My latest column is up at Project Simplify…

The Not-So-Simple Life: Mind-Mapping 2011

I’ve made reference to mind maps more than once in these pages, but until now, I haven’t really gotten into much detail about what they are and how they work. There are a few reasons for this.

For one thing, I assume you have access to Google and Wikipedia just like I do, and a search at either of those sites for “mind map” would get you up to speed pretty quickly. So anyone who was curious and even a little motivated could learn about mind maps easily on their own. Also, it’s been a while, but The Simplifier’s own Shawn Tuttle has written about mind maps here and there in the past. So I didn’t want to belabor the point.

Really though, the main reason I haven’t gone deeper into discussing mind maps is that it seemed only natural, since it’s been my mind map that I’ve been talking about all this time, that I would show and discuss my mind map if I wrote a column that dealt directly with the subject. But my main “My Life” mind map is a complicated thing. More importantly, it’s a private thing—containing both things that I may never end up showing to the world, and things that need to remain confidential until I’m ready to show them to the world. I have notes about clients, all my main screenplay and creative ideas, and lots of other stuff that I probably wouldn’t show to anyone unless they signed a confidential disclosure agreement.

Plus it’s not exactly done, per se, either. My mind map is getting big and full, but it’s not nearly what it will be once I truly flesh through, index, and interlink all my notes and loose ends. Aside from the first two months, 2010 was assistant-free, sadly, and when it’s just me, I’m only able to chip gradually away at the mountain, while trying to stay focused on the few main balls that I’m juggling in any given week. So the comprehensive, all-inclusive mind map that truly represents my entire universe-tilting to-do list remains a work in progress. (Not to mention, the true ridiculous scope of it calls into question the issue of whether I should even be allowed to wander around unsupervised. Which I guess we’ll have to deal with later. Or never. MUAHAHAHA!!)

However, in the grand tradition of pretending that things end on December 31st and start on January 1st, I have created a mind map for myself that is focused just on 2011, and it should serve nicely as a way to discuss some mind map basics. Whenever I do explain mind maps to folks who don’t know about them, they seem to really like the idea—so maybe 2011 could be the year where mind maps revolutionize your life, starting right now! (Insert fanfare—a chorus of medieval buglers, let’s say.)

(continued…)

Read the rest at Project Simplify