Organizing Life

A mindmap can be a wonderful tool to organize your mind and to organize your life. Personally, I love to use a visual map to do this. My maps however, don’t always have the look and feel of the traditional mindmaps Tony Buzan showed us to create.

In this article I want to tell you more about how a mindmap or visual map can help you organize your life and organize life, projects and ideas in general. You also learn why my mindmaps work very well, yet they don’t take lots and lots of time to create (big plus for everybody who is interested in saving time of course).

A mindmap helps you to organize your life in a very brain friendly manner.

You see, you already know the answer to so many problems you are working on. You already understand what needs to be done first, and what can wait. You can pick exactly that item or task from your environment that needs your attention right now.

The problem however is with most people they over think things. That is not that strange… You have all that information in your head. So it is difficult to pick the right item (at first).

I want you to imagine all the things you need to do the next week that help you move forward towards your goals.

Do you see them all vividly in your mind’s eye?

Probably not…

Your mind can focus on one item, making the rest seem less prominent or important. And that is exactly what happens when you need to pick the most important (and/or urgent) task to do right now.

Since you are focused on one thing, your brain will make that one thing more important, blocking the rest of the items.

Fortunately there is a simple solution to fix that…

Yes, you’ve guessed it correctly… a map!

This can be a visual map, mindmap, concept map, summap, just a small picture, or anything else. Just as long as you can create the overview fast and without much thinking about the technique or the content.

Remember, you already know what you need to do. The map only assists you to overview everything on one piece of paper (or on your computer screen).

When you finished your map, you will be able to see everything in one big picture and you see relationships between them. This is much easier than doing all of that in your head.

The next step is to pick the right task and move forward by doing that what you have to do.

Creating the map…

I told you that I want you to spend as little time as possible on a map. That indirectly indicates that you don’t create traditional mindmaps with lots of images. Since the map is only to give structure to your thoughts, and you don’t need to remember everything (because you have it in your map and in your head), you don’t need images.

The only thing you have to do is outline the ideas and thoughts in your head.

I suggest you take about 2 minutes (MAX!!!) to do this. When you are more experienced in doing this, it will probably take you less than one minute. But for now, just take the 2 minutes.

After 2 minutes, you are ready and you can pick what you need to do.

You can highlight that topic and start working on it.

Now simply update your map and make sure you spend as little time as possible on working on the map. You should be creating, managing, exploring and taking action on the items described in your map. So just do that.

Moving Forward

A map on your planning may look very similar to a master map. I know that master mindmaps are normally on one topic and give you all the information on that topic. And yes, they are often used to organize content on a topic and not to organize life.

But hey… just give your mind the opportunity to look at things differently. A planning for the next week or month might also be called a master map, right?

I created a Master Mind Map Method manual (lots of M’s ). In this practical manual you learn how to create a master map yourself on any topic. This hands on guide is available at :
http://mindmapsunleashed.com/organized_information/

Within the next two weeks, I will be adding additional material to the guide (a video lesson). The price is then going to be increased as well. Everybody who bought the manual before will get that new video material of course for free.

When you invest in the manual today, I make sure you receive life time updates on new video, audio and written material as well. Every time I add new content, the initial price of the manual goes up (because you get more value).

Head on over to http://mindmapsunleashed.com/organized_information/ and buy the manual now.

After you did that, make sure you leave your thoughts and ideas on organizing your life using maps below.

Thanks!

Tags: advice, improve your map, organizing life, productivity, simplicity, visualization