Photography: hawkexpress

For David Allen life is full of “stuff.” For people who have never heard of David Allen, never tried to read his geek productivity bible Getting Things Done, never wondered how to label a file or categorize their lives, that’s as unhelpful a truism as declaring that work is difficult. But for the followers of GTD, people who have been accused of regarding Allen as a kind of cultic leader (the same kind of leader he himself once saw in John-Roger, leader of the New Age Movement of Spiritual Inner Awareness in which Allen remains a minister), it’s an eye-opening revelation. Employ a process that pushes that “stuff” out of the way and what remains will be only the most important elements. Instead of wasting their hours on life’s minutiae, they’ll be able to devote their time to the big things. They’ll get things done.

Mostly though what they’ll be getting done is the process of doing things – and that’s if they can figure out the process. Allen doesn’t just earn revenue from his best-selling book and its sequels. His seminars cost $695 per person, a sign not just that his followers consider his techniques valuable but that they’re so complex they have to fork out almost 700 bucks to figure out how to use them. Allen’s system requires multiple levels of categorization and treatment for every aspect of life from going to the dry cleaners and vaccinating the dog to launching a website and changing jobs. Every task has its moment, sometimes timed to the minute. Every chore receives attention according to its apparent level of importance, but only after you’ve put it through a system that awards it an appropriate priority level.

Getting Things Done, a System Dedicated to Geeks?

43Folders.com, a site dedicated to GTD, has argued that the system is ideal for geeks – people, it says, who tend to be disorganized but “love assessing, classifying, and defining the objects in their world,” who “crave actionable items” but “have too many projects and lots and lots of stuff.” But that’s a narrow definition of a geek. “Geeks” today are more than bespectacled programmers with ponytails, beards and an unhealthy knowledge of Apple mouse designs. They’re specialists, experts in one particular field whether that field is Java programming, gardening or marketing coffee beans. They’re not interested in creating order in their day; they’re interested in seeing the results of their creation.

For followers of GTD, nirvana lies in the process of organization. For geeks, process is the means to an end and nirvana for them is in having nothing left to organize at all.

The difference lies in two key ingredients missing among the files, folders and labels of GTD: creativity and vision.

Every successful business begins with an idea. But ideas are common, successful businesses relatively rare. Between the concept and the IPO, the buy-out and the private Caribbean island lie years of small achievements: websites built and tested, products designed and prototypes checked, clients won, satisfied and retained. Those small steps are the sorts of things that GTD was designed to deal with, organize and prioritize, but while plenty of corporations have invited David Allen to put on his seminars to organize their workforce, it’s hard to identify a list of entrepreneurs who have relied on GTD to build their path to success.

GTD Gets Things Done, Outsourcing Gets Results

That’s because a successful entrepreneur develops a vision of his end goal and is able to maintain it all the way through the process of building success. The same creativity that gives them a picture of what they’re trying to achieve also enables them to see the obstacles that can prevent them from achieving it and the force to push those obstructions out of the way. David Allen has described his system as helping users to find their way through a thick forest in which the trees are “stuff” hiding the items of real value.

“Any email could be either a snake in the grass or a berry,” he explained once in interview with Wired Magazine.

But successful entrepreneurs don’t become successful by picking berries. They build success by having a vision of what lies through the forest to the meadow at the end. There may be “stuff” in the way in the form of emails that need to be answered or dogs that need to be vaccinated but the smart, successful types don’t waste their time writing those tasks down, giving them labels and filing them in special folders. They trust in their ability to achieve success, make an investment — and pay someone else to do it for them.

That’s perhaps the biggest difference between people who focus on getting things done and those who manage to achieve great things. David Allen might be the guru for the type of geek who wants an uncluttered life but a more appropriate guru for a geekpreneur who wants to turn their commercial vision into a functioning business might well be Tim Ferriss. His book The 4-Hour Workweek might have had a misleading title, and outsourcing your dating life to Indian underlings is taking things a little too far, but his approach of only doing the most important and valuable tasks yourself and leaving everything else to paid helpers is a system followed by more successful types than those who use GTD. In fact, it’s a system followed by just about every successful type who has ever turned a one-man concept into a thriving company. The system – if outsourcing can be called a system – requires an investment of time in the form of training, and money in the form of payments to freelancers, but if it means you don’t have to waste time on “stuff” or on organizing “stuff” then it’s more likely to free up the time to not just get things done but to actually do things. And that, after all, should be the result any productivity system.

Photography: Scott Feldstein

Cubicle walls might not have been pretty but they’ve always been good for productivity. Not seeing your neighbor might have freed you up to take a snooze, fire up the solitaire or surf to the sports pages, but it also meant less gossip, fewer temptations to chat, and the fear that your boss might peer over the wall and catch you in the act. So what happens when you give the office a miss and swap the cubicle for a coffee shop? What can you do to ensure that working in a social environment won’t mean all sociability and no work?

It’s a question that’s become increasingly important as cafes recognize the power of wifi to pull in regular customers. A survey in 2006 found that about a fifth of the US workforce spent at least some time working outside a traditional office, and estimated that the rate was growing by about 10 percent a year. With hi-tech firms feeling the squeeze in the recession and even skilled geeks picking up pink slips and  “consultancy” business cards, it’s no surprise that so many café tables are now packed with Macs.

Etiquette between café workers has now become clear but while those rules will keep the atmosphere pleasant, they won’t necessary keep your productivity high. That happens first when you choose the right café. Even chains serving identical drinks in identical décor can vary in atmosphere. A Starbucks on a main street will often be filled with shoppers resting their feet and swapping sales stories. A branch next to a law firm will contain suits discussing briefs and sharing strategies. Each of those cafes will feel very different to freelancers opening their laptops and hoping to hunker down to some focused effort. It’s always harder to work when others around you are having fun. Look up from your keyboard to see others typing away though, and you’ll feel guilty you’re not doing the same.

Work Where Others Are Working

Rule one for productive café workers then, is to work in a café where others are working, meet in a café where others hold meetings — and have fun in a café where others are chatting.

Rule two is to keep your distance. There might not be walls between tables in a café but there should be enough space for workers to get on with work without being tempted to sit and talk. Etiquette demands a nodded greeting between regulars but productivity requires nothing more to be said before it’s time to close up and head back to the home office.

That’s not as easy as it sounds. Asking a fellow coffeeholic to watch your Mac while you make space for another brew can easily spark an opening for a conversation. Sharing a power outlet gives enough in common for two workers to feel like old friends. And talking can make for useful networking. One of the benefits promoted by co-working spaces is that they allow freelancing geeks to talk, chat, problem-solve, and perhaps even build businesses together. The conversation and the company are as much a part of the package as the table space and the Internet connection. When you see the person at the next café table not as a potential disruption but as a possible partner, it’s tempting to spend time deepening those connections instead of building your product.

