This is an excellent book. The author does an amazing job of articulating the concept, need, and application of a life lived with margins. I am purchasing copies for my friends.

I liked this book very much. Its written from Christian perspective but it applies to the lives of everyone. Margin is something that every Christian should read and any person who can take the good points from a book.

Dr. swenson diagnoses of the effects of technology and busy lifstyles that mark our culture today.His presciption for a better life through
margin in key areas of living was practical and very doable.
If our culture would respond to his advise, this would be a better world and certainly happier families and children.
JUST DO IT!
ps I preferred the book to the tapes.
The voice was too low of energy to inspire change.

This product was wonderful. I could not stop the cd's once I started them. I finished the set and a couple weeks later I heard the speaker over the radio, live. It was the same stuff. Great material. Life changing... A must have.

This is a great book that really helps shed a different light on how to put margin in your life. This book really help me personally and I would recommend it to anyone. I also recommend the workbook, It makes things practical and help you to apply what you have learned in the book

Richard Swenson serves as a "prophetic physician" with the insights he provides in this title and its follow-up book "Overcoming Overload." Although he is a medical practitioner, his thoughts here transcend medicine and offer Divine refreshment for the exhausted spirit of individuals in the 21st century. As the title suggests, the key idea presented is "margin." The author defines margin, then describes its vital nature for various areas of human life.

I strongly and highly recommend this book to all busy Christians, which means just about every believer. Even non-Christians will find a great deal of helpful information. For me, this one is a keeper!

Very insightful book regarding the nature of stress and how to better manage it.

Great help in working through the demands of life. Margin helps one to think through and prioritize the myriad of things that cry for attention. This is a must for those who are being crushed by the busyness of their lives.

What Swenson writes makes so much sense. This book is changing the way I approach work and life in general. I am even giving a talk to young adult ministry leaders this weekend incorporating many of the principles from the book. This is a much read to ask you to take a close look at your life and what you are living for.

This book makes sense. It is very well written, easy to understand and incredibly practical for today's world. It is a must read for anyone who wants their life back! It will challenge the way you live, your priorities, your relationships and what living is all about.

I'd skip the first half of the book as it is a bit tedious and statistic-y, but the latter half is revolutionary. Dr. Swenson gave me permission to slow down, to live simply, to enjoy people
more than things. He proposes a radical way to slow down life. He made me long for relationships, frugality, giving hilariously, and contentment.

This is a wonderful book. Dr Swenson shows you how to turn off , tune out, unplug, get off the grid. If you feel like you are running all the time, burning the candle at both ends, you are. In this book Dr. Swenson shows you how to get your life back.
This is one of my favorite books and it has a permanent place on my bookshelf. Everyone in our cities & states.. needs this book. Get back to what really matters in life. Read this book. It will change your life and you will be glad you bought this book.

This is a wonderful book. Dr Swenson shows you how to turn off , tune out, unplug, get off the grid. If you feel like you are running all the time, burning the candle at both ends, you are. In this book Dr. Swenson shows you how to get your life back.
This is one of my favorite books and it has a permanent place on my bookshelf. Everyone in our cities & states.. needs this book. Get back to what really matters in life. Read this book. It will change your life and you will be glad you bought this book.

I recently realized that every time I see someone on television sleeping in a hammock, I'm envious. It just looks so appealing! Well, I think I know why. It's because people who have time to nap in a hammock, have margin. Today I finished Dr. Richard Swenson's book of that title, which rates as one of the most important books on life-management that I've read. Swenson is convinced (and I think he's right) that we live in an unprecedented age where the pace and complexity of life conspire to produce exponential levels of stress and overload. Margin is the space in various areas of our lives - physical, emotional, time, financial - that can protect us from overload. When margin decreases, stress increases and burn-out is the end result.

Swenson spends the first part of the book discussing the cultural changes and societal reasons that account for the pain of stress and overload. This is his diagnosis of our pain. Much of this material reads like a sociology textbook and might even be boring to some people, but that should not put one off from reading the book.

The second section, discussing the presription for overloaded lives is really the heart of the book, and easily make the book worth reading. The prescription is margin - margin in physical energy, emotional energy, time, and finances. We don't have margin because we overwork, overcommit, overspend and overeat. We spend too many hours at the office, accumulate too much debt, spend too little time in silence and solitude, neglect nutrition and exercise and rest, and fail to nurture important relationships. What we need is a strict regimen of lifestyle changes which will help us cultivate margin in our bodies, our souls, our calendars, and our budgets. This calls for discipline and intentionality. These chapaters are especially helpful in providing wise strategies to help us along the way. I've read a good bit of this material twice.

The third part of the book deals with the result of building margin into our lives, namely health - health measured in contentment, balance, rest, and relationships. The chapters on contentment and balance were especially helpful to me, partly because they probe deeper than behavioral issues into the motivations of the heart. Other positives in the book include Swenson's extensive quotations from sociological and cultural researchers, his personal anecdotes, and his meditation on Scripture. Some weaknesses are an occasionally corny writing style, some weak interpretations of Scripture, and perhaps assuming too much from less than scientific research. But these are mild criticisms at best and do not really affect the overall message or usefulness of the book.

As a whole, this is a commendable book and one that is needed by most of the people I know. Almost everyone is too busy, stressed, tired, and overloaded. I certainly have been. And I intend to make some changes. One of those just may be purchasing a hammock for my back yard, so that I can enjoy some afternoon naps every now and then while my son plays in his sandbox nearby.

This book is something that everyone over the age of 21 should read carefully and think about for a long time. Then, make steps to create margin in your life. This book explains why you need margin, how it can change your life, and how to find/create it. Our society is careening towards self-destruction... here is a way one person at a time to change that. Read it like a college text... underline it... then implement it.

The topic of this book is timely and the concepts are important. I recommend the book because it has some very helpful observations about our overly busy society and it has a number of good suggestions on how to live life with greater sanity and satisfaction. I give the book only three stars because the author's writing is tedious. He either had a great book idea and the publisher told him the book needed to be thicker, or the publisher failed to edit with sufficient vigilance or both. The first five chapters could have been cut in size dramatically. It doesn't take 5 chapters for anyone living in the United States to realize that there is a problem with "margin." I wish the author had respected how time starved we are and starting discussing the solutions quite a bit earlier.