MindMapSwitch

After the positive feedback from my previous mind mapping exercise, I wanted to try another mind mapping exercise with my son.

Now that he is 3 years old, he has already decided which toys, stories and games are his favourite. To let him see them all as one, I sat down with him to mind map his favourites. For this exercise I decided on the following topics:

• Colour
• Food
• Animal
• Weather
• Story
• Toy

These topics are everyday things that he knows about.

Starting at the top right, I worked round each branch asking what his favourite was and why. Before I started this exercise, I had a rough idea what each of his favourites would be, but once we completed the mind map, I realised I only got 2 of his favourites right!

   

Click here to download:

Favourites_A_Mind_Mapping_Exer.zip (260 KB)

This is a great exercise to explore what your child likes and their reasons for that favourite, but don't feel you need to stop with your children! Reverse the roles and let your child ask you about your favourites.

Once your done, compare your own mind map with your childs. Let them view the mind maps side by side and ask them if they can spot any favourites that are the same or similar.

If you're not confident in creating your own favourites mind map, you can download the first mind map from this post to use in your own exercise.

Happy mind mapping!

My apologies for the poor quality in the scanned mind maps. I thought I had my scanning process finalised, but it appears something has went wrong when I resized the images. I hope to rectify this soon.

While tweeting about my weekly mind map, Niall Daly asked me on Twitter how I mind map my weekly review. Today I am going to show you!

Mind mapping your weekly review is a great way to reflect on the previous week and prepare yourself for the week ahead. The best part is it only takes a few minutes of your time.

I tend to split my weekly review mind map in half down the middle of the page:

1. The left half is where I reflect on the past week.
2. The right half is where I prepare for the week ahead.

I always start with reflecting on the previous week. It's give me an idea of areas or projects that I need to place more focus on. Before I start mind mapping my reflections, I create two branches on the left of my mind map called 'Hits' and 'Misses'.

Under the hits branch I add branches for roles in my life or projects that I am working on. Under each of these I add branches where I have performed well in. Using a single keyword to denote the area in each roles or project I have done well in, it gives me a good overview of where I have made progress.

Under the misses branch I add branches for roles and projects similar to my hits branch. Under this branch I mind map out aspects of each role or project that I have neglected.

I spend a couple of minutes reviewing my past week and start thinking about roles and projects that I want to focus on for the week ahead. Taking a couple of minutes to just reflect on your past week let's you identify roles or projects that you have neglected. Now we can start preparing for the week ahead!

On the right hand side of your mind map add a separate branch for each of the roles or projects that you are going to focus on for the week ahead. Under each role or project, mind map the next actions you need to complete in order to move that project forward. In no time, you'll have a list of next actions for the next week.

When you're mind mapping your weekly review, remember these tips:

1. Messy is good, the mind map gets thrown away in a few minutes anyway.
2. Stick to single keywords for branches. Using associations we want to generate ideas and actions for our projects and roles.

This is just my preferred way of mind mapping my weekly review. I also use a similar mind map to review activities at work. I like to keep my work and personal projects separate, but there's no reason why you can't use a single mind map for both.

I hope this helps you in your weekly reviews.

Happy mind mapping!

I've been using Google’s Gmail application for a few years now, but up until a few weeks ago I didn’t realise how much time I had been wasting. Since I had started using Gmail, I had been using the mouse to shuffle emails about. Not very productive when you consider that using the shortcut keys can be much faster than fiddling about with a mouse.

In an effort to spend less time in my inbox, I decided I would learn the shortcut keys so that I could process my emails faster.

So what was I going to use to remember all these shortcut keys? Mind mapping of course!

Mind mapping your short cuts keys is a simple process. Starting out with a list of shortcut keys, mind map each of the shortcut keys based on their context.

What’s great about this exercise is that the actions that you are mind mapping tend to be only 1 or 2 words long, so it’s really easy to organise your shortcuts into branches that mostly consist of 1 keyword. Also the actions you are mind mapping can be easily annotated with images that make your mind map stand out more.

Here's my mind map for Gmail's shortcut keys:

Tips

Trying to remember shortcut keys for your favourite applications is a marathon not a sprint. Remember these tips when you're learning your shortcut keys to make it easier:

1. Keep the mind map in view while your working. Having it nearby as a reference means you can quickly look up those shortcut keys you’re not familiar with.
2. Review the mind map each morning and identify those shortcut keys you haven’t memorized yet. Make a point of learning those for that day. Next day test yourself on the shortcuts you used the previous day and see if you remember them.
3. If your application has hundreds of shortcut keys, then try to learn only those shortcut keys that you will use on a day to day basis. I don't use the Tasks feature of Gmail so I left it out of my mind map.

I’m hoping to turn this into a habit in the next few weeks, by which point I won’t need the mind map as I will have committed everything to memory.

Being able to work smarter means learning more about the software you use on a daily basis. Each month I’m going to make a point of mind mapping a single application’s shortcut keys and start using them.

Happy mind mapping!

It's Blog Action Day 2009 and this year's topic is climate change. Today, bloggers all over the world will be highlighting the issue of climate change and what we can do to help.

Rather than bog you do with my rants on climate change and what we should be doing, I thought it might be a better idea for me to instead present my mind map on climate change. Enjoy!

