The Mindjet Blog

Posts Tagged Dashboard

Empower Your Maps with Power Markers

Sep 16

Posted by MichaelDeutch in MindManager, MindManager for Windows, Mindjet, Tips n' Tricks

Proposal_00_090916Use Map Markers well and you’ll find the value of your mapping increase exponentially.

One way to start realizing the potential of map markers is through a new add-in called “Power Markers for MindManager“. (Note: This add-in works with both MindManager 7 and 8 for Windows.)

Power Markers let you more easily keep track of important things that get lost deep within your larger maps. It does this by providing a complementary view of your map’s markers in the MindManager task pane window. You can either view an automatic roll-up of your markers or a ‘hot list’ of topics organized by your markers. Read the rest of this entry »

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Coming soon: MindManager 8 for Mac – iCal Integration

Sep 11

Posted by MichaelDeutch in MindManager for Mac, Mindjet

MindManager 8 for Mac

MindManager 8 for Mac simplifies task and event management with its new iCal integration.

iCal, Apple’s personal calendar application, makes it easy to keep track of your busy schedule and To Do lists. You can create as many separate calendars as you need — one for home, another for school, a third for work, and so on. And, it lets you display it all together or you can choose to see information from only the calendars you want.

There are four new flavors of iCal integration with MindManager 8 for Mac… Read the rest of this entry »

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Accelerated Learning with Mind Maps

Aug 12

Posted by MichaelDeutch in Mind Map Examples, Mindjet, Success Stories

Accelerated Learning with MindManager

The following is a guest post by MindManager user, Fernando Montenegro. Fernando is a technologist with a large IT company in Canada. He has been a MindManager user since 2001 and uses it extensively for professional and personal needs. Check out how Fernando maps his way through the ongoing technical certification process for IT professionals:

Technical certification exams are a part of life for many IT and knowledge professionals. These exams may be steps in one’s career plan or may be requirements for specific assignments or business partnerships. Because the field I work in – network security – is quite broad, I keep track of certifications across a variety of areas.

I’d like to share how I use Mind Mapping in general (and MindManager in particular) to help me manage and prepare for my certification exams. This method has worked well for me when preparing for several exams. Read the rest of this entry »

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Integrate Your Work in Dashboards for Optimal Performance

May 7

Posted by MichaelDeutch in MindManager, MindManager: CPA Edition, MindManager: Sales Edition, Mindjet

What were you doing before you clicked the link? Did you get distracted from some other task at hand? If so, you’re not alone!

With trillions of emails, voicemails, texts, instant and social media messages flying around, it’s amazing anyone gets anything done! The cost of information overload and overwhelm is rising, now reported costing over $900 billion annually.

So, how can we achieve peak performance?

There are tons of productivity tricks to help you overcome overwhelm. Turning off email notifications, shutting down instant messenger, and sending calls directly to voicemail are simple tricks that can be implemented immediately. Blogs like Lifehacker, zen habits, and 43 folders have sky-rocketed in popularity because they’ve developed their niche providing guidance to the millions who are drowning in information and constant interruptions. One thing these blogs all agree upon: they’ve written about mind mapping and how it increases your productivity!

Eliminate Distractions with Dashboard Mind Maps

Mind maps are often thought of as a visual method to map out thoughts and ideas. Going beyond the ‘traditional’ definition, another powerful use is to create a dashboard for a project, process, your day, week, or even your life.

Maps provide holistic views of everything related to the subject, including thoughts and links to files, websites, emails, etc… With dashboard mind maps, you’ll spend less time looking for information avoiding potential distractions and more time focused on making a positive impact at work and in life!

Dashboard mind maps come in a variety of flavors; the most common are process, project, and personal dashboards.

 

Process Dashboard Maps

Process dashboard maps are created to guide the execution of a multi-step process. For instance, I’ve created a map to support my writing of the Mindjet blog. It contains links that I use to research and write blog posts. After publishing posts, I filter the map based on the post’s theme to display the relevant links where I will promote the post.

 

Project Dashboard Maps

Project dashboard maps provide quick and easy access to the project’s important information including your goals & objectives, plans, status, deliverables, etc… They can be used by individual project managers or team members or collaboratively updated (with Mindjet Connect).