In practice though, those sorts of benefits rarely materialize. Fellow café workers might make for reasonable neighbors but there’s little reason to believe that they’ll also make good partners. Once you’ve assessed another freelancer’s ability to help your company — and found it wanting — it’s best to stick to nodding terms so that you don’t spend your time talking instead of working.

Add Stress to Your Coffee

Where you sit matters too. Café regulars tend to choose the same seats each day but it’s important to choose the right seat. Obviously access to a power outlet will  be crucial — otherwise you’ll be spending half your time glancing at the battery icon — but choosing a seat that lets you sit with your back to the wall can help with productivity as well. You’ll be able to see everyone else (and see them working) but you won’t be stuck with the feeling that someone is reading over your shoulder. There are few things more disruptive than that. Cafes are public which means that to protect your productivity you’ll also have to do whatever you can to protect your privacy.

But perhaps the biggest threat to productivity when working in a café isn’t the atmosphere, the conversations or the peeping toms trying to spy on your screen. It’s the comfort. Cafes are designed to make people relax but studies show that a little stress can improve productivity, even if a lot of stress has the opposite effect. To be at your most productive then, you’ll want to introduce just a little bit of pressure even in a place as calming as a café. You can do that by setting yourself strict limits on the length of time you’ll sit and drink. Knowing that you’ll only be there for two hours — and that you have that long to complete a specific task — will get you working against the clock. You can also try breaking the routine by visiting the café at a different time of day or trying a different watering hole. The unfamiliar might not be as stressful as a tight deadline but it might just be enough to make you retreat into your laptop and get on with your work.

Cafes have turned out to be great places for digital nomads to use as replacement offices. They’re everywhere, they’re affordable, and they come complete with good refreshments. But using them in a way that lets you work rather than relax, get things done rather than watch waiters get things done, and produce results rather than just a large bill, does take a little care. Get it right though and you should find that your local coffee bar beats the cubicle any day.

Twitter’s hashtags have become an essential tool. Conference organizers use them to expand their reach. Communities use them to track natural disasters. And of course, protesters use them to tell the world what they’re doing and what their governments are doing back. It’s no surprise then that spammers also use them to hit eyeballs and push their dodgy goods, and that the most popular trending topics always seem to be light and breezy: three things to say after sex tends to pop up a lot and everyone always seems keen to announce what they’re listening to right now. But essentially, hashtags are a way for Twitter’s users to organize the information they’re producing on the site. They’re a means of categorization, allowing anyone to find the data they’re looking for without wasting hours sorting through irrelevant posts. In other words, hashtags are efficiency tools. So how else can you use them to improve your productivity and cut back on wasted time?

The easiest way to use hashtags for productivity is to identify the tags that are most relevant to you and create a series of saved searches from your Twitter page. You won’t need to do more than click the tag to bring up a list of the latest results so you’ll even save the time it takes to type the hashtag into the search field. First though, you’d need to know which tags you need to be looking for. Directories like Twubs and wikis like What The Trend can tell you what the different tags mean, and Brizzly, a social media platform, provides a little explanation together with each trending topic. But in practice you’re unlikely to need them. As you follow people you find interesting on Twitter, you’ll naturally come across hashtags that your community is using. Save the most common terms, create a relevant list, and you might just be able to cut down on the time spent checking Twitter for interesting tweets. Those hashtag links will bring up the best tweets on your topic right away.

Categorize Your Tweets

Saving hashtag searches will help you to quickly find tweets that have already been categorized by others. But hashtags can also be a good way to categorize your own tweets. It doesn’t matter whether other people use those hashtags or not –- in fact, you don’t want people to use them. You want to create a system that allows you to pull up a list of the tweets you’ve posted that fit a particular category.

The #quote tag, for example, is used by people who like to toss inspiring quotes into their timelines, an easy way for people who have nothing interesting to say themselves to add new content and win retweets. Create a unique tag for your own quotes and place it in your tweets in addition to the #quote tag, something like #[username]qts, and not only will you turn up when someone searches for quotes, but you’ll also be able to quickly pull up a list of your own tweeted quotes. While it might not make the most exciting reading, it will at least ensure that you don’t tweet the same quote twice and it will help you to figure out what kind of quote you might want to include next.

For other kinds of tweets, categorization by hashtag will let you keep track of your posts in the same way that categories let you group posts on blogs. Replies could have one kind of tag, tweets about your business another, tweets about your blog a third kind, and tweets about your product a fourth tag. Include the occasional tweet listing the tags you’re using and you’ll help your new readers to find old posts they might have missed. And by calling up posts that use those tags you’ll be able to see which kind of tweets you should be tweeting next.

Categorize Other People’s Tweets

That’s particularly important when it comes to Twitter-based conversations. You can’t categorize other people’s tweets, and while you can favorite them, that only gives one overall category for the tweets you’ve found important enough to answer. Fave all the tweets you’ve replied to and, if you’re chatty – as you should be on Twitter — you’ll struggle to find old posts that caught your eye. You’ll have the same fight flicking through your own replies to see the posts you were replying to.

Include a hashtag in your replies though and you’ll create a layer of categorization beneath “favorites” and “replies.” You’ll be categorizing your own replies but more importantly, because you can click through to see the tweet you replied to, you’ll also be able to categorize other people’s tweets that have caught your eye. Using the hashtag #replyblog, for example, will let you find the conversations that you’ve had about blogging.

And there is one more way that hashtags can improve your productivity. They can stop you using Twitter so much. One of the reasons that Twitter is such a time-waster is that you never what kind of post is going to be coming up next. You don’t know if those “2 new tweets” are going to be something important, relevant and unmissable, something fun and entertaining, or something pointless and dull that makes you wonder whether it isn’t time to unfollow. Restrict your tweet-reading to hashtags on a service like TweetGrid or TweetDeck and you’ll only be getting information that you know you want. You’ll also be getting a lot less information overall.

Most productivity systems are centered on categorizations, whether that’s in the form of multiple to-do lists or the 43 folders of Getting Things Done. Twitter’s hashtags make it possible to add multiple category levels to your own tweets, allowing you to keep track of the information you’ve posted in the past, as well as find relevant data that other people have tweeted too. Lists might not have taken off on Twitter but with a little creativity, you should find that smart hashtagging can save you time, keep your reading relevant and improve the way you keep track of track of Twitter’s communications.

Nothing focuses the mind faster than an impending delivery date. You’ve accepted the task, done the research and played with the procrastination. Now, with the deadline in sight, you actually have to finish the job and hand over the goods. The change is massive and sudden. Knowing that your reputation and possibly your job is on the line has an amazing effect. Suddenly, a task that looked impossible becomes achievable. YouTube and viral emails still appear tempting but you can block them out. Your productivity goes through the roof. Instead of staring at the wall or pacing around the room, you’re hacking at the keyboard as though it’s stuck to your fingers. Even if you miss the deadline a little, the period between recognizing the urgency and completing the job is one of unparalleled attention and diligence. If only you could work that way all the time. Sprinting like this over a full working life is just about impossible but you can take some of the lessons learned from the effect of a tight deadline and use them to raise your work rate every day.

