A PeepHole to my mind!: Mind Maps - Give shape to your thoughts!

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Have you ever had this strange urge, where your mind seems to be a relay station,

for multiple thoughts flying around in the air? Confused…. Ok consider this…

You go walking on the road and see this nice picture of a colorful garden.

You decide to draw a picture of it when you go home…

Next along the road you find on the window display, a Thai cuisine,

and you get the next urge in order to try it out in your kitchen…

As you return home you suddenly remember you got your clothes to wash,

in your to-do list and you got to fix it up pronto…

Bam… there goes all your previous ideas as you now have a brand new priority.

Well Mind maps are something to order your though process in pictorial form as a linear graph…

The example I put up is not exactly the best in line, but it just about explains what I’m trying to get across.

Don’t even think for a moment that I’m totally an expert in the subject.

Thing is as a single guy trying to juggle between two jobs, I do get pressed for time.

The requirements of one job do interfere with that of the other with the result,

that I usually end up confusing, mixing and finally forgetting what I’m supposed to do.

So the solution for it…. No not mind maps.. But productivity tools!

We do need to organize our life in a certain manner to get things done systematically.

Not that we have to be auto bots or something… but the line for disarray have to be drawn somewhere…

While I do use a system of calendars, alarms, reminders, planners, and even,

productivity wallpapers for this purpose(OMG!), mind maps give a hard view to what I want to do.

According to Wiki Mind Maps are :-

A mind map is a diagram used to represent words, ideas, tasks,

or other items linked to and arranged radially around a central key word or idea.

It is used to generate, visualize, structure, and classify ideas, and as an aid in study, organization, problem solving, decision making, and writing.

And that’s exactly what someone into business, job, writing,

or even a student can use to sort his priorities and his mindset out….

A to do list is not always a helpful companion if you are planning a business campaign.

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Well that said by using a network of nodes, links, lines and diagrams you can practically download your messed up mind into paper and have a view over it.

To explain more would be pointless without actually trying it out.

Id suggest using FreeMind for this purpose. A free software for mind maps with all the functionality that is required.

Functionality would mean something like this :-

Fully functional following of HTML links stored in the nodes, be it www links or links to local files.
From very early versions, Freemind supports folding which is its essential property.
Fast one-click navigation, including folding / unfolding on one click and following links on one click at the same time (you don't have to make choice between fast following of links and fast fold/unfold). You can move the map by dragging the map's background as well as using mouse wheel.
Undo
Smart Drag'n Drop, including the possibility to copy nodes or copy style of nodes; dragging and dropping of multiple selected nodes; dropping of texts or list of files from outside
Smart copying and pasting into, including pasting of links from HTML or structuring the pasted content on the basis of the number of leading spaces in a line; pasting of lists of selected files
Smart copying and pasting from, including plain text and RTF (MS Wordpad, MS Word, MS Outlook messages).
Export of map to HTML, with folding.
Find facility, where found items are shown one by one as you do "find next", and the map is unfolded only for the current item.
Possibility to use and edit long multiline nodes; even with newlines
Possibility to decorate nodes with built-in icons, colors and different fonts.
Low costs of risk of switching away to another mind mapping tool, because FreeMind stores maps in XML format. If you have a lot of maps created by FreeMind and you want to switch to another program, writing a conversion program should be easy, especially if that program features Visual Basic scripting facility. Christoph Rissner describes in his article (http://krottmaier.cgv.tugraz.at/docs/seminar/sem2002_mindmaps.pdf) at IICM site (http://krottmaier.cgv.tugraz.at/veranstaltungen/seminar/abgeschlossen.html) his implementation (http://krottmaier.cgv.tugraz.at/docs/seminar/sem2002_mindmaps.tar.gz) of data exchange between FreeMind and MindManager.
File mode enables you to browse the files on your computer, seeing the folder structure as mind map.

Uses of Mind Maps can be tabulated as :-

Keeping track of projects, including subtasks, state of subtasks and time recording
Project workplace, including links to necessary files, executables, source of information and of course information
Workplace for internet research using Google and other sources
Keeping a collection of small or middle sized notes with links on some area which expands as needed. Such a collection of notes is sometimes called knowledge base.
Essay writing and brainstorming, using colors to show which essays are open, completed, not yet started etc, using size of nodes to indicate size of essays. I don't have one map for one essay, I have one map for all essays. I move parts of some essays to other when it seems appropriate.
Keeping a small database of something with structure that is either very dynamic or not known in advance. The main disadvantage of such approach when compared to traditional database applications are poor query possibilities, but I use it that way anyway - contacts, recipes, medical records etc. You learn about the structure from the additional data items you enter. For example, different medical records use different structure and you do not have to analyze all the possible structures before you enter the first medical record.
Commented internet favorites or bookmarks, with colors and fonts having the meaning you want.