MacMegasite

Knowledge Management using Mind Maps

In these days of information overload, the compact way of representing ideas that is embodied in Mind Mapping is essential. You can summarize a huge amount of information in a very compact space. For us to be able to cope, we need efficient knowledge generation, management, and use.

Watch this video to find out all about knowledge management. Actually more than just knowledge management - we’ll examine how knowledge is created, what it is, and how you can use it: http://www.novamind.com/blog/index.php/knowledge-management-using-mind-maps/

We are fed with a huge amount of data all the time, and we are pretty good at sorting through the incoming data and applying our understanding of the relationships between the different pieces of data and its meaning to us, so we can turn the data into information. In this process, we delete, distort, and filter the data to fit our understanding of the world. The raw data is turned into something that is summarized, described and defined in terms that fit with the information we already know.

This massively reduces the amount of material we need to deal with, and also helps us process new data as it comes along, but still we are overwhelmed with the amount of information. We need to turn the information into knowledge, so we generalize the information and look for overall patterns that fit with our current knowledge. Knowledge allows us to have the concept of how things work, so we can develop strategies and methods that we know from experience will work. We will also be able to more easily process information because we know the patterns that we expect the information to fall into, and are able to recognize those patterns with new information.

Now if we purely operate from the level of Knowledge, we are able to implement strategies that are effective at dealing with issues, but we will not be very good at creativity or invention of new solutions.

So beyond knowledge there is what we can call Wisdom or Understanding. In order to go from knowledge to wisdom, we need to understand the principles behind the patterns we see, and the reasons that the strategies work. We recognize meta-patterns in the knowledge - patterns that define the patterns we observe. Once we recognize those reasons, it builds a framework of “truth” around our perception of reality, so we are able to form hypotheses as to what the principles are, and test them to form principles and archetypes that we can use to drive creativity, invention and coming up with new paradigms which either fit with the truth of our reality or challenge it in new ways. Having this framework of wisdom in place helps with good decision making, efficient processing of options, and creative thinking that stems from solid principles.

We thrive on being at the edge between overload on the one side and boredom on the other side. If we have inefficient ways of dealing with data and turning it into information then we will have data overload problems, and if we have inefficient ways of turning information into knowledge, then we will have information overload. What most people term information overload is actually a combination of data overload and information overload. If we get overloaded by either data or information overload, we are likely to either withdraw from the information flow and adopt a “whatever” or “I don’t care” approach, or do some sort of more mundane task or work, or blob out in front of the TV, or distract ourselves from the actual task we should be doing. In one way or another, we either cut down our input or our processing of it to avoid the feeling of overwhelm.

On the other end of the scale, if we are not stimulated with enough data, or the data we are receiving already fits with what we already know in every way, we get bored, and sometimes do things that actually sabotage situations or relationships because subconsciously we have become bored.

As you can see, our typical reactions to overload are unhelpful because we get into stuck states and just give up completely, and our reactions to boredom are often unhelpful because we sabotage things just to make life interesting.

While it is possible to go through life with very few tools and strategies to be able to cope with overload or boredom, if you live your life like that, you are likely to be very unfulfilled and accomplish very little. On the other hand, when you use the right tools and techniques to be able to deal with increasing amounts of data, information and knowledge, you will enter a “flow” state where you are able to achieve massive amounts in a short space of time, and be able to be creative and a visionary. It will both make for massive personal growth and productivity, but will also allow you to feel in control of the situation, going with the information flow.

If you feel bored, and develop the skills to be aware of that situation before you artificially introduce drama, then you will go and seek out more stimulation - more data, more challenges to tackle, and you will get the immense satisfaction of dealing with the hard problems and conquering them.

When you are dealing with a lot of data and information at once, it’s like a pipe, and if that pipe gets blocked, then all the information and data piles up behind it and very soon you have an overload situation and everything shuts down and you start using your tactics to get rid of the incoming information, or ignore it, and the whole flow process stops and you stop learning, stop gathering knowledge, stop creating wisdom, and stop being creative. One of the most common causes of this happening is when you get stuck making a decision, which is why we have the video on decision making, so you never need to have that blockage again.

But the more subtle issue is if you have more data than you can handle going in to the pipe, and the pressure gradually builds up and builds up and you don’t know how to handle it, until it eventually explodes.

