Mind maps - Tool towards enhancing your productivity

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If you have worked for a while I am reasonably sure that you would have hit almost all the following situations

• Tons of notes - but cant link the data / extract what you want when you want
• Can see the links between discussion points - leads to a non optimal decision
• Making a presentation and you get pointed 'why have you not considered this ?' - thought about it but got missed ?
• Started a work weeks with 10 threads - completed 5 at the end of the week leaving you wondering how the others slipped ?
• Just had a promotion and are finding the level of information overwhelming ?

I can go on and on .... but the point of providing this list is simple - if you want to avoid these just get to using mind maps.

There are a multitude of resources on mind mapping on the net and you can find them here and here and here and here. In this post I will try to summarize one survey I found on mind mapping and found it interesting.

Primary mind mapping software programs

1. Mindmanager - 72.6%
2. Freemind - 10.4%

Conclusion - Like any other product people would like to try a free application before moving into a paid software to manage mind maps. This in my understanding reflects two things

1. Freemind has a great chance of gathering market from Mindmanager - I would love this being a fan of Opensource software platforms.
2. The information availability on mind maps is relatively low which makes people to take route through a free application to get convinced about the relevance of mindmaps
   

Top 5 applications of mindmap's in today's context

1. To Do Lists (58%)
2. Preparing for Presentations (58%)
3. Making Notes (56%)
4. Problem Solving (53%)
5. Project Planning (52%)

Conclusion - The range of applications for which mind maps are being used only implies that essentially mind maps can be used for anything and everything. Its only a matter of realizing the need for that and able to map the activities. A approach with such a broad range of applications is definitely bound to catch on

Time spent per day on mindmap's

1. > 1 Hr - 40.4%
2. 1-2 Hr - 33%

Conclusion - The large % of people seem to be spending only 20-30% of the work day on mindmaps which probably means that it still remains a support system and not a mainstream activity.

Top 5 benefits from mindmap's

1. Clarity of Thinking
2. Manage Information overload
3. Improved Productivity
4. Better organization of tasks
5. Visualize information relationships

Conclusion - No other type of program enables you to record your ideas, thoughts and knowledge and rearrange them up with the flexibility that mind mapping software enables.

Top 3 hurdles for widespread acceptance of mindmap's

1. Lack of adequate knowledge of mindmapping
2. Acceptance of mindmapping by others
3. Software not easy and intuitive

Conclusion - Seems to be a difficult issue which needs an all round effort to ensure better acceptance and mainstream usage of mindmap's

The survey itself covers a few more topics and ideas. Pls go here to get a copy of the complete pdf of the survey results.