12 tips to create mind maps

Here are 12 simple tips to create mind maps in a professional and efficient way.

Reviewing with GTD

If we want an efficient GTD system, we must have a routine of review of this one, in order to have the control and know in any moment what things we have, when we need manage a change or when we must do or execute anything.

Organize your tasks using Kanban boards

Image: Jeff Iasovski at Wikipedia – Creative Commons

A Kanban board is an organization tool very useful, powerful and effective, than can be used individually, but specially with teams.

Get organized using mind maps

A mind map is a very powerful tool to represent our thoughts, organizing our ideas and structuring our knowledges. Its usefulness is immense and can be applied to any need imaginable, including the organization of tasks and projects.

Tony Buzan, the father of mind maps, in his book “Mind maps for the Business”, gives some ideas about how to harness the power of mind maps in order to organize our work and improve our productivity. Some of the maps presented here are inspired by these ideas, adding some own ideas. Mind maps have to be imbued with our personal thinking and our own way of organizing.

20 essential tools to improve the productivity

Whatever your method of organization, there is a tool to get the most out of your work and be more productive. The following are a collection of tools, with a personal and impartial assessment about the best I’ve found throughout my career, and based on my experience. My advice is to try them yourself in order to decide which one best suits your way of working, regardless of the score with which I described the tool.

I rated the tools in different functional categories:

• Notes: Notes management.
• ToDo: To do list.
• Advanced ToDo: Advanced to do list.
• Kanban: Kanban dashboards, in which the tasks change their workflow or status.

Study Case of GTD

The following is a practical example to understand how work the principles of collection, processing and organization.

Take care of your tools to be more productive

The tools are similar to our hands to work. The health of our tools is intimately linked to the health of our productivity and our work.

Original image of Doug Powel, extracted from Stockvault: http://www.stockvault.net/photo/108522/grampas-workshop

 

Key factors to overcome the crisis

We live in a time of uncertainty and frantic and continuous changes, which break the rules of what we knew. The crisis has collapsed the pillars of stability and welfare of society and markets, but also generated new paradigms, new situations and new ways of approaching and doing things.

Given the current circumstances, it is necessary, more than ever, acquire a cold and open mind. We got carried away by ineffective feelings, such as “why is happening this to me?” “Blame it on the crisis, the goverment, the risk premium, international markets…”, “I try to overcome it, but I can’t”, or “why bother if I’m going to fail anyway?”. We must rise above all this and understand that it is a waste of time, even if you have every reason in the world. And speaking about the world… it is moving without waiting for anyone.