Now if the knowledge is inaccessible, or difficult to understand, then it is useless to you or whoever could benefit from it. When the knowledge is readily accessible and actually used in the decision making and problem solving processes, and creative green field thinking, then you have the sum of the knowledge and experience of everyone and every situation that contributed to that knowledge at your disposal to allow you to make the most of every situation.

Of course this is where Mind Mapping comes into play.

As you gather the data, you can put it into a mind map, and as you do so, you are naturally deleting, distorting and filtering the data to become information and to match with the knowledge and information you already have. This helps deal with data and information overload. As you arrange the mind map, you are starting to group the information so that the linkages between the ideas convey meaning, and the organization is exactly the same as when information is organized in your brain. At this stage you are still operating mostly from a left brain logical perspective, but at the same time you are naturally creating an image that is attractive to your right brain too.

As you graft the branches and use the colors and branch shapes and images to indicate the commonality of ideas, you are building the understanding of the patterns within the information, and generalizing back to the root branches. This allows you to gain the level of overview of information that is necessary for it to be knowledge where you understand how it all fits together, and how your objectives are going to be met.

So you are automatically turning the data into information and the information into knowledge as you create and refine your Mind Maps. This knowledge consists not only of the keywords on the branches, but also the colors, positioning and connections the branches have, as well as the images, boundaries, task information, priorities, branch notes, and all your hyperlinks to other documents, web pages and resources. They all go to make up the sum of the knowledge contained in the Mind Map. The compactness and richness of this visual representation of the knowledge makes Mind Maps excellent knowledge management tools, so that when you (or somebody else) need the information, it is right there in an easily understood format, and with all the richness of the information and data behind it.

Having the knowledge represented graphically in this way is a great help in going the next step to wisdom and understanding where you get the picture of the principles and the underlying patterns in the knowledge, and can therefore propose archetypes and principles that can drive forward through a brainstorming process to new and innovative solutions.

Using Mind Maps in this way ensures that you can manage the volume of data, process it efficiently into information and package it up into knowledge without getting overloaded. This means you can move through wisdom to true creativity based on a solid foundation of understanding. To my knowledge, there is no other tool better suited to this process of creating and maintaining close to optimal performance than Mind Mapping.

About Mind Mapping

Mind Maps are diagrams that work the way people think — they organize the information in the same way our brains organize information. They make it easy to understand, remember, and communicate complex information.

Our brains like thinking in pictures. The smooth curves and colorful pictures used in Mind Mapping create powerful images for your brain to remember.

Mind Maps cater to both logical left brain thinking and pictorial right brain thinking at the same time, which makes them a very good way of storing and recalling information, presenting things to other people, and brainstorming new ideas.

About NovaMind

NovaMind has been the top Mind Mapping program available on Mac computers for the last 6 years, and has been available for Windows for over two years. It is rapidly gaining recognition for its many unique and innovative features and ease of use. NovaMind makes Mind Mapping intuitive and fun.

For more information about NovaMind, please visit www.novamind.com or e-mail Gideon King at gideon(at)novamind.com.

Decision Making made easy using Mind Maps

Often the number of factors you need to deal with when making difficult decisions can leave you bogged down and feeling overwhelmed and helpless. What you need is a structured way of getting all the issues out there, uncovering and designing all the options, and a system for choosing the best options to pursue.

This video will give you power tools to be able to make even the toughest of decisions with confidence using Mind Mapping techniques. Watch the video now at : http://www.novamind.com/blog/index.php/how-to-make-smart-decisions-using-mind-maps/

The first step is to brainstorm the potential directions very much like what we talked about in the problem solving video, but once you have the decisions outlined, there are some techniques that come in very useful for exploring the potential decisions in detail, and also techniques for deciding which option to choose, and assessing the impact of any decision.

The supporting Mind Map for this article and video is available on NovaMind Connect.

We will talk about how to use Edward DeBono’s six thinking hats to examine the possibilities from six different perspectives. For each perspective, you put on an imaginary hat that only allows you to think from that perspective. We show you the structure of this in a Mind Map made using the six thinking hats method. White represents information needs and gaps; the red hat is where you put forward intuitive ideas without needing to justify them; black is where you are judging the ideas harshly and exercising caution; yellow is logical reasons why this will work; green is alternatives and proposals; and blue is the big picture. You can read the full details in Edward’s book called “Six thinking hats”.

Next is PMI, where you consider a concept from the point of view of positive or Plus aspects, negative or Minus aspects, and Interesting things about the proposal - things that are neither positive or negative, but instead have some interesting aspects to them. This is a slight variation on the listing of advantages and disadvantages which was propounded by Plato and Benjamin Franklin.

