MindMapSwitch

So a couple of weeks ago I wrote about my most common mind mapping mistake. For years I have been using lowercase keywords in my mind maps which made them hard to read later on.

Well, a couple of weeks later and after producing 10 mind maps, I think I have finally broke my bad habit of lowercase keywords. Here's how I done it.

I always carry a notebook for ideas, sketches, and other things that I don't want to forget. After trying out a couple of different sizes, I finally settled on the plain pocket journals by Moleskine. Their cheap and really portable. This was my secret weapon for breaking my bad mind mapping habits.

For my bad keyword habit, I created a sketch of a single branch with the habit I wanted to change and added a couple of branches that I thought were important to my habit and emphasized my habit.

Right, it doesn't look much but before I started each mind map, I opened my notebook at the this page and just reviewed the branch for a few seconds. Just a few seconds is all it takes. Now with the good habit still in my head, I started to create my mind maps using my new habit.

I reviewed this page before each mind map for a week. After a week I found myself turning to my notebook less and less and instead starting to mind map with uppercase keywords right away. For the last week I have been creating mind maps with uppercase keywords for all my mind maps without my notebook.

I plan on trying this technique for the year to help me with my mind mapping habits and I hope you try it too! It's not only a great way of breaking your bad mind mapping habits, but other habits too!

Happy mind mapping!

On the Systems Wiki blog, I read an interesting article regarding a new contextual analysis feature in the online mind mapping service, Comapping. What this feature does is analyze an attached document or URL and creates new branches in your mind map using keywords extracted from the document or URL.

This is an extremely helpful feature for information gathering, but I can't help wonder on the dangers of allowing technology to make these decisions for you, and especially when it comes to a thought process like mind mapping.

Everyday Decision Making

Everyday we allow technology to make decisions for us and influence our decisions. Probably the biggest decision maker today is the search engine. From millions of articles and references on the Internet it decides which results would be the best fit for the query you have entered.

This is okay for things that are clearly impossible for a single human to do, but when it comes to analysing a document or website then use these forms of automation with caution. For example, you don't always assume that the first post returned from a search engine is the best fit do you? Of course not!

Mind Mapping is Your Thought Process

You see, mind mapping is a process of getting information from one place to another. Part of this process is deciding on which information is important to you and should be included in your mind map.

As a long time mind mapper, I have taken a number of different sources of material and mind mapped the information that was important to me. Each time I did this, I made decisions that would be of benefit to me. Some of these decisions were made based on emotion or irrational thoughts. Can a machine make such decisions? Of course not.

Always Review

Tools that automate processes for us are great when we tell them exactly what to do, but when those processes employ a form of decision making in your mind maps, take some time to do a review.

If your software application employs such automation and returns 5 keywords from a business proposal, don't automatically assume those are the right keywords.

Scan the document yourself, and compare the keywords you have extracted with the keywords your mind mapping software has extracted.

You'll more often than not, create similar lists, but there might just be an important piece of information that your mind mapping software has missed.

What do you think? Is the process of information gathering for your mind map something you would rather do, or are you quite happy to delegate this process to your mind mapping software? I would love to hear your thoughts on this!

When I'm mind mapping the most common mistake I make is writing my keywords down in lower case. I've been making this mistake for years and each time I start a mind map I end up with a quarter of the mind map with lower case keywords and the rest of the mind map in upper case.

You would think I would have overcome this by now, especially after mind mapping for over 15 years. Well I'm still making the same mistake today.

It's not a bad thing really, because although I am still making that mistake, I am also aware of it.

In the interest of developing my own style of mind mapping, I'm keen to make it a habit of using captials in my mind maps, but when you're against the clock for projects and you start a mind map to re-group yourself, your style goes out of the window.

If you mind map using software though, you're covered. Lots of mind mapping applications have preset styles that automatically captialize your keywords for you. Yes, I could switch to mind mapping using software, but I still prefer to use paper mind maps 

I think I have solution though, that I hope will change the way I mind map, but more of that later.

When you're mind mapping, what's your most common mistake?

Let us know your mind mapping mistakes in the comments below and go public. Nothing motivates you more than going public with a mistake so that you can rectify it.

A couple of weeks ago I talked about the types of mind maps that I am going to be focusing on for 2010. Since writing this I've have discovered a couple of revelations about my mind mapping.

Mind Mapping is Fun

Okay, it's might seem a silly reason to mind map, but if you're not happy doing something, then why do it?

When I first started mind mapping, it was always for fun. When mind mapping ideas, books or personal reviews, it was always fun and it was always for me. A couple of years ago I started using mind mapping to manage my software projects. What started out as a great idea quickly turned into a nightmare.

At the start of this year I made a decision. I'm going to stop using mind mapping to manage projects.

Since then I have been able to enjoy my mind mapping more, because I'm mind mapping the things I want to mind map. It's fun again!

