The I.T. Alchemy Lab: Mind Mapping

I spend about half of my days in meetings. Some are presence only while others are full participation. Regardless to my involvement, I always find myself looking to jot notes down quickly while we ping-pong from topic to topic. When I go back and try to read my pen/ink notes, it is always full of little arrows and lines that turn into a mixed jumbled of thoughts, ideas and action points. In time, this type of note taking just became too confusing and began causing issues as I often found myself missing a quick note that I did not "attach" to another thread or missed a key part of a requirement that would have saved me some time down the road.

Introducing: Mind Mapping

Mind Mapping isn't necessarily new, records of graphical thinking can be dated back to the 1200's. It gained some ground in the 60's and 70's, but it was not until 2002 that it finally grew roots. As with all things in the "there's an app for that" world, the next practical evolution was software mind-mapping.

So what exactly is mind-mapping?
Wikipedia defines it as: A mind map is a diagram used to represent words, ideas, tasks, or other items linked to and arranged around a central key word or idea. Mind maps are used to generate, visualize, structure, and classify ideas, and as an aid in study, organization, problem solving, decision making, and writing.

I define is more along the lines of: a hierarchical, graphical way to loosely map your thoughts, action items and notes based on topics. Each new topic can be a child of the root conversation or a child/sibling of an existing topic.

To many, this will be completely new and it will take a bit of time to get used to taking notes the way your brain actually works. However, once you get used to it you will find (and research supports) that your notes are much more organized and you have a much better understanding of what went on and what needs to be done.

In the past I have used proprietary Mind Mapping tools such as MindJet. However, lately I have found (thanks to a colleague at work) that there are a number of OSS (Open Source Software) Mind Mapping tools. However, of the ones I tried, the only one I truly liked was 'FreeMind'. It has all the nifty little features that I am used to with MindJet with a simple and clean user interface. If you happen to be a tablet user, this tool will make your life much easier!

How to use ”FreeMind”: Create a new mapping, name your root node. To add a child node, hit “Insert”, to add a sibling node hit “Enter”. The tool is smart enough so that if you have focus on node-x, hitting enter will still create a new sibling. Provided is a screenshot and the actual FreeMind example and the demo example created for the email.

Word of Warning: It is very easy to select a node, even when you do not mean to. Once you start typing it will clobber your open objects. There is an Undo (standard CTRL+Z) but I am not sure how many there are.