First, it’s important to understand that deadlines aren’t uniform. They pack different characteristics and each characteristic has a different effect on motivation. The outcome for the worker himself, for example, is one important influence. A deadline for a design that could win you a promotion or land a larger and more satisfying project is likely to be met. A threat from the wife that she’ll throw out anything in the garage that hasn’t been put away by the end of Sunday can be fairly safely ignored. Deadlines aren’t just dates, they’re also carriers of personal punishment and reward.

Missed Deadlines Are Your Fault

They’re also vehicles for organizational punishment and reward, and that’s important too. When a failure to meet a deadline is going to have a knock-on effect throughout the business, delaying the next stage in a project or causing large-scale changes to the marketing plan, those results also affect motivation. Even if you can shift the blame onto tardy suppliers or poor information, the knowledge that others will suffer will influence your ability to knuckle down and finish on time.

And personal interest in the project helps too. When a task is interesting, exciting and fun to do, you’re more likely to do it on time and less likely to be pulled away by the lure of a new post on an interesting blog or the chance to chat with a friend.

All of these things make up the task’s importance—to you and to the organization. Other factors affecting a deadline’s ability to drive you to get things done include its level of difficulty, and the specificity of both the task and the deadline goal. You’re much more likely to miss a deadline when the job is difficult, when you’re uncertain about the requirements, and when you’re not clear about when the project actually has to be delivered. Does “the end of next week,” for example, mean 5pm on Friday or, if the project is just going to sit ignored on a computer all weekend, can it include a bit of Monday too?

So deadlines are most effective at increasing productivity when they include real consequences, when you know what needs to be done and when it needs to be done by, and when you enjoy the job. Few tasks pack all of those things but the more you can include, the better.

But these factors are difficult to control. You don’t want every job to be life or death. A task that looks clear can become fuzzy as you work your way through it. And while you might start a new task buzzing with excitement, that thrill can quickly fade.

There is one characteristic of a deadline though that’s more powerful than all of the others combined, and it’s also under your control: its proximity. One group of researchers at the Foster School of Business at the University of Washington has argued that a close deadline brings rewards closer, increases the challenge and raises motivation. It creates two psychological states, they argue: urgency and “felt accountability.”

Clearly, no one is going to ask for a tighter deadline just so that a task feels more urgent but deadlines can be made to feel closer simply by placing smaller versions—milestones—before the final due date.

Celebrating a Milestone with a Million-Dollar Party

This is something that happens anyway, argue the Foster Business School researchers in the book, Work Motivation: Past, Present, and Future. Using secretaries as an example, they describe how employees faced with a deadline continually assess their progress towards the goal, reallocating their time and effort depending their assessment of whether they’re likely to finish on schedule. In effect, workers are creating mental milestones that tell them whether they’re on the right track.

Those milestones can be built up and made concrete. Dan Carrison, writing in Deadline! How Premier Organizations Win the Race Against Time, describes how Boeing organized a massive party to celebrate the first time all of the components of its new widebody 777 jetliner were put together. The company didn’t just invite all of the engineers and employees who had worked on every part of the plane to mark the event—which would have opened the celebration to 10,000 people—it invited their families too. Altogether, more than 100,000 people were able to tour the plane as proud relatives showed off the screws they had attached and the wing parts they had designed.

But the plane wasn’t finished. It would be another two years before it made its first flight. This wasn’t a celebration of the end of a job. It was an attempt to encourage workers to complete the task on time. Engineers were able to see what their work had achieved so far. They were able to understand what completing the project would create. And by allowing employees to bring their families, Boeing was able to recruit a giant team of cheerleaders: wives, husbands and children who would ask their staff about the big plane over the dinner table.

A party after the project is completed is a reward, Carrison writes. A party held while the project is still under way—when it’s met a milestone—is a motivational strategy.

Of course, you don’t have to throw a million-dollar party to mark your milestones but knowing when they are, celebrating their achievement and letting others know when you expect to be done can all keep you focused and motivated, even when the final deadline is far away.

Photography: smileygeekgirl

Start working for yourself and distractions suddenly become a great deal more destructive. You might been bothered in the past by a colleague talking too loudly in the next cubicle. The constant drip of emails into your inbox might have been pulling you away from your projects. But when the money you received at the end of the month was always the same regardless of how much you produced, it didn’t really matter how often you went back to the watercooler to escape the noise or how much time you spent looking at lolcats. Become your own boss, and those distractions aren’t just mildly irritating (or even lots of fun), they’re expensive timewasters that reduce your monthly income.

It’s when you calculate the amount of money you’re losing when you let distractions pull you away from work that you realize just how much those trivialities are costing you. If you’re charging $50 an hour, for example, and spend twenty minutes a day looking at friends’ feeds on Facebook and ten minutes a day writing jokey emails, then you just spent $25 for that entertainment. That’s about three times the price of a movie ticket.

A workday will always have some distractions but there are things you can do to minimize the power — and the cost — of the biggest timesucks.

Avoid People

People are the most powerful distracters. They’re demanding, they’re everywhere and they get offended when you ignore them. While working from home will mean that you have fewer people milling about the office looking for a conversation, it doesn’t make you completely incommunicado. You have to do that yourself.

So children have to be taken care of. Trying to work with little ones running around your feet rarely works out. They’ll be demanding your attention long before you’ll have completed your project, and they’re the hardest people to ignore. This is one instance when multitasking just doesn’t work, so divide the time, get help and make sure that when you’re at work, you’re working, and when you’re with the kids, you’re far from the computer.

Unless it’s a real emergency. In that case, you can always call on the TV to do its job, at least for a while.

Grown-ups are a little easier. They understand when you shut the door, even if they don’t like it. You can also choose to use voicemail instead of answering the phone to everyone who calls, turn off your chat programs and set specific times to answer email.

While people can be giant moving sources of distraction, they’re not too difficult to avoid.

Surf Smartly

The Web though is unavoidable. With around a quarter of a billion websites and plenty of unseen content that you probably should read and certainly would enjoy reading, it’s not hard to justify taking a few minutes to catch up on the news or check out the latest tweets.

The solution looks simple. You can turn the Internet off. If you don’t have the self-discipline to pull the plug or shut down your wireless connection (and who does?) you can always pack your laptop off to a spot with no connection at all. Or use a program that blocks access to certain sites except for set times of day.

But that’s a mistake. There’s only one greater source of distraction than the Internet, and that’s its absence. Instead of looking for a few minutes at the latest headlines, you’ll be wasting ten-minute blocks wondering if it’s really possible to get a connection when there’s only one bar showing. Or trying to figure out whether it’s possible to beat the blocker.