Mind Map for Yourself First

My mind mapping is primarily for myself, but when I produce mind maps for public consumption, I start to wonder if my mind map is conveying the right information. That's when mistakes start to happen. Single keyword branches become 2 or 3 keyword branches, extra information is added, and lot's of other unnecessary information gets added to my mind map. This is not the way to do it.

In an effort to improve my writing in general I bought Stephen King's book, "On Writing". I've had heard so many good reviews about it that I decided I must give it a try. The one part of the book that really stood out for me was Stephen's comment concerning writing and drafts.

Basically the first draft you write is for yourself and the second draft is for anyone else who wishes to read your manuscript. We can apply this to mind mapping, but we don't usually prepare multiple drafts of a mind map. So how does it work for mind mapping then?

It's simple. Mind map for yourself, let others take from your mind map what they need.

Your mind map is based on your thinking, but you can't anticipate the thinking of each person that reads your mind map. If you stick to the guidelines of mind mapping then each person that reads your mind map will be able to take what they need from it.

The Reward

A rewarding mind map is one that you enjoy making. I've only just discovered that I don't enjoy mind mapping everything, but the topics that I like to mind map often result in being the most rewarding mind maps.

Review the way you use mind maps and find alternatives for those things you don't enjoy mind mapping. Instead focus on the things you enjoy mind mapping. It's much more fun and rewarding!

Happy mind mapping!

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!

Last week I mentioned my mind mapping focus for 2010. These were uses of mind maps that I was going to explicitly focus on for the year. This also means however that I am not going to be using mind maps in other areas. Blasphemy? Well, no.

As a long time user of mind maps, I've used mind mapping for lots of different things. Some uses of mind maps have stuck with me and are used  just about every day. Others though I have struggled with.

Rather than struggle on with using mind maps for these purposes, I have decided to cut the cord and stop using mind maps in these areas.

These are the three key areas where I won't be using mind maps:

1. Project Management - As a web developer, I'm very picky about the software I use and how I use it. I frequently collaborate with different people through different mediums, but I have yet to find an effective mind mapping solution that let's me manage projects and information as well as collaborate with others.
2. Information Storage - Mind mapping for me is about the moment. Ideas are born, decided upon and then processed. Mind mapping just doesn't work for me as a way of holding information.
3. Planning & Scheduling - Nothing beats a calendar for scheduling and planning work. I've tried so many time to schedule appointments and such using a mind map, but I always end up going back to the 

In these cases, I felt that mind maps were not a suitable tool to use and have since started using other tools, such as calendars, wikis and project management software.

Mind mapping is a wonderful tool that can be used in so many ways, but it's only effective if it is used within the right environment. When you're in a changing environment, you need to adapt your tool set so that you can continue to work effectively.

To mind map effectively we need to identify areas where mind mapping excels as tool. Only then can you reap the benefits of mind mapping!

This year I'm going to be using mind mapping for only four specific types of mind maps.

My aim is to focus on these and hone my mind mapping techniques for each one so that by the end of the year I will have hopefully mastered the techniques required for each type of mind map.

These are the types of mind maps that I will be focusing on:

1. Note taking - I'm always taking notes and this is where I spend most of my mind mapping time. Whether it's going through my Google Reader, reading a book, or checking out some documentation, I've always got a mind map going.
2. Problem Solving - As a software developer, I'm continually trying to solve problems. It's part of my job. Mind mapping helps me solve problems with programming by allowing me mind map components of a software application and visualise the problem. This gives me better clarity of the problem and allows me to create solutions to the problem.
3. Writing - I would love to be a writer and have started using mind mapping to outline articles and works of fiction.
4. Idea Generating - I'm always thinking about new ideas whether it's for a new web application or a work of fiction. This pretty much goes hand in hand with using mind mapping for writing. First all my ideas go into a mind map and then these ideas are fleshed out further in a new mind map before I start writing.

So why am I limiting myself to these types of mind maps?

Last year I tried mind mapping for all different kinds of things. What I found was that some of the places where I tried to use mind mapping didn't fit into my work flow or wasn't productive. This isn't to say that mind mapping won't work for these kinds of mind maps with other people. It just didn't work for me.

Mind mapping is a personal thing and the benefits you get from it depend on how you use it. In order to maximise my time and effort, I'm focusing on working with four different types of mind map. I'll still create mind maps for other purposes, but mostly I'll be focusing on these four.

Do you have a specific type of mind map that you're focused on? Has there been a time where you tried to use mind mapping and it just didn't work for you? Let me know in the comments.

In preparation for the New Year, I am going to show you what you need in your mind map to define and monitor your goal.

Last week I asked you to brainstorm some ideas for your goal and a couple of days ago we looked at the first three branches in your mind map that lets us define your goal.

Now that you know what your goal is, our next step is to create the branches you will need to monitor your progress through out the year. These branches will be:

1. Skills
2. Milestones
3. Review

Shall we look at each of these new branches for your mind map?