One really useful way to use this is by creating a Mind Map where the first level branches are each person or group affected by the decision, and their PMI reaction to the option you are considering. Put yourself in their shoes and imagine how they would feel about it, or survey them to find out for sure.

Another thing that you can factor in to the assessment is what is called a force field analysis, where you put the proposed change in the middle of a Mind Map, and on the left you have the forces for change, and on the right you have the forces against change. This is again a variation on the advantages and disadvantages lists, but is specifically directed at the environment of the problem.

These techniques allow you to generate different options and explore the potential decisions thoroughly, but what about actually making the decision?

Actually you are likely to find that the thorough exploration of the options makes the decision easy, but assuming it’s a difficult problem you still need to have tools to be able to choose the best option.

Often you need to narrow the list of options down, and you can do this by using the Pareto principle which in this context means that 80% of the benefits come from changes to 20% of the factors. This can be really helpful if you have a lot of options which could feasibly be implemented. To use this system, rank each of the options, and choose the top 20% of the options to implement. You can do this using the priority markers if you are using the Platinum edition of NovaMind. Otherwise, you can just number or color code or arrange the branches to indicate the ranking.

Say you were trying to increase sales of your products and you had listed a number of things you could do to increase the number of leads, increase the conversion ratio, increase the average sale, increase the number of transactions and increase the margins. Now you rank the options, and start by implementing the top 20% of the items, and it is likely that you will increase your sales 80% as much as if you had just blindly implemented all the options, and at a much lower cost and amount of effort.

A refinement on this method is to also include a cost benefit analysis in your assessment of the options. You can create a branch for the costs and another for the benefits, and if there are other things you need to consider like short term and long term impacts, and risk factors, these can be added in to the assessment. In order to make it more objective, it can be useful to have things like the assessed probability of success, overall benefit, risk factors, and preferences used as factors in a formula to give a better rating to each option.

But what if you have a number of options that still look good and you need to choose one to implement? You need a technique for selecting the best option.

Start a new mind map with the decision you need to make in the title, and for each solution or option, create a first level branch. In some cases the result will be an outcome, and in some cases it will be another decision that needs to be made. If the result of making a decision is that you need to make another decision, then add the options for that decision as child branches, and continue until you get to every branch representing a decision producing an outcome. In the video we use an example Mind Map where, we have a decision as to whether to do advertising or start an affiliate program, and the decision to do advertising leads to another decision as to whether to use Internet or Print advertising.

For each possible type of outcome, add a child branch. In most cases, just two or three outcomes will do, to indicate either success or failure, or optimistic, neutral, and pessimistic outcomes.

Now for each of the possible outcomes, give it a value which makes sense within the domain. In the case of a monetary benefit, like increasing sales, it will be dollars, but in other areas, you might have to assign arbitrary values to the relative value of that outcome. Next, assign a probability to each of the possible outcomes, representing the likelihood of that outcome happening, so that the total adds up to 1.0. For each option, multiply the likelihood by the value, and add them all together at that level. This is the value of making that decision. Now subtract the cost of implementing that decision, and you are left with the beneficial value of that decision. Choose the largest net benefit to implement. In this case, clearly creating an affiliate program is the best thing to do.

This is of course easier to understand when you see it in the video.

This works well if you have the factors reasonably well defined, but if there are complex subjective elements to the decision, you will need to use what is called a priority vector as a multiplier for each category. This is basically a way of weighting the factors that are more important in your decision. To work out the priority vector, we need to briefly switch over to a spreadsheet and add a row and a column for each category you are assessing, then for each square in the matrix, assign it a value according to these options:

• Equal importance => 1
• Somewhat more important or better => 3
• Definitely more important or better => 5
• Much more important or better => 7
• Very much more important or better => 9

…and if it is less important, then use the reciprocal value, for instance if it is definitely less important then you would use the value 1/5. Of course when something is compared to itself it is the same, so the values are always 1.

The video example shows how to calculate the weighting for each thing that has a subjective weighting, and then apply that to the actual values for each option that is being considered, as well as combining the weighting with the beneficial value of each option.

This turns the uncertainties and subjective assessments into a formula that can be applied to give a decision that reflects all the relevant facts, probabilities of success, and the more subjective inputs, giving you a definitive decision that you can use with confidence.