So don’t try to avoid the Web. Instead, use it smartly. Open sites that you can read in nibble-sized chunks. Twitter is good because you can read the tweets with a look. News sites can also be useful because by the time you’ve hit refresh and waited for the new headlines to load, you’ll be ready to head back to your work.

Shut down your browser completely though and deciding what site to open will take enough mental effort to pull you completely away from what you should be doing. Leave it open and when you find the cursor heading towards the toolbar, you’ll be able to keep the distraction to a minimum, even if you can’t get rid of it completely.

Turn Off the Silence

Noise is also supposed to be a distraction, but that’s not always the case. Much depends on the type of noise you’re hearing and the type of working you’re trying to do. A repetitive banging or a constant dripping will always be more off-putting than a piano concerto. And complete silence is so unusual that its presence can be even more distracting than a little background noise.

But music also brings a structure. Songs and albums are a set length, so you can tell yourself that you’ll keep cracking on until you reach the end — and you always know when that end is coming. Even talk radio like NPR can bring a schedule that can help to retain focus at least until the end of the program.

The key then isn’t to find a space in the library where you can’t hear anyone scream but to find the right kind of noise to match your project. For those whose work requires playing with words, classical music or tunes in foreign languages can work well. When the work is tedious and requires more physical than mental effort — such as data entry or QA — talk radio can keep the curious part of your mind occupied while the rest of you sticks with what you should be doing.

And even the background din of a café can be helpful. It’s not just the call of the baristas or the buzz of conversation that will keep you staring at the screen but the fact that you’re alone with a computer. That’s fine when you’re looking at the keyboard but spend any more than a few seconds gazing around the room with no one to talk to and you start to look a little weird. Reminding yourself of that should be enough to distract you from your distraction.

It’s impossible to work for eight hours (or more) straight without being distracted at all. But when you’re working for yourself, it is worth identifying the biggest slackers — and firing them.

One of the problems of working online is keeping track of your life. It doesn’t matter whether you are researching for an offline job or are a hardcore web worker. In the past, a lot of us have used paper day planners, but if a significant part of your day is spent online, you likely have digital information to track. One of the most powerful and flexible ways to do this and stay productive is with a Personal Dashboard.

A Personal Dashboard doesn’t have to be just for your personal affairs but can include aspects of your life and work on or offline. There are actually a number of web applications that are considered a type of web dashboard, including Pageflakes and Netvibes. Some people even use an RSS reader such as Google Reader, or a calendaring tool such as Google Calendar as a sort of web dashboard.

The drawback is that these sorts of apps are very narrow in their feature set, especially Google Reader. Sure, you can track all the sites you like to read daily, but that’s about it. With portals like Pageflakes and Netvibes, you can do a bit more. Yet you cannot track other types of information, images, links, lists, etc. Most of all, it’s not necessarily in a handy format.

A much more suitable application choice for a proper Personal Dashboard is to use a mind mapping tool. You have your choice of desktop or web-based packages, and even the latter are starting to offer sophisticated feature sets.

What’s a Personal Dashboard For?

A personal dashboard is a sophisticated way to digitally track your offline and online life, both for work and personal. Here are some possible bits of information you might keep in your personal dashboard, in no particular order.

1. Personal goals – career, relationship, etc.
2. Tasks by time period – daily, weekly, monthly, yearly, long-term.
3. Personal tasks – meetings, appointments, reminders.
4. Work tasks.
5. Schedule.
6. Work log – a record of what you did, by day or even by hour.
7. Reading list – online (URLs), or print (list of magazines, books, authors).
8. Passwords.
9. Notes in full text.
10. Links to finished documents, including word processor or spreadsheet files.
11. Design snippets

Why Mind Mapped Dashboards?

Why use a mind mapping tool? A mind mapped personal dashboard allows for high productivity, for all the same reasons to use a mind mapping tool at all: flexibility and diagrammatic representation, stimulation of thinking processes, and more. You can view mind maps in detail or at a high level, use different shapes, colors, line styles, text fonts and so on. Mind maps stimulate both sides of the brain, logical and creative. So you could take your personal dashboard and expand it to link to other mind maps where you’ve worked out solutions to work or life problems.

If you think you’ll miss your RSS reader app or your favorite portal, no problem. Most desktop-based mind mapping tools allow you to link a map node to an application. So a mind map becomes more of a meta-dashboard that can provide hooks into your desktop applications and documents, as well web pages, and store snippets or even large blocks of text.

So it doesn’t replace portals, calendars, to do lists, etc. What you have instead is a central area where you can access what’s important to you each day, arranged in some diagrammatic fashion that is optimum for your use.

Here’s a summary of the value of using a mind map for your personal dashboard in more detail:

1. Radial thinking – the visual structure of many mind maps forms a radial pattern, which supports a more open type of thinking pattern.
2. Hierarchical structure – any information that has hiearchy can be well-represented in a mind map.
3. Flexible structure – easily reorganize information.
4. High or low view – ability to expand/ collapse map nodes so that you can get focused view or a bird’s eye view, respectively.

An advanced mind mapping tool allows:

1. Active linking to documents (web pages or on hard drive) and applications. Clicking a linked map node starts up the application associated with the attached document type.
2. Synchronization with MS Office, including Excel, Word, Outlook, MS Project and other files.
3. Inclusion of native spreadsheet blocks (as an alternate to linking to a spreadsheet file).
4. Creation and linking to sub-maps.
5. Attachment of notes to map nodes. In terms of workflow, this is a productivity boon. This makes it easy to find associated notes.
6. Inclusion of images in map nodes.
7. Floating nodes that represent peripherally related information which should not be part of the main map.
8. A variety of map styles.
9. A type of diagramming, using map node shapes, lines, borders and relationships.
10. Building of complex mind maps, depending on the tool used.

A Sample Personal Dashboard Mind Map

Depending on which mind mapping tool you are using, you can get pretty sophisticated with a personal dashboard. A great example of a personal board is in MindJet’s library. The snapshot above shows an overview of this dashboard, but I recommend you see it in full. To view the mind map, you’ll need a copy of MindJet’s MindManager Pro 7 (free fully functioning trial) or their free MindManager Viewer 7 map viewer. The Windows version of MindManager offers a 30-day fully functioning trial. For Mac, it’s 21 days.

The drawback, at least as far as I found, is that MindManager can get addictive, and if can’t afford the steep price (which is worth it if you are a hardcore mind mapper like myself). What you might want to do instead is start with a copy of the free multi-platform (Windows, Mac OS X, Linux) FreeMind. Work with FreeMind, get used to the process, if you haven’t used mind maps before.

If you like the general feel of using a mind map, then consider downloading a trial version of MindJet MindManager (Windows, Mac OS X). This should give you enough time and feature variety to determine if you like mind mapping enough to purchase software or stick with FreeMind. Or a relatively expensive desktop option that I’ve used extensively, amongst several dozen, is MindApp, though it’s nowhere nearly as sophisticated as MindManager.