 

 

Personal Dashboard Maps

Personal dashboard maps tie together everything in your life, providing you with the big picture and all the important details that matter most to you.

 

Here are three additional resources to help you create a dashboard map:

 

Tips for Creating Dashboard Mind Maps

Add Links with File Explorer
You may already know that dragging files from your desktop right onto your map creates topics with hyperlinks to the file. But there’s an even faster way to add files to your dashboard maps using the file explorer. With just a few clicks, you can link all your relevant files and folders into your dashboard providing instant access. Updates within your linked folders will appear automatically in your map when the map is refreshed with the F5 key.

Video: How to Add Links with the File Explorer

 

Access Links with the Embedded Browser
Linking to content provides the ability to organize everything visually. Take it to the next level by using MindManager 8’s embedded browser to do your work without ever losing context or perspective.

Use the embedded browser to access and work with web applications and Microsoft Office files directly inside MindManager. I recently asked the MindManager Enthusiast’s group on LinkedIn how MindManager has impacted their productivity. Here are a couple of the responses:

    “Hello Michael: I use the embedded browser functionality everyday for my projects. I have all my major deliverables for the year in one map. The topics of the map contain the various deliverables. Each deliverable has project information, links to websites, links to Excel, PowerPoint, and Word documents. I review all those documents and websites "in the map" using the embedded browser functionality. Truly a time saver!” 

—Chance Brown, Learning & Development Specialist and Visual Mapping Consultant

 

    “Hi Michael. I always have dozens of projects going in mind maps, and most of them require extensive research (writing projects, workshop/webinar development, presentations, blog posts, client proposals, etc.) Any content I find related to or in support of one of my projects goes directly into the corresponding map. I thought I’d died and gone to heaven when I first discovered the "Send to MindManager" button in my web browser several versions ago. I totally did away with the "Add to Favorites" browser process and now organize all of my web info in mind maps. But to have web and document content display right in the map interface now is such a productivity boost! Just being able to clip and paste notes from research sources directly into maps from within the same window is such an awesome time saver. Well done!” 

—Jocelyn Coverdale, Productivity Expert and Office Organizing Specialist, National Speaker and Trainer — Ballantrae Solutions

 

Integrate with Microsoft Outlook or gmail
If you’re using Microsoft Outlook, send items directly from Outlook into your dashboard maps. In the Mail, Calendar, Contacts, Notes, and Tasks sections, click either of the two MindManager icons to send a selected item or a folder to your map.

Video: Add Microsoft Outlook Items and Folders

Another alternative is linking to emails in your gmail or Google docs which is explained in the Mindjet blog post: Integrate Gmail & Google Docs with MindManager.
 

Focus on Content with Tags and Filters
Finally, the last tip to get your dashboards up to speed is the use of map markers and power filters. Adding text and icon markers onto map topics not only adds meaning and context, but also lets you filter the map to display only the information you need at any given moment.

Why bother? Here are a few general examples of how I’ve filtered maps:

  • Show items that are assigned to ‘me’
  • Hide tasks that have been completed
  • Show topics related to an area of interest
  • Display topics with hyperlinks or attachments

Other ways to focus include using shortcut keys like F3 (focus on topic) and F4 (show /hide branch). Give them a try next time you’re navigating around your dashboard map.

 

So, now a question for our readers….What’s In Your Dashboard Map?

  

Downloadable Examples:

  

Related Resources:

 

  

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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Outside the Box Project Management

May 6

Posted by MichaelDeutch in MindManager, Mindjet, News & Events

“We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.” Albert Einstein

This week, Mindjet was a sponsor at the PMI / New Jersey’s sold-out regional symposium, "Outside the Box Project Management". The event focused on providing project managers with the knowledge and tools to…

  • Create value for organizations
  • Provide sustainable competitive advantage for organizations
  • Motivate team members
  • Get stakeholders’ buy-in on important project decisions
  • Solve customers’ complex problems
  • Secure project financing

 

Not surprisingly, mind mapping was a HOT topic at the event. Here are a few ways maps can be applied on your projects:

  • Capturing and organizing project research
  • Solving problems and creating strategies for mitigating serious risks
  • Creating project dashboards, tying together disparate information & providing the ‘big picture’
  • Drafting and writing reports and presentations
  • Identifying milestones and required deliverables
  • Gathering requirements and conducting interviews
  • Analyzing stakeholders and project influences
  • Taking project and meeting notes

 

These types of maps and more were explored in two different sessions at the conference:

  1. Jamie Nast, author of Idea Mapping, presented "Idea Mapping – A Whole New Mind for Project Managers".
  2. Ron Krukowski, president of e-Techknowledge, Inc., PMP & professional project manager, presented "(Mind) Mapping Success Out of Chaos"

Check out these short videos of both Jamie and Ron that we captured before their sessions.

Here’s one of the maps Jamie shared at the presentation which highlights some applications of mapping for projects: download map.

 

Using mind maps on your projects? Share how you’re mapping in the comments below!

 

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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Getting Things Done…with Mindjet

Apr 13

Posted by MichaelDeutch in Mindjet

Happy Monday everyone!

Are you into GTD (David Allen’s Getting Things Done), just getting started with it or wondering what it is?

I’m excited to share my recorded webinar that offers a high level GTD explanation and illustrates how I use mind mapping to ‘get things done’. View the webinar or download the slides.  

 

 

 

 

MindManager GTD Templates:

 

 

And, here are some of the other items I mentioned:

 

 

Related Posts:

 

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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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Mapping Your Social Networks for Maximum Productivity Online

Feb 9

Posted by MichaelDeutch in MindManager, Mindjet, Success Stories

Public relations and social media expert, Brian Solis, was recently recognized as a finalist in the SEMMY social media award for his post on the Conversations Prism. Brian is a prolific blogger for PR 2.0 and bub.blicio.us where he shares social media best practices & standards and promotes the industry as a whole. Brian’s Conversations Prism highlights the various categories and companies that together make up the evolving social media market.

In the following post on PR 2.0, Brian shows how he uses MindManager to map out his own online experience, tracking where relevant discussions are taking place as well as the communities that he promotes and participates in. With this 50,000′ view of his social activities, Brian can quickly focus his time and attention in communities that are relevant to his work and life.

For my own work at Mindjet, I’ve created a similar map to help me track and participate in online conversations about Mindjet, mind mapping, visual thinking and productivity. It’s a great way to get perspective over the various communities and strategically focus online activities. As you’ve probably already experienced, it’s easy to get lost or waste a lot of time online. Here are a few additions that I’ve implemented in my Social Media map to optimize and increase my online effectiveness:

  • Goals: What are the goals or objectives for participating in any of your online communities? Add this context into your map using either topic notes or by creating additional subtopics for each community. This extra context helps keep your participation focused on achieving your goals and minimizing the chances of getting distracted online.  
  • Themes: Group or tag your participation by theme. For instance, if I want to promote a blog about mind mapping and David Allen’s GTD, I apply a MindManager filter to quickly view all the communities where I’m participating in conversations about GTD. This helps me contribute relevant content to appropriate communities (e.g. I’ll go to David Allen’s forums, NING groups, LinkedIn groups, etc…)
  • Relationships: Do one or more communities have relationships with each other? If you ‘tweet’ on twitter, did you set it up to also appear in Facebook? Highlight these connections between communities with MindManager’s relationship lines.
  • Hyperlinks: Include hyperlinks to each site. You can then view them in MindManager 8’s browser or open them in external browsers.
  • Tools: Add any secondary tools that you use to monitor conversations within communities. For instance, do you track conversations about your company or brand in Twitter using Search Twitter? Do you want to run a blog search on Google? Add all these tools onto your map for easy access.
  • Passwords: I use a Password manager to log into all the communities that I participate in. Prior to that, I tracked the important user names and passwords in my social media dashboard map.
  • Teams: Use Mindjet Connect or MindManager Web to collaborate on social media maps with others (e.g. all of marketing & PR) to coordinate social media activities across teams.

How have you mapped your online experience? Share your story below or send me an email (michael dot deutch at Mindjet dot com) or tweet with examples. I’d like to continue to write about this topic and would love to share your feedback and examples on the blog.

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