Map Markers: How to Use Markers to Simplify Map Editing

Map markers let you quickly select related topics across your entire map.

Over the last couple of posts, we explored what markers are and how to apply them to topics. Today, we’ll use markers to select groups of topics based on matching map markers. I’ll explain how I’ve used this to quickly update many topics at once to visually represent status (e.g. highlight items completed or items at risk) and contribute to my team’s status report with content from my personal dashboard map.

There are two ways to select content based on map markers:

1. Power Select Topics that Match Specified Markers
2. Power Select Topics that Do Not Match Specified Markers

Let’s take a look at each method…

1. Power Select Topics that Match Specified Markers

I use this feature in a couple of ways: to perform mass formatting and to cut and paste topics into other branches or maps. Here’s a look at both scenarios.

As you may have seen in previous posts, I use dashboard maps to manage my GTD process, projects, and my life. Throughout my day, I will quickly update maps with notes and map markers but not mess around with other formatting.

Before I take a holistic review of my dashboard or share it with others, I’ll make sure that it is visually consistent by formatting topics & fonts to represent status (e.g. completed projects have topics that are green, projects at risks are red, etc…). This makes is much easier to scan a map and know where to focus. I update the map by ‘selecting’ topics that contain specific markers (e.g. ‘at risk’) and then apply edits to all of the selected topics at once. I change topic shapes, colors, font colors, font sizes, and more….

This process lets me keep massive amounts of data formatted the way I want without breaking my flow or taking lots of time to find and edit specific topics. I apply a marker and move on to my next task knowing that I can come back and update the map without exerting much effort.

Another way that I use this is to keep my team status report up-to-date. On a weekly basis, the product leadership team will meet and we all update a master team status map with our current projects, status, and any ‘red flag’ items that need to be raised and resolved as a team. I’ve simplified my process by using the Power Select feature to grab items out of my dashboard map and then paste a copy of them directly into the team status report. It takes just a couple of minutes to keep the team informed with the latest status for all my projects.  

Steps to Select Topics that Match Specified Markers

1. On the Home Tab, in the Editing group, click on Select
2. Click on the option Power Select
3. In the Power Select options, click on the box next to the Marker that you want selected
4. On the bottom of the Power Select options, click on Select and choose Select Matching Topics
5. If the option “Expand branches to show all matches” is selected, the map will expand to display the selected results

Once your criterion has been selected, apply updates as needed or cut / copy and paste them into other branches or maps.

Before Snapshot: No topics are selected

After Snapshot: Topics with my selected criterion (e.g. yellow flag map markers) are selected 

2. Power Select Topics that Do Not Match Specified Markers

You could also select topics that do not match one or more markers making it the inverse of the results mentioned in the section above.

You may want to apply the same type of reasoning to when or why you would use this Power Select option. For instance, if you want to copy all of your ‘incomplete’ projects, you can select topics that do not match topics with the ‘complete’ map marker. Or, you may want to cut and paste everything except for your ‘priority 1′ items into a secondary map. This is easily achieved by selecting topics that do not match priority 1.

Steps to Select Topics that Do Not Match Specified Markers

1. On the Home Tab, in the Editing group, click on Select
2. Click on the option Power Select
3. In the Power Select options, click on the box next to the Marker that you want to avoid selecting
4. On the bottom of the Power Select options, click on Select and choose Select Non-Matching Topics

Still have questions about Map Markers? Leave them in the comments and I’ll try to address them in the upcoming posts for this series. 

Related posts: 

• Map Markers: What are they?
• Map Markers: How to Codify Maps with Icons & Text Markers

About the Author: Michael Deutch is Mindjet’s Chief Evangelist, content contributor for the Mindjet Blog and the Mindjet Connections newsletter. Get more from Michael on Twitter. 

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