These mind mapping techniques take you from the tools to find options, to simple decisions and right through to giving you top of the line tools for making very tough decisions that rely on both hard facts and more subjective factors. When you use mind maps in this way, they become very powerful tools for visualizing the options and making fantastic decisions.

About Mind Mapping

Mind Maps are diagrams that work the way people think — they organize the information in the same way our brains organize information. They make it easy to understand, remember, and communicate complex information.

Our brains like thinking in pictures. The smooth curves and colorful pictures used in Mind Mapping create powerful images for your brain to remember.

Mind Maps cater to both logical left brain thinking and pictorial right brain thinking at the same time, which makes them a very good way of storing and recalling information, presenting things to other people, and brainstorming new ideas.

About NovaMind

NovaMind has been the top Mind Mapping program available on Mac computers for the last 6 years, and has been available for Windows for over two years. It is rapidly gaining recognition for its many unique and innovative features and ease of use. NovaMind makes Mind Mapping intuitive and fun.

For more information about NovaMind, please visit www.novamind.com or e-mail Gideon King at gideon(at)novamind.com.

Planning Projects using Mind Maps

Mind Maps are a great tool for planning and managing projects.

Watch this video now to find out how to plan your projects and how to use those project plans for scope management, communicating project goals, and getting the buy-in of all stakeholders: http://www.novamind.com/blog/index.php/using-mind-mapping-for-project-planning/

The earlier video on managing your to-do lists using mind maps introduced you to the basic concepts of organizing your requirements using mind mapping. Now we will extend that to look at project planning specifics.

But first, let’s ask the question, “What’s wrong with the age-old standard project management packages like MS Project and Merlin (http://www.novamind.com/merlin)?

Well, they certainly do give you good tools to manage your projects, but they really have a strong tendency to get people focusing on the minute task levels of projects far too early in the inception phases of a project.

This means that you can easily lose sight of the main objectives of the project, or get so stuck in the details that you forget some important tasks or objectives.

But the planning for a successful project begins before that. There is a whole inception phase of the project where the relevant information is collected together and organized so that you have a clear understanding of the scope, time, cost, quality, resources, communications, risks and of course stakeholder requirements for the project.

Often this information is gathered as large specification documents which are hard to navigate around and understand the requirements, but all of these areas can benefit from the use of Mind Mapping, and you can create Mind Maps to represent each knowledge area, and have branches for the details and hyperlinks to other documents and resources where required.

As you start a project, you need to define what the major objectives are, and each one of these objectives will become a first level branch of the Mind Map, then for projects of any reasonable size these objectives get further broken down into sub-objectives that contribute to the achievement of the major objectives, or the major areas of work contributing to the overall objectives. So these become the second level branches. Finally it is broken down into actual tasks that must be performed, which are the leaf branches on your Mind Map.

Obviously this is flexible and you only use as many levels as necessary for your project, and for a large project, it may require more levels.

When you get down to the task level, you may want to assign resources to the tasks. This is something you can do in the Platinum edition of NovaMind. The video shows you how to create and assign resources to the branches. Of course the resources usually refer to people, but can also refer to other resources which have a limited availability, like vehicles and meeting rooms.

The video also shows you how to assign task information to the branches, including priorities, percentage complete, start and finish date and duration.

You can see how easy it is to structure your project into objectives and then go right down to the task and resource level using Mind Maps. This means that you can use brainstorming techniques to come up with the right ideas and objectives. The techniques used for brainstorming are covered in a different video.

As you go through the exercise, you will fully explore the options for the project in much more breadth and depth than what you could cover in a requirements document. Then you can do the assessment of the ideas and objectives, and make sure that the ones you want are retained, and then look at the budget and time constraints etc, and go through a scoping exercise.

Mind Maps are a great way to manage project scope because you can remove a branch or sub-branch without impacting the other branches.

This makes it easy to make sure that there is nothing forgotten in the early planning and scoping part of the project, as well as being a great tool for presenting the project to all the stakeholders.

If you are trying to get funding for a project, it makes it much easier when the project plan is drawn out as a Mind Map. Everyone can see what the objectives are for the project, how they are going to be achieved, the tasks that are required to achieve the outcomes, as well as the resources that are required. When the project sponsors see in the Mind Map all the things that need to be done to achieve their objectives, they will understand the basis for the project costs, and can make much better informed decisions on scoping and overall outcomes. This means that it is much more likely that they will accept the costings you have provided because they can see where their money is going - everyone can see clearly what the objectives are, how they are going to be achieved, and what resources are going to be required. They may also decide to take some of the main objective branches and move them to a new phase in the project so that it can be done properly, rather than trying to fit it in to an unreasonable timeframe.