There are hundreds of blogs out there that want to help be more productive. Is there a better way to learn to be more productive without all the fuss of projects, context switching and fancy to-do lists?

Nicholas Bate has taken a different approach to this and has an article on his blog entitled, "The 7 Platforms of Astonishing Productivity". Instead of writing about how to make yourself more productive, Nicholas has gone right back to basics and has defined 7 platforms that are the building blocks of being productive.

The 7 platforms not only cover things like workflow and balance, but also considers the individual. Being healthy in mind and body is something that makes you work better, but it's rarely mentioned in past articles I have seen about being productive.

Check out the mind map and the original post by Nicholas Bate.

I've been pretty consistent since I started this blog just over a year ago. The key to this has been my reliance on a mind map that let's me see at a glance what I need to do to keep my blog ticking over.

This is my blogging activities mind map, and in this post I'm going to show you how to use one to maintain your own blog.

All the tasks that I need to complete to keep this blog running is done from my mind map. It's split into different recurring time frames that indicate when a certain activity should be completed. Currently I'm working from 4 different time frames on my mind map:

1. Daily
2. Weekly
3. Monthly
4. Half Yearly

Within each time frame branch I add a 2 work description of the activity. The single keyword per branch rule doesn't apply here, as I need the mind map to indicate to me straight away what I need to be doing for each time frame. I also use hyperlinks from each branch to a file, folder or URL that I use to complete that action. Here's how you can start your own blogging activities mind map:

1. Decide on the time frames you wish to work from. If you can't see as far ahead as 6 months with your blog, then stick to daily and weekly tasks until you find the tasks that you need to complete on a less frequent basis.
2. Start with a couple of tasks under each time frame branch. Don't make too many to start with as you'll bog yourself down with chores and quickly lose interest in your blog.
3. If you can create hyperlinks from your activities to the appropriate file, folder or URL. Each activity is now just one-click away from being started on, which means less messing about for you.
4. Use markers to indicate which activities you've completed and which ones still remain.

The great thing about this mind map is it's simplicity. I don't want it to be too crowded. Keeping it minimal means that I can make quickly assess what activities I need to do and when. As the mind map contains nothing else, I also remain focused on the activities I need to carry out while not being distracted. 

Do you have other favorite uses of mind mapping for blogging? Leave your comments below, I would love to hear about the unique and creative ways that bloggers are using mind mapping.

Being successful in anything you do requires a lot of work. To guide you along the way there are countless books, articles, videos and podcasts to help you. Instead of filtering your way through the masses of information, why not try using Nicholas Bates 7 P's of Absolute Success?

Nicholas Bates post is a great place to start if you're looking to make a success of a business, project or anything else that means a lot to you. I highly encourage you to read his post to give yourself a background to the mind map.

Included in the mind map is the bit.ly URL for the Nicholas's original post. Enjoy!

Last week I was sinking under a to do list that comprised of things I never thought I was going to get done. Stressing out about it just isn't an option to me, so I re-visited a few posts in order to familiarize myself with Getting Things Done methods again.

While it was great to look at the aspects of this popular method again, I'm only really interested in the overall work flow that GTD stands for.

A simple decision process that lets me quickly analyse and apportion my to do list in a quick and easy way.

Not content with the standard flow chart provided by GTD, I started out creating a simple mind map that encapsulates just the absolute basics of the work flow, in a nice big and bright mind map.

While, it doesn't have the artistic flair of other mind maps I have seen, it has served me well in the last few days as a little reminder of just how I should be handling my projects. Have you created a mind map for your preferred work flow?

Share your links and ideas in the comments below folks!

Mind maps are an instantly recognisable medium whether they are generated by hand or by software.  But what are the essential ingredients of a mind map?

A Theme

Every mind map must have a theme.  Having a theme allows us to focus our thoughts on a single area or topic.  Mind maps always have a central image and this is where our theme starts.  Having the central images allows us to focus on the theme and also triggers associations and ideas related to that theme.

Keywords

Keywords are often over looked in mind maps due to people preferring to write short notes or even full sentences.  These are okay in special circumstances, but mind maps work best when single keywords are used.  Using single keywords for each branch gives us the freedom and flexibility to create more relevant associations to our existing branches.

Colour

One of the fun parts of mind mapping is adding colour.  No one likes to read a boring black and white mind map right?  Using colour allows us to group or emphasize topics and keywords.  Whether your doing hand drawn or software mind maps, adding colour is one of the easiest and fun things that you can do to your mind map. Colour is often used as a way of grouping branches and topics.  An area where software based mind maps often excel is their ability to use colours as a code for the mind map.  Different colours can be used to signify different types of branches or topics. 

Imagery

In order for mind maps to maximise their visual appeal the best thing to do is to add images, drawings and doodles to your mind map.  Pictures convey more information than any amount of keywords you can legibly fit into a single mind map.  Images should be fun, attractive and descriptive. Even if you already have a keyword for a topic, it doesn't hurt to add to it in the form of images.  It makes your mind map clearer to understand and easier to remember.

Whether your using hand drawn or software mind maps, these are the essential ingredients to a mind map.  By focusing on these four ingredients in your mind maps, you'll produce better and more visual mind maps.