Today I am training a group of people in mind mapping, smart reading (I prefer this over speed reading) and memory training. Since I am writing this early in the morning… I will keep it short. Only a reminder of a small yet important piece of advice you received earlier.
During my training courses (and today) I advice people to create only a few maps each week. This could be one for (all) your projects and one to clear your mind or even capture your current state of mind (we’ll talk about this later). Don’t create many mindmaps each day.
People who start using mindmaps often create mindmaps for every tiny piece of information. I once even saw a person mindmap my name and mobile telephone number!!! – Really.
My main reasons for warning you about creating too many mindmaps are:
- One of only a few mindmaps to manage gives you overview.
- Many individual and scattered mindmaps to manage is not practical.
Remember, you are not in the business of creating or managing mindmaps. You are in control over your mindmaps and the information they carry for you.
Make sure you have 3 mindmaps which you use on a daily basis. You probably don’t need more mindmaps to be actively supporting you.
1. A mindmap with you long term goals, missions and objectives. Only updated a few times per month/year.
2. A weekly/monthly or project mindmap. This map can be updated on a daily basis and shows you the projects you are working on.
3. A daily mindmap to organize your thoughts and other daily information. This mindmap offers you an overview of what you think of and what you work on right now. Update when needed. This daily mindmap may be viewed as a scratch pad. Please archive it or throw it away at the end of the day.
The information from your daily mindmap may be transferred into the weekly mindmap. Are you working on a project and you have a breakthrough? Add this new information to the appropriate project in the project mindmap.
When you see that information from the weekly and daily mindmaps influences you on an even larger scale, you can add a new goal or objective to your long term mindmap.
This way your mindmaps offer you an overview of the short, medium and long term. They are also interconnected. Each map influences the other maps.
I really like it that I can review my long term goals, values and missions on a daily basis. It keeps me focused.
How many mindmaps do you use on a daily basis?
How many mindmaps do you make on a daily basis?
Arjen
(my mindmaps work for me)
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{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
I currently have a personal dashboard mind map and a weekly planner mind map, however with more and more projects coming up I am thinking of moving my projects into a separate mind map so that I can manage them better there.
My weekly planner has space enough that I use it on daily basis for notes and other things, and because it’s in my mind map atlas I can refer back to previous weeks just be flicking back a few pages!
My computer dashboard gives me links to my master mindmap and to directories and websites. Most of my planning information is linked to from this map as well.
Very nice to see you can review old weekly planning maps from your mind map atlas. A good idea to have these included.