But what if you need to bring someone up to speed on a project that is already underway?

Mind Maps are very useful in briefing new team members on the project. When a new team member is assigned to the project, the Mind Maps will give them a picture of the overall project goals, updating them very quickly. The Mind Maps give a graphical overview of the tasks, how they relate to each other and their importance and impact in the greater scheme of things.

The new team member can then be introduced to their individual role in the project and will be able to quickly see what their responsibilities are and how these responsibilities relate to the overall project, giving them a better understanding of what and how they will contribute to the team and the project. Often this will lead to them volunteering their skills for tasks you may not have assigned them to, because they understand that they can make a strong contribution to the project in that area.

You very quickly have their “buy-in” on the project, whether they are coming in at the start of the project or part way through. They can see exactly where they fit in, why they are needed and how they can contribute.

Now of course during the running of your project, you would use a dedicated project management package like MS Project or Merlin to handle the detailed running of the project, and you can transfer your project information to Merlin, or to any project management package that reads the MS Project XML file format (which is just about all the project management software currently available).

So as you can see, NovaMind is a great tool particularly for the inception phases of projects.

Watch the video now to hear about using Mind Maps for brainstorming requirements; scoping; time, cost and quality management, assigning resources, communicating project requirements, and managing risks. When you use Mind Mapping in this way, you will be able to manage the scope of projects better, make sure that no requirements are left out, have better communication with the stakeholders and sponsors, and have better buy in from your staff working on the project.

All these things add up to better managed and more successful projects.

About Mind Mapping

Mind Maps are diagrams that work the way people think — they organize the information in the same way our brains organize information. They make it easy to understand, remember, and communicate complex information.

Our brains like thinking in pictures. The smooth curves and colorful pictures used in Mind Mapping create powerful images for your brain to remember.

Mind Maps cater to both logical left brain thinking and pictorial right brain thinking at the same time, which makes them a very good way of storing and recalling information, presenting things to other people, and brainstorming new ideas.

About NovaMind

NovaMind has been the top Mind Mapping program available on Mac computers for the last 6 years, and has been available for Windows for over two years. It is rapidly gaining recognition for its many unique and innovative features and ease of use. NovaMind makes Mind Mapping intuitive and fun.

For more information about NovaMind, please visit www.novamind.com or e-mail Gideon King at gideon(at)novamind.com.

Mind Mapping is a very powerful tool when it comes to solving problems. In this video you will see how you can take a structured approach to problem solving which will allow you to generate more ideas and better solutions. You will hear about the four step method of problem solving, and you’ll get a feel for how this can work for you.

Watch this video to see how to use Mind Maps in this way http://www.novamind.com/blog/index.php/how-to-solve-problems-using-mind-mapping/

The first and most important step of all is defining what the problem is. Now this may seem pretty obvious, but actually a thorough examination of what the problem is can lead to a redefinition of the problem, or turning a huge problem into something manageable, and helps get you in the right frame of mind to solve problems that initially seem overwhelming.

So the goals here are to have a narrowly defined problem that we are sure is not multiple problems, but a single well defined problem. We need to be sure that it really is the problem, and that the problem is not obscured by emotion, opinion, hidden or open agendas or anything else. It is also important to understand why it’s important to solve the problem, because this will give you the impetus to actually follow through with the process.

Now the first four ways we examine the problem are based on what are known as the cartesian quadrants, based on the work of René Descartes, and the concept was originally applied to proving a theorem - if you could prove it by examining it from all of these perspectives, it was taken to be proven true. However, we are using it in a slightly different way here, because we are using it to examine the problem it from all four of these perspectives, which will eliminate everything that is not the problem, and we will have a clear and concise grasp of what the problem really is (or at least what we believe it to be). Don’t be surprised if viewing the problem from these four perspectives completely changes the problem you are solving, or even proves that it wasn’t a problem in the first place. Often our original idea of what the problem is, is actually symptoms of the problem, and this method allows you to break through to the core problem.

The video walks you through a practical example of problem definition based on this Mind Map. As you go through the definition of the problem, you add branches to your mind map, narrowing down the definition to the core issue, but also generate some strong starting points for brainstorming solutions.

Some people also try to define the objectives and what constitutes a good solution very tightly during this phase of problem resolution. This is counter-productive, because it narrows your thinking. The process we have gone through with the definition of the problem has already narrowed things down quite sufficiently.