If you prefer using something web-based, there are several options, including Mindomo, Mindmeister, or Comapping. However, don’t always expect the full sophistication of a desktop, especially the ability to fire up desktop applications.

Photography: elliotcable

It’s a type of holy grail: trying to get more work done in less time than you’re spending now. Entrepreneurs, web workers, freelancers, writers, designers, coders… Doesn’t matter what type of work, you’re probably wondering how to increase your work productivity.

Well there are ways to increase work productivity. These are some tips that have worked for me over the years.

1. Plan. Judicious planning can make the difference in your productivity. While some people can fire off several units of work from scratch, most of us need some time to consider a few ideas, absorb some relevant details/ research, and have time to brew our results – whether it’s an article, logo, web design, code or whatever.

2. Use mind maps to organize. Lists are fine as a starting point, but mind maps are a far more productive tool to organize information.

3. Have lots of ideas. The more ideas you have, the greater the chance that one of them is worth pursuing. Professional photographers, for example, tend to find this out intrinsically. They might take an entire roll of film (well before digital cameras) with the expectation that 1-3 frames might produce a usable picture. Inventors also try many ideas before getting to something that works.

4. Filter your ideas. Use discretion and judgement to filter ideas for feasibility. That is, if you manage to create a large flow of ideas on a regular basis, learn how to pick out the winners. You can be like Thomas Edison and come up with 9,999 ways not to invent a light bulb, but you’d save so much more time if you filter for worthwhile ideas.

5. Sketch/ diagram. Producing visuals for your ideas not only help convey them to others but stimulates a different frame of thinking. It’s also easier to visualize your end results and work towards that. Diagramming always helped to produce code faster.

6. Think peripherally. The answers to your questions might come to you from unexpected sources. Sure, that sounds a bit cryptic, but I’ve always attributed my usually high productivity to immersing my mind in different topics and content formats. This gives me creative flow, and combining unusual ideas (“intersecting”) sometimes produces solutions I wouldn’t otherwise think of. (For more about “idea intersection,” I highly recommend reading The Medici Effect – free PDF copy at main website.)

7. Build on your past successes. Why waste your past efforts? Is there anything you’ve done previously that will help you complete faster what you are doing now? For example, the reason why I could often produce a thousand lines of working, partially-documented computer code in 2-3 days was because of reusing code fragments I’d developed in the past. Each fragment had its own functionality. You’ll have to extend this paradigm to whatever work you do, but here’s another example. When I freelance write, I often work in niches with overlapping topics. This is usually intentional, sometimes fortunate. What it means is that I can leverage a few hours of research for one article by reusing some of it for a later article. By spending a bit of time planning possible future articles, I save a lot of time and get a lot of work done.

8. Batch tasks. Work in such a way now that you can reuse or leverage current efforts later. One way to do this is to batch a group of related tasks. Instead of fragmenting your time doing small tasks one at a time and spread out, consider if you can allot a block of time (time chunking) to do them all at once. This allows you to focus on related efforts. With some tasks, it might require a bit of planning, but the time saved makes it worthwhile.

For example, if you’re a writer and tend to research and write for each article as the need arises, you are not batching tasks nor leveraging your efforts. Assuming that you’ll have a block of articles in a short period of time (say a month at most) which have something in common (topic or niche), you might be able to plan them all at once and even research for them simultaneously. So if you plan and outline your batch of articles now, you leave time for ideas to brew, to allow the articles to grow. I tend to use a mind map to organize and develop my article ideas, simply because mind mapping software allows you to easily switch between “big picture” and “detailed view.”

This batching can be applied to admin tasks or regular work. I no longer check my email every 15 minutes. I’ll spend 5 minutes every hour or two hours to check a few email accounts, one forum, and Twitter or Plurk.

9. Allot less time for your work. If you work at home, it’s quite likely that you’ll mix business and pleasure time if you don’t make a conscious effort not to. That means you’ll just take that much longer to get your work done. However, this principle can apply no matter where you work. Setting artificial deadlines might motivate you to be more efficient with your work.

If you spend any part of your work day online, it’s possible that you get a heavy dose of information overload and excessive sensory input. E-mail here, e-mail there, voice mail, IM/chat, cell phone text messages, Facebook chat, Facebook wall, Facebook messages, Twitter, Plurk, and whatever else you can think of. On top of that, there’s actual productive work tasks you do. If your day is full of distraction, large tasks can feel overwhelming.

If you’re in this situation, there’s a simple piece of advice that bears reviewing, something you’ve probably heard countless times before: take one step at a time. It’s a very simple but powerful approach, since it’s far easier to focus on one small step or change at a time.

How It Works

The key to conquering large tasks is break them down into smaller subtasks, then to only focus on the current subtask. Even better, if you “hide” everything but the current subtask, it becomes easier to focus. You already know what comes after, but you keep distractions to a minimum by focusing. This way, you can enjoy small successes each step of the way, and large tasks become less intimidating.

Managing Tasks

Once you break a large task down into smaller tasks, you have a choice of methods for managing your taskload. Here are a few methods.

To-do List Software

To-do list applications are great for brainstorming a stream of consciousness and writing down thoughts as they come to you. However, they’re not as ideal later when you need to organize your thoughts, cluster ideas together.

It’s often better to scribble down your thoughts in a list, on a piece of paper, then apply another method, such as mind mapping (below). Another flaw with to-do lists is that if you have deadlines attached to each subtask, it’s sometimes difficult to get an overview of related tasks. Calendaring software (below) might be more suitable.

Some sample to-list applications are Ta-da Lists, Todoist, and Remember the Milk (RTM). RTM integrates with Google Calendar. Some of these function well on cell phones, especially those with large screens such as the iPhone.

Calendaring Software

Free Web-based calendar software abounds, and using it is another way to manage tasks, provided you know when you need to complete each task. The real benefit of web-based calendaring apps is that you can access your calendar(s) from anywhere that you have an Internet connection, often including from a mobile phone. Some calendar tools even synchronize seamlessly with to-do list applications. So you could import events recorded on your mobile phone, or from your web-stored lists.

If you don’t know which calendar tool to use, Mashable lists over 65 of them. Some of them, including Google Calendar, have APIs to build custom applications with. Or you could simply combine a to-do list app such as Remember the Milk, mentioned above, with Google Calendar, giving you a more robust way to manage tasks.

Project Management

Project management, aka PM, is a very sophisticated approach for managing a set of related subtasks. Good Project Management software offers a number of tools and methods, such as Gantt charts, critical paths, etc. If tasks are spread out over a team of people, you can track their efforts as well, check their workload, determine which tasks are project bottlenecks, and get a rough idea of how long an entire project is going to take. I say “rough” because subtask durations might change, and any later subtask dependent on a previous task will be affected, as might the entire project.