Skills

The first branch you are going to add to your mind map is skills. Having a goal is great, but if you lack the skills needed to complete the goal, then you're leaving yourself with a big challenge ahead of you. To ensure that a goal is achievable we need to identify two sets of skills:

1. Skills you have that you need to complete the goal
2. Skills you don't have that you need to complete the goal

Create two branches on your skills branch and start identifying skills that you feel will be beneficial towards achieving your goal and the skills you feel you will need in order to achieve your goal.

Use images and colour to emphasize those skills you don't currently have. Making them stand out on your mind map will daw your attention to it and hopefully push you towards acquiring these skills in the path towards achieving your goal.

These skills will help you define the milestones that you will need to work towards in order to achieve your goal.

Milestones

Milestones are not overnight things. Achieving your goal is a marathon and just like runners you need markers set along the way to ensure you're heading in the right direction and getting nearer to the finish. So how do you define these?

Using your skills branch, you can easily deduce that the skills that you will need to work towards your goal. I prefer to use the first few months of the year to work on any news skills I need in order to complete my goal. Using these early months to build up your skills means that you can then focus on completing your goal in the later months of the year with the skills you already have.

How many milestones do you use?

Well, as you're working to complete the goal before the end of next year, I would suggest a milestone every month or every 2 months. You don't want to burden yourself down with a milestone every week. You just need to ensure that the milestone gives you enough time to complete it. It should be something descriptive, but no too focused on a single job.

Mind map your milestones using keywords for each milestone. For each milestone you could also use a map marker to indicate if that milestone has been successfully completed.

Review

What's a plan without a review?

In order to ensure that the goal is completed on time, you need to define 3 or 4 points in the calendar when you will review your progress to ensure that achieving your goal is on track.

In your mind map, create branches for each of the reviews you will need throughout the year. Add dates to the calendar to finalize your scheduled reviews. For your review, look at the progress you have made through each of your milestones.

How you review your goal is up to you, but on your mind map use mind map markers to indicate if a review results in progress being made. Each day, you will be able to glance at your mind map and see straight away if your on track working to achieving your goal.

What Next?

So there you have it. We have created our basic goal mind map for 2010. The next thing to do is to act on your milestones and start getting action lists going to complete your milestone.

Through out the year I am going to review my own mind map and post my thoughts on my progress here on MindMapSwitch. I'll also be writing about changes or tweaks I will make to my goal mind map as the year goes along.

Happy mind mapping and I'll see you all in the New Year!

So last week, we talked about mind mapping a goal for 2010. How did you get on?

If you have your goal then great, you're ready for the next step. If not then why not take a few more days to ponder it over. There's no rush and there is no rule to say you need to have one for the first day of the New Year.

Right, let's start off then.

What you are going to do is create a single mind map that you will use to define your goal and monitor your progress on it through out the year.

You can use either paper or software for your mind map, but I'm going to use paper. Easier portability means I don't need to carry a laptop about with me to use it!

In order to start we need to clearly define your basic ordering ideas. These are the initial branches for your mind map. There are going to be 6 basic ordering ideas in your mind map. In this first post we are going to look at the first three branches which you will put on the right hand side of your mind map.

1. Goal
2. Commitment
3. Rewards

Let's look at each one of these in turn and how you should use them in your mind map.

Goal

The first thing you are going to do is define your goal. In past years you might have written a couple of sentences about your goal and put it somewhere for you to see every day.

However life is hectic and complicated at times. Sometimes things happen out with your control and throw you off course. When this happens, it sometimes makes your goal unattainable because you feel like it you have it written in stone. You then think you're now so far off course, your goal is unattainable. Let's take a different approach to this.

Instead of writing down a clear cut sentence or two on your goal, mind map it using a few keywords and images instead. Not only is this more visually appealing, it also offers a degree of flexibility. When the goal posts change in life, it means your goal can move with it.

Mind mapping just a few keywords to your goal, will allow you to interpret the goal differently each time life changes for you. A lot can happen in a year, but we don't want to lose complete sight of our goal. Rather than writing off the goal, we can then add or remove keywords to or from our goal so that we can interpret it slightly differently.

Commitment

Who do you tell about your goal for New Year. Your partner? Family? Anyone?

Chances are that the only person you will tell is yourself. That your first downfall. Setting a goal in secret makes it more easy to fail. Things are harder to fail if more people know about them.

Consider telling someone who knows you really well. It could be your partner, a relative, a friend. As long as that person really knows you then they will also know your reasons for achieving your goal and not failing.

Mind map that person and their contact details on your goal mind map. By knowing that at least one person is in on your goal means you are accountable for the success of failure of your goal.

Rewards

Having a goal is all well and good, but have you thought about what you're going to get from it? Better health, a better job, a better life? Knowing what achieving your goal will bring you is a great motivator towards actually achieving it.

Mind map the key benefits from achieving your goal and what it will bring you. Here it's important to use imagery in your mind map. By visualising the end of your goal you will see how it will change you in a more positive way.

So there you have it, the first part of your mind map goal for 2010 is complete. In the next part we're going to add branches that will measure our progress and performance towards achieving your goal.

In the meantime, happy mind mapping!