Also, while we have been talking about this in terms of problems, the word Challenge is really more appropriate, because our thinking about problems is often fearful and dreading these heavy things that weigh us down and hold us back, whereas challenges are things that we step up to and overcome, and feel positive about our progress. Also, this methodology doesn’t need to be about solving problems - you can use exactly the same method for identifying and going after new opportunities.

Next, the video explains the four step method of solving the problem.

Part of this process is brainstorming. Brainstorming is designed to be free from judgment, and the idea is to get as many ideas out there as quickly as possible. The concept is that quantity yields quality, and the more ideas generated, the more solutions you will find. This is the opposite of linear thinking, where you arrive at one solution and then stop thinking.

With brainstorming, you want to generate as many ideas as possible just throwing them out there and recording just the keywords on your mind map so you can keep up - maybe using the BranchStorm™ feature of NovaMind. To get things started, you have probably generated some ideas or categories of ideas just from the problem definition exercise. Add those categories to your Mind Map, and then add sub-branches for specific ideas. Think from the perspective of no resource constraints - assume you have infinite money, staff, time and expertise available at your disposal. You can pull it back to reality later.

If the ideas come too fast to organize them as you go, just get them down there and organize them later.

But what if you run out of ideas?

Here are some ways of getting the creative juices flowing again:

• Get up and go for a walk, or do something else completely different and come back after half an hour
• Add blank branches to some of your categories and ideas, and your subconscious will work on ways to complete these branches by supplying ideas - you can do this before going for your walk, so your subconscious has been triggered to search for specific ideas
• Use the NovaMind Suggesterator™ to come up with new words and associations, and build your ideas from there. Choose some of the words from near the end of the list of suggestions where they are more “off the wall” suggestions, and work out connections with the problem
• Think of ways of “improving” an existing solution or proposed solution
• Ask the question “If there was another solution what would it be?” - this tricks your brain into supplying another idea when you don’t think there is one, and once you have come up with one more idea, the flow of ideas starts again.
• How would other people solve this problem? People from another country, your competitors, your ancestors, children, etc.
• What limitations on your thinking have you imposed? Although you are supposed to be brainstorming from the perspective of no constraints whatsoever, your mind is probably so attuned to judging ideas and limiting what you come up with as potential solutions, that you need to ask “what other solutions are there if there are no restrictions?”. How can you reverse or get rid of those assumptions and limiting decisions. What possibilities open up when you do?

During the brainstorming, you were not judging anything. Ridiculous ideas were recorded along with sensible ones without judgment. Now it’s time to organize the information on your Mind Map into different categories, where you have a branch for each category, and the proposed solutions and ideas as sub-branches.

Remember that there are always multiple solutions to problems.

So check what is going to be feasible, what fits with practices and policies, or where changing those practices and policies would be a better solution. Make sure you take into consideration the effects of your proposed solution on everyone involved, and whether the idea really does constitute a solution to the problem. If a solutions looks ridiculous, ask how you could accomplish the same thing in a different way, or which parts of that idea can we actually use.

Make sure the solutions fit with the facts of the situation, and judge the impact on both the problem and anyone and everyone affected. Every potential solution will have pros and cons - make sure you think about that as you make your decision as to which of the proposed solutions to follow first. Make sure the cost and time to solve the problem is worth it. Which solutions are you best equipped to implement? What are the short term and long term benefits of each solution? How do the solutions fit with your time and resource constraints?

Record further details under the preferred options on your Mind Map, such as time frames and the steps involved in achieving the desired outcomes.

The video tells you how to gather the required information and take action on implementing the chosen solutions, and follow up to make sure that the things you did actually solved the problem.

So, watch the video on how to solve problems using Mind Mapping above if you haven’t already done so, and I wish you all the best with using NovaMind to solve all your problems and generate new ideas and solutions.

About Mind Mapping

Mind Maps are diagrams that work the way people think — they organize the information in the same way our brains organize information. They make it easy to understand, remember, and communicate complex information.

Our brains like thinking in pictures. The smooth curves and colorful pictures used in Mind Mapping create powerful images for your brain to remember.

Mind Maps cater to both logical left brain thinking and pictorial right brain thinking at the same time, which makes them a very good way of storing and recalling information, presenting things to other people, and brainstorming new ideas.