Project management is a very structured approach that is typically better suited to large, complex projects with many dozens of tasks and one or more team members. Smaller projects might benefit from some PM principles, though often there is too much rigidity or over-management of tasks.

Mind Mapping

Mind maps can take over where to-do lists leave off, are sometimes robust enough for managing projects, and are an ideal tool for  implementing a “one step at a time” approach for several reasons. (In fact, most mind mapping software allows you to put to-do lists aside, and offer equivalent functionality.)

1. Mind mapping software lets you expand or collapse parts of a mind map with ease. This allows you to see the big picture but to also focus on the small picture details when you need to.
2. They are a free-form way to record information, tasks, links, and other bits of data. To this information, you can apply as little or as much structure and hierarchy if and when you want to do so.
3. Mind map nodes can show text, icons, or images, and link to documents or activate applications on your computer desktop or in a web browser.  This means that if you use a suitable mind mapping application, you can integrate any type of to-do list, calendar or PM app from different parts of the map. Using mind maps, you have the benefit of all of the above-listed methods, if you want – giving you a more robust approach to task management. A mind map can then act like your project command center, and can itself be integrated with a master mind map or personal dashboard map.

An added benefit is that an increasing number of mind mapping applications – e.g., MindJet MindManager – are either incorporating PM features or are integrated with separate PM software, including Microsoft Project.

Of the methods listed above, mind mapping gives you the most flexibility and can incorporate the other methods.

By now, you’ve probably seen a number of Geekpreneur posts about mind mapping. Mind maps are a powerful tool that when used properly can multiply your productivity.

Here are some of the general ways that mind mapping can make the average freelancer (and other people) more productive in their work, followed by a list of some specific uses.

1. Offers blank canvas. Mind mapping software (or paper) gives you a blank canvas to work with.
2. Facilitates brainstorming. Allows unstructured brainstorming where ideas can be organized later.
3. Shows multiple detail views. You can switch between high-level and low-level detail, allowing you to see the big picture or focus when necessary.
4. Cues learning. More closely resembles human thought processes, so mind mapping research notes on a topic makes it easier to remember the concepts as a whole. This makes it easier to learn complex topics.
5. Integrates your digital workflow, since all mind mapping software allows map nodes to link to either other maps or document files. Clicking on a linked node fires up the default application for that file type.
6. Controls your workload. Allows you to break down complex problems into more manageable parts. For example, you can take a piecemeal/ step by step approach to writing articles and other documents.
7. Complexity flexibility. Mind maps can be simple or complex. Personal dashboards, for example, can be your daily workflow command center, integrating all your digtal/ web work tasks into one place.
8. Controls admin records. Easy to keep project completion records, with links to invoice files or to web documents.
9. Controls information overload. Freelancers – especially writers – often have to do a fair bit of research. Information overload can be a daily problem, but when using mind maps, it’s easy to build a reference map of articles, group and regroup information as necessary.

Some Daily Uses of Mind Mapping for Freelancers
Here are some more specific uses of mind maps for freelancers.

1. Personal Dashboard. A personal dashboard using a mind map allows you a powerful way to manage your work and personal life. Sections of a personal dashboard can start as a cluster of notes but can later transform into articles, documents, books, websites, business plans.

2. Task Management. Personal and work tasks are only a fragment of what you might put in a personal dashboard, but they’re an important part of your daily life. There are a variety of ways that you can manage tasks using mind maps. You can use them for simple to-do lists, track goal completion, develop ideas and more.

3. Idea Generation/ Idea Bank. Using mind mapping software, it’s fairly easy to simply brainstorm ideas. Once you’re finished brainstorming, you can applying filtering criteria to accept or reject each idea. After filtering your list down, you’re left with an idea bank. You can now easily organize your ideas. Hierarchies for information often “reveal” themselves, so it’s dificult to say in general how you should organize everything.

4. Learning Log. Mind maps aren’t just for brainstorming and recording ideas. If one of your tasks is to learn a subject or niche topic, mind maps allow you to build an organic knowledge base.

Start by recording what you know, in the same way that you might brainstorm. Brainstorm first, then organize your thoughts. Now arrange your notes into whatever natural information hierarchy occurs. You can add notes to your knowledge base as you learn something new, and even turn it into an idea bank.

Need to learn a language so that you can translate your writing (or someone else’s)? Mind mapping is one of the most ideal ways to learn a language. Not only can you link to web pages with podcasts or lessons, you can add images to map nodes to speed the learning process. You can build your own paced lesson plan this way, and with some mind mapping packages, share interactive maps.

5. Problem-Solving. A visual approach to problem solving often stimulates solutions that might not otherwise have occurred to you.

1. It allows you a big-picture view of the problem, although you can zoom in on details as well.
2. Mind mapping also allows you to break a problem down into component parts and dissect it piecemeal.
3. Allows you to explore relevant questions and various options radiantly, without confiining you like a list or spreadsheet would.
4. Stimulates “intersection” (Medici Effect) solutions from unrelated disciplines. These are those types of solutions that are often labelled “inspired.”

6. Scope, Plan, Develop and Write a Book. Regardless of the type of freelancing you do, if you plan to write a book about your skills, mind mapping software is a perfect tool. Some mind mapping tools are even integrated with word processing software, making conversion from map to finished document even simpler. Mind mapping also works for developing novels.

7. Document Version Control. Create a sophisticated version control manager for your documents, whether you write articles or code, do graphic design, or some other form of digital freelancing work.

8. Easy-Access Password Cache. Freelancers often have to maintain multiple website accounts. A password cache mind map allows you to hiearchically organize accounts by category of web service. Add in the site’s logo or favicon and you have a visual cue to find passwords faster. Most mind mapping programs let you link a map node to web page, so you can activate each web service from its corresponding map node.

Consider this undesirable freelancing scenario: you’ve gotten to the level of success in your business that you have so much freelance/ contract client work that you can’t think straight and can’t get the work done. If so, then you need to manage your workload. Even if you’re not overwhelmed with work at the moment, setting good workflow habits now will save you grief later. Having work you can’t complete is probably worse than not having it at all – something I’ve had to deal with earlier this year, when my productivity slipped.

Knowing that you could handle more work if it came to you makes you more receptive to opportunities that do pop up. What’s more, if you have an efficient workflow, that makes it easier for you to outsource to someone reliable and be able to manage them. This sparks the beginning of a transition from freelancer to entrepreneur.

Project Selection
Here are a couple of questions to ask yourself when you’re at the project selection stage.

