Review: Time Management Magic by Lee Cockerell

the lowdown
This book centers on primarily--you guessed it--time management skills. This is an interesting twist on the topic, though, due to Cockerell's history with Disney, and before that, with Hilton and Marriott. Now Cockerell ekes out his living giving motivational speeches and writing books about customer service, and now time management. It's nothing ground breaking, but it was a fresh take on the topic.

I was interested in this book because as a law school student, and just generally a human being in today's society, I feel like I'm always pressed for time, as evidenced by the tardiness of this review (my bad y'all). While I can't say that this revolutionized the way that I'm managing my time, it definitely made me consider how little time I spend planning and managing my days. This book definitely drove home to me that spending the time to plan out your next day pays dividends in the future when you wake up knowing what your tasks are. I'm still working at adopting the majority of his system, but it's a work in progress!

the good

• Cockerell really knows his stuff. He wouldn't have had such a successful career without superb time management skills, and he knows it. He was able to drive this home really well by providing examples of the way his system benefited him while he was at Disney, which had the added benefit of providing a slight peek into the world of Disney hotels, which I really enjoyed.
• His system is simple and easy to follow. It felt like something that would me manageable for me to do. Again, it's nothing groundbreaking, or something that you couldn't think of on your own, but it was nice to have it spelled out in front of you. It mainly consists of writing down what you need to get done the next day, and ranking those items, but it's nice to hear it from someone who has really made it work.

the bad

• There is a lot, and I mean a lot, of self promotion in this book. Cockerell really puts the sell on his other books pretty hard. He is also little self serving, at one point celebrating the fact that he has over 3,000 contacts. I think that he promotes his career successes to show that he's been able to accomplish a lot simply by listing the things he needs to get done, but it comes across as vain.
• Additionally, there is a lot of product promotion. If Cockerell doesn't have a kickback set up with DayTimer, the planner he uses, I'd be shocked. He mentions DayTimer more times than I could count, and frequently mentions that they will ship to your house, etc. It would have been more tolerable if DayTimer had something unique that other planners don't, but I didn't see anything in particular.

the quote
"Everything is hard before it is easy, but when you master the hard things, life gets easier."
skip it/borrow it/buy it
This one falls solidly into the borrow it category, primarily due to its brevity. I definitely think it's worth a read, especially if you feel like you're constantly running out of time. His system is solid. But it's a short read, especially when you take out all of the DayTimer references, so borrow this one.

overall score:7/10

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