About NovaMind

NovaMind has been the top Mind Mapping program available on Mac computers for the last 6 years, and is rapidly gaining recognition in the Windows market. NovaMind makes Mind Mapping intuitive and fun.

For more information about NovaMind, please visit www.novamind.com or e-mail Gideon King at gideon(at)novamind.com.

Different people learn in different ways. NovaMind can make a big difference to your understanding, memory and learning because the notes you create suit your personal learning style.

Watch this video to see how to use Mind Maps in this way http://www.novamind.com/blog/index.php/note-taking-using-mind-maps/

To be effective at note taking, it is best to first prepare by creating a Mind Map that shows what you already know about the topic. Add to your Mind Map the things that you think are going to be covered in the presentation or study. Next identify the things you want to find out and add those topics to the mind map so that your brain is focused and subconsciously looking out for that information.

Then during the talk or study session, note the ideas as they arise. Where you can, associate the ideas where they belong on the Mind Map, but if the information is coming too fast for that, just get the keywords down and you can organize it later. Remember that the most efficient storage of information on a mind map is through using keywords and the association between the keywords to represent the ideas.

Use the prior knowledge you had to hook in the new information, as well as identifying the new ideas and making sure you get the association between the ideas reflected in the structure, because this is how your brain remembers information.

Identify the gaps in your knowledge so that you know what you don’t know, and can ask the right questions to get that information. Work out what is missing. What don’t you know? What else do you need to understand and act on the information, and where can you get that information?

After the presentation has finished or the study session is over, review the information you have gathered, summarize it and reorganize it so that the hierarchy makes sense to you. If you need to memorize it, do the one hour, one day, one week, one month and one year scheduled reviews, as well as creating a copy of the Mind Map without looking at the original so that you can make sure that the information has really sunk in.

When you use a mind map, note taking feels compact and complete. An entire class or lecture can be seen at a glance. It’s an incredibly effective way to study, review, understand and memorize information, as you’ll see once you begin using NovaMind in this way.

About Mind Mapping

Mind Maps are diagrams that work the way people think — they organize the information in the same way our brains organize information. They make it easy to understand, remember, and communicate complex information.

Our brains like thinking in pictures. The smooth curves and colorful pictures used in Mind Mapping create powerful images for your brain to remember.

Mind Maps cater to both logical left brain thinking and pictorial right brain thinking at the same time, which makes them a very good way of storing and recalling information, presenting things to other people, and brainstorming new ideas.

About NovaMind

NovaMind has been the top Mind Mapping program available on Mac computers for the last 6 years, and is rapidly gaining recognition in the Windows market. NovaMind makes Mind Mapping intuitive and fun.

For more information about NovaMind, please visit www.novamind.com or e-mail Gideon King at gideon(at)novamind.com.

A key part of any presentation is the preparation, and this video gives you some important tips about preparing your presentation using Mind Mapping techniques and NovaMind.

The video is available at http://www.novamind.com/blog/index.php/how-to-prepare-your-presentation-mind-map-in-novamind/

In NovaMind Pro and Platinum, there are two Mind Map templates which you can use for creating your presentations, and these are introduced in the video, but the majority of the video shows you how to put together your presentation without using a template, based on the research work of David Kolb and Bernice McCarthy.

These studies on learning styles and how people react to the information they are presented with give a solid basis for building presentations that hook the interest of your entire audience.

You have probably heard about the concept that different people learn in different ways, and David Kolb did some interesting research which concluded that there are four main ways that people learn new things: By experiencing something for themselves, by observing something and reflecting on what they have learned, by thinking about what they have heard, or by doing things for themselves.

It is difficult to appeal to all these different learning types in a single speech, but Bernice McCarthy put together what is called the 4-mat system, which is designed to hook the interest and attention of all the different learning types.

The 4-mat system of presentation is divided into four sections, which are: Why, What, How, and What If.

For the “Why?” people, if you don’t hook them right up front with a good reason for them to listen to you, you will not be able to get them to listen to the rest of the talk. You really want to hook these people because they are the ones who will take your message on board as part of themselves and spread it to other people.

If the “What?” people don’t get the information about what is going to be covered in the presentation near the start of the presentation, they will thing that there is no substance to what you are talking about. You want these people to take it all in because these are the people who will be able to explain in logical detail exactly what the idea is, and can then take it forward and implement it, sticking to the true concepts no matter what human or other obstacles are in the way.