1. One client or several? It’s rarely a good idea to only work with one client. Sure, there’ll be transition periods, but you want to deveop an active list. The Pareto Principle (aka 80/20 or 70/30 Rule) could be interpreted to suggest that most (e.g., 80%) of your income will come from the fewest (e.g., 20%) clients. However, there’s the matter of the other 20% of your income, and what happens if your big clients drop out for a while or even permanently. What’s bad, too, is having just one client and worrying about that constantly.
2. One project or several? This more difficult to answer and really depends on your work efficiency and ability to handle large projects. If you’re bad at breaking down a project into smaller tasks and systematically completing them, then you might be better off take more small projects. Personally, I prefer a mix.

Ultimately, what you pick (clients, projects) really depends on how you work and what type of work you do. For me, I prefer (or used to) more small coding projects but more large writing projects. (It’s hard to have to come up with lots of fresh writing content week after week. Freelance blogging is not quite as systematic as maybe technical writing.

Setting Project Priorities
Whether you choose lots of small projects, fewer large projects, or a mix, it’s important to set your task priorities. A task might be a complete small project or part of a large project.

1. Prioritize projects by due date first.
2. Then prioritize by size, not fee.
3. Break large projects down into smaller tasks.
4. Give each task an approximate value, whether it’s a whole project or part of one. This is very important for large project tasks, else it’s easy to get overwhelmed.

For example, if I have a $50 project and a $500 project, regardless of deadline, the larger one is going to be more intimidating. But if I break it into logical subtasks and assign a rough value (based on a fraction of the project rate), then its easier to be systematic. This is more important for freelancers, since we tend to have to work on many projects simultaneously. Keeping a clear list of achievable tasks and subtasks is key to managing a large workload.

Setting a Work Schedule
If there’s one luxury most freelancers have, it’s that of being able to choose your work schedule. If you want to work evenings, go ahead. Do what works for yourself and your clients. I prefer to code in the day and write on evenings and weekends. That’s not always the case, but it’s nice if I get to pick based on mood. Creative work is often affected by mood, so schedule freedom helps productivity.

1. Choose your work session durations. Assuming for a moment that you’re going to put in a 40-hour work week, there are many ways you can split it up, depending on other demands in your life. It might also depend on the type of freelance work you do. Some people prefer to put in a 5-day week of 8 hours each. Others prefer a 4-day week of 10 hours each. For coding, I used to prefer 10 hour days. For writing, I like to split the day up into 2-4 three-hour chunks, depending on deadlines.
2. Choose task order.  You do want to factor in time for research, interacting with clients, doing administrative tasks, and so on. My rule of thumb: if I’m feeling productively creative, I write. Otherwise I do non-creative tasks.
3. Go with the flow. If you’re really efficient and come up with a killer workflow model that maximizes your personal productivity, go with it. However, if it starts to change, don’t be afraid to let it. My workflow models often change within a few months, based on the needs of the work i’m doing or my personal productivity level at that time.

Efficiency of work flow is often affected by personal life. If you have a strong personal reason for being efficient, you’ll find it. If you’re having trouble with workflow, maybe there’s an area of knowledge that you need to refresh or update.

Procrastination causes loss of revenue and is the often a manifestation of a problem with either (1) your workflow; (2) your choice of projects or clients; (3) a feeling of lack of knowledge; or (4) health issues or personal problems that need to be sorted out. These are issues that need to be dealt with, if you if you want to build up to an efficient workflow.

Need to learn a niche fast? Learning something new always has, well, a learning curve. But if you want to shrink the time it takes to learn an entire niche, one of the most efficient and productive methods is to use mind mapping.

Workflow Benefits of Mind Mapping
There are literally hundreds of uses of mind maps, and mind mapping, but here are some of the important “work flow” reasons to use this process:

1. Mixed map views. If you’re using mind mapping software, you usually have the luxury of switching between either detailed or high-level views of your maps at a click.
2. Easy info gain. It’s fairly easy to record a variety of information about a niche: links, documents, images, notes, etc.
3. Easy info organization. Because mind mapping software generally offer up a blank slate with loose hierarchy, you can organize information in a mind map in any way that you feel comfortable, within the parameters of the software’s features. If you’re using paper-based mind maps, then there are few restrictions. (Starting with paper maps and then transcribing to a digital mind map is something to consider, depending on whether you are researching online or from printed matter.)
4. Easy info reorganization. It’s easy to shuffle around sections of a digital mind map, rearrange individual nodes, change hierarchies and sub-hierarchies.
5. Easy to explore options. The organic nature of a mind map makes it easy to explore sub-niches or to look at various problems to be solved.

Reasons to Use a Mind Map for Learning
Here are just some of the things you can do with a mind map when it comes to learning a niche:

1. Catalog what you already know about your niche.
2. Catalog what you still have to learn (provided you know what that is).
3. Produce a lesson plan for learning your niche topic.
4. Manage your “learning” task list.
5. Record whatever you learn along the way. (I.e., anything you didn’t know that you didn’t know.)
6. Brainstorm an idea bank.
7. List any niche-related problems that you need to solve.
8. solve problems by exploring various problem solving techniques such as tunneling or color coded visual analysis.

There are other reasons that you’ll discover as you go along.

Suggested Process for Learning a Niche
Here is just one process you could use to learn a niche using mind maps.

1. Find your starting point. If someone asked you what you know about a niche, you might draw a blank. So instead, start recording niche-relevant websites and web applications that you frequent. Add in links for software, books, magazines, etc., that you might recommend. If you don’t know where to start, try a niche search engine.
   1. portals
   2. voting sites
   3. industry sites
   4. “tips” articles
2. Collect additional bookmarks. While you record bookmarks for websites you already know and are surfing, you might come across links to other sites and articles that may be useful. Don’t worry about the info hierarchy just yet. You can take care of organizing information later.
3. Save RSS feed URLs. You can subscribe to RSS feeds in a feed reader such as Google Reader. Alternately, some mind mapping software (e.g., MindJet MindManager Pro 6 and up) even allows for creating sub-maps with RSS feed headlines. (MindJet calls them “smart map parts”.) You could also build your own custom feed aggregators, rivers of news, or news timelines, depending on how sophisticated your niche tracking needs to be.
4. Dissect content. This is where your actual learning takes place. Everything else is just “setup” activity and maintenance. As you browse/ read an article, dissect it. Jot down salient points and concepts in your master mind map, or create a sub-map and link to it. Try to summarize the article’s information in point form, but in the form of a mind map. Because of the “radiant” nature of mind maps, information absorption is far easier than if you use straight lists.
5. Reorganize info. When necessary, move mind map nodes around to suit your learning needs. Change the information hierarchy around until you find something easy to remember and maintain.
6. Enhance your map. Emphasize various portions of your niche map, making sections and concepts and hieararchies distinctive aids in memory retention and learning. Some possible enhancements using mind mapping sofware are:
   1. Use different node shapes. E.g., circles, ovals, rectangles, lozenges, hexagons, etc.
   2. Use node background colors and textures.
   3. Use node border colors.
   4. Use connecting line colors and thicknesses.
   5. Use colored, bolded, and/or italicized text.
   6. Use different font sizes.
   7. Use icons to categorize nodes or sub-maps.
   8. Add images for emphasis.
   9. Use different map modes (layouts), if available.
   10. Use boundaries around clusters of related map nodes.
7. Keep the info mapping process organic. Depending on the duration of your learning, you could be constantly adding new information as you come across it. It does not have to be a one-time, single session effort. So you’d be repeating some of the above steps as necessary.

