So, my new job as a project manager in a big company requires me to take in a lot of information and then formulate the information and ideas into workable plans. In the past when I needed to organize my thoughts I would usually use good ole paper and pen or a Word or text file. However, a few months ago a co-worker introduced me to mind mapping.

In a nutshell mind mapping involves organizing thoughts and ideas in a tree-like format rather than the usual top-down. The real power comes in that you just start doing a brain-dump without worring about seuqence or formatting. Once you get used to it mind mapping becomes a really fast, gratifying way to organize and communicate your thoughts and plans.

I will not get into the basics or background too much - see the Wikipedia article above for that. However, I do want to point out a really good, free software package for mind mapping that I use. It is called FreeMind and is available on sourceforge.

My point is - try it. There are times when a mind map helps better than anything else I have done.

Brett Kapilik :: May.21.2008 :: Project Management, Just Stuff :: Comments Off