The “How?” people will take away the information you gave them and try it for themselves. Some of them will be able to visualize themselves doing the things you were talking about, but in many cases, they need to actually do it themselves. When these people know that it works by experiencing it for themselves, they will build strategies and designs to implement the ideas widely, and will inspire others to follow them.

And lastly, the “What If?” people will be thinking up questions right from the moment you start your talk, and you have to know how to cater for their needs in your presentation. This is discussed in the video These people love doing things with what they have learned, and will get in there and learn by trial and error, and when they have “got it”, they will share their vision of the possibilities this opens up, and will encourage and cajole other people to become involved.

The video shows you how to use Mind Maps to implement these strategies for both a short talk and a longer presentation. Mind Mapping gives you a lot of advantages over more traditional presentation methods, both in the structuring and preparation of the presentation, and by using Mind Maps during presentation delivery.

So watch the video now to get the full information, and if you don’t already have NovaMind, you can download it by clicking on the download button on the top of any page of the main NovaMind web site.

About Mind Mapping

Mind Maps are diagrams that work the way people think — they organize the information in the same way our brains organize information. They make it easy to understand, remember, and communicate complex information.

Our brains like thinking in pictures. The smooth curves and colorful pictures used in Mind Mapping create powerful images for your brain to remember.

Mind Maps cater to both logical left brain thinking and pictorial right brain thinking at the same time, which makes them a very good way of storing and recalling information, presenting things to other people, and brainstorming new ideas.

About NovaMind

NovaMind has been the top Mind Mapping program available on Mac computers for the last 6 years, and is rapidly gaining recognition in the Windows market. NovaMind makes Mind Mapping intuitive and fun.

For more information about NovaMind, please visit www.novamind.com or e-mail Gideon King at gideon(at)novamind.com.

Mind Mapping your to-do list is the most common use of Mind Mapping, so NovaMind have created a video to teach you exactly how to use Mind Maps to create and manage your to-do list.

The video is available at http://www.novamind.com/blog/index.php/how-to-mind-map-your-to-do-list/

Mind Mapping software makes it easy to organize the things you need to do. Sometimes you will want to create a to-do list that is time based, like ones used to organize your week. Other times, you will want to organize according to your objectives or goals.

You can use the adornments to visually categorize the tasks on your Mind Map, and you can use the colors and shapes of the branches to form visual associations too. If there are logical associations between the tasks, you can indicate them using link lines.

You can put checkboxes on the branches to indicate whether a task is complete, partially complete, or not yet started.

If you have more extensive task management needs like seeing the percentage complete, setting priorities, assigning resources, start and finish dates etc, then you can do that in NovaMind Platinum.

Watch the video to see all these aspects of using Mind Maps for your to do lists, and several other tips to help you get the most out of your to-do lists using Mind Mapping software.

All these features make Mind Mapping in NovaMind a very powerful way of creating and managing your to-do lists.

About Mind Mapping

Mind Maps are diagrams that work the way people think — they organize the information in the same way our brains organize information. They make it easy to understand, remember, and communicate complex information.

Our brains like thinking in pictures. The smooth curves and colorful pictures used in Mind Mapping create powerful images for your brain to remember.

Mind Maps cater to both logical left brain thinking and pictorial right brain thinking at the same time, which makes them a very good way of storing and recalling information, presenting things to other people, and brainstorming new ideas.

About NovaMind

NovaMind has been the top Mind Mapping program available on Mac computers for the last 6 years, and is rapidly gaining recognition in the Windows market. NovaMind makes Mind Mapping intuitive and fun.

For more information about NovaMind, please visit www.novamind.com or e-mail Gideon King at gideon(at)novamind.com.

David Alison blogs about how he uses Spaces in a dual monitor Mac environment to be more productive. Provides a good sense of how you can do some serious multi-tasking with Spaces.

CaricatureIcons.com has announced the availability of a new online portrait/caricature service. You send your photo, they draw you. It’s pretty simple, and very fun.

You can use the Caricature like avatar in your Blog, AIM, MySpace, FaceBook, Business Card, Twitter, Desktop, t-shirts or use it as a logo.

The Caricature are delivered in EPS Vector-based file, Macintosh Icons, PC icon formats (ICO), PNG files and also an 300 DPI JPEG.

CaricatureIcons.com Custom Caricature Icon Service is available today for just $29 USD.

Fast Icon has released Feed & Twitter Monsters, which contains 2 freeware icons of funny creatures.
This icon collection is available for download for Mac OS X, Windows Vista as well as a handy PNG files for Linux, web or blogs in the FastIcon Website.