factors tend to foster an unfocused and inefficient workplace.This book offers employees in such situations with insights and strategies that show them how to be more productive and efficient. If done well, it will also result in better work life balance and a less stressful workplace.Two caveats, particularly for management and business owners:1. Woefully inadequate attention (in this book) to the value of planning as the most effective way to minimize "fires" and "the tyranny of the urgent";2. No apparent consideration for time and attention necessary for maintaining the culture and values of the company (e.g., customers always come first, or great performance every time or measure twice, cut once, etc.)

I was glad to have read this book. I was able to get some new ideas of how to approach things. The best of those ideas fitting the title-Never check email in the morning. I have started to follow this rule and have found 1. I don't really need to (if they needed something from me first thing, they should have called me or emailed me yesterday) 2. I get a lot more done in my day. I create a to-do list first thing in the morning (see D. Allen's method) and spend the first part of my morning addressing those items on the list. I recommend this book to anyone wanting a new way to look at their work day.

This is one of those books that you can't read cover to cover because I doubt anyone will take everything she talks about and apply it to their Work Life. However, it's a great resource when you're struggling in a particular area of organization and productivity. The whole concept of keeping your first hour of the day email free is brilliant (if you can manage it). I like Julie's approach to productivity, but there are some things in here that just didn't make sense to me. If you need an overhaul, I recommend this book because she covers a lot of topics. Very good resource to have on hand.

I bought two books from this author and both are very easy to follow and implement. I looked around at a whole lot of these books and I'm sure there are lots of other good books on getting organised - but this and the original "Organising from the Inside Out" are just fine for me. Most of the ideas are real time savers and you'll feel a whole lot better organised if you do what you're told. Only problem for me is I was always a disobedient child - things haven't changed much. The discipline is the hard part of both these books.

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Excellent - very sensible easy to follow advice. Great advice. Try it today you will not regret it I promise

3 stars alone for the idea to refrain from e-mail reading in the morning - thanx! I applied it, and it really helped.Full stop. That idea alone is worth getting the book!But: I.m.h.o. the only really *new* idea - the subtitle promised other "unexpected" things... Compared to other "self-organization" books (e.g. by LeBoeuf, McCormack, McKenzie or L.Seiwert) it is a boring read.I was brougth to the book by Merlin Manns' 43-folders website -this guy often comes up with "unexpected" ideas :-)

probably better suited to other people - wordyThe title is the good advice.