The above process is merely suggested. Adjust it for your own needs and learning style.

Example Niche: Photography
Some of you Geekpreneur readers know that there’s a sister site, Photopreneur, with its own photography blog. So this is just as good an example niche as any other.

So suppose you’re trying to learn (more) about photography. Your reasons could be one of many, and would actually dictate how you use mind maps to learn this niche. Some possible reasons:

1. To become a photographer (or a better one).
2. To write about photography.
3. To teach photography.
4. To learn to use photography in design.

There are of course other reasons, and each one requires a different starting level of knowledge about photography. So what information you mind map will differ from what someone else maps.

Let’s refine our example and say that you intend to write about photography, but that you do already know something about it. So you’re building on prior knowledge, but you want your mind map to be a master reference for the niche.

Now, what info might you map? The diagram below shows some possibilities.

If your daily work involves a substantial amount of writing or research, you know the frustration that sometimes comes from trying to manage information for multiple projects. It doesn’t matter whether you’re writing business plans, company reports, articles for clients, or doing academic research. Coming up with an effective way to manage multiple document files and research notes can make a difference in your work productivity.

One of the most ideal ways to manage research notes and multiple forms of writing is mind mapping. A digital mind map is like a blank canvas that gives you multiple benefits.

Benefits of Using Mind Maps for Research and Writing

1. You can see high- and low-level views of document details.
2. Easily organize and reorganize the information hierarchy in whatever way is optimum for a given document.
3. If you work as part of a remote team, you have the choice between web-based mind mapping applications or new shared workspace features that complement desktop mind mapping tools.
4. Most digital mind maps, regardless of the originating application, integrate well with files on your desktop and the default applications tied to their file types. You can associate each node of a mind map to a document file. Double-clicking your mouse on a linked node activates the desktop application associated with that file type.

To summarize the benefits, a mind map gives you powerful control over multiple document from a single place. E.g., a master map, which will give you a high level view of all your research and writing projects and files. You can then link a map node to either a document file or even to another mind map that contains even more details about that project. If you link nodes to document files, you can then quickly open those files in the associated text editor, word processor or web browser. Ditto for image file links. (Note that some high end mind mapping tools have native editors, word processors, spreadsheets and browsers embedded in the interface.)

How to Use Mind Mapping for Research and Writing

Storing Research Data
When you use a mind map to store information, notes, hyperlinks, images, spreadsheets or whatever else, you have a  lot of leeway in how you store your data. The simplest way is to either type, copy/ paste, or drag and drop your information into a sequence of mind map nodes. When you start to see hierarchies, you can rearrange the map nodes however you want.

Writing
When it comes to writing documents using mind mapping, you have a number of options:

1. Brainstorm. You can brainstorm semi-randomly, recording what you already know, building a list of related topics, and cataloging (research, links) what other people have written about similar topics, as well as relevant images. Then start asking questions. If you’re writing articles, you might ask yourself what others have not said. What can you add to the collective conversation about that topic? Continue to collect notes, links, and whatever information you need to form your article.  On the other hand, if you’re writing business or academic documents, it’s likely that you need to follow some document structure.
2. Structured writing. Start by listing off the sections your document needs, depending on the structure you need to follow. This gives you a basic outline and is actually a powerful way to help you visualize completing complex writing projects. For example, you might have the following sections in your mind map:
   1. purpose
   2. assumptions
   3. tools
   4. processes
   5. notes
   6. intro
   7. body
   8. summary
   9. references

   Now flesh out the sections in layers, adding details as you go, including point form notes, examples, theory, interpretation, or whatever you need for the type of document you’re writing.

Cautions

Don’t overthink. It’s possible to overplan when using a mind map. Take notes in the form of your map, then start writing. Either use your mind map’s native text editor/ word processor, or a third party application.

Don’t obsess about the writing. Do your best to edit, check typos and grammar after you have a rough draft.

Let it flow. When you use a mind map to record research notes or to write an article or document, you give yourself an unstructured canvas that can be intimidating. If you get stuck, try collapsing portions of your mind map to look at the big picture (high-level view), not the details. Maybe the flow of your document or article’s sections is not quite right, but you will not notice if you’re only looking at the details.  Let your mind map nodes flow and develop naturally. You can always alter hierarchy after you’ve noted everything you feel is necessary. Your final document does not need to include everything that you have in your mind map. The map is only a guideline towards your completed writing.

Example
As an example, take a look at the PDF file via the Scribd window below. It’s a PDF of my final mind map for the article you’re reading. You can see the structure I’ve applied, though it looks extremely different than what I started out with.

Mind Mapping for Productive Research and Writing

Final Thoughts
Mind mapping can be used for any type of research and writing, and gives you a greater degree of control over large quantities of information. A master mind map can be the glue that helps you manage a large set of research notes and document files.

In Tunneling Your Way to Complex Problem Solving, the focus was to define an end goal and determine how to get there from “here,” your current state, by exploring possible options, fleshing out the details organically, then filtering out options that were not feasible. This method of problem solving and goal setting can be applied in the reverse direction as well.

For the sake of reference, I’m calling this approach “reverse tunneling,” and it builds on similar ideas as in the previous article, but also upon a goal setting process developed by Brian Azar, a personal and professional coach also known as the Sales Doctor.

Brian Azar’s Goal Setting Process
Brian Azar developed his goal setting technique over the years, using his early experience in social work, then as a personal/ professional coach mostly for salespeople, and also his recent work teaching kids tips on how to have an entrepreneurial mindset.

The basic process is that you define your goals and then step backwards to determine what “X” has to come before “Y”, then what “W” has to come before “X”, and so on until you come to present day.

His approach usually is applied to a five-year period, and the step-back period is one month. So you start with your goal for five years from now, then step backwards one month at a time, determining what needs to be done in the month previous to achieve the next month’s goal. Keep stepping back until you are in the “now.”

For example, if you want to build up, say, $50,000/year in sales in month 60 (five years from now), what do you have to do or achieve in month 59? What do you have to do or achieve in month 58 to get to month 59? Write down what you think you need to do or achieve in each month going backwards, but stay open to the possibility that there may be one or more alternatives to achieve the sub-goal in month X. Make sure you break monthly goals down into weekly and/or daily goals, as appropriate.

Adapted Process
Brian Azar’s process can be applied to personal and professional goals. Many of his clients are salespeople, though his method can be adapted for many uses including typical entrepreneurial goals. In experimenting with his process, I realized that it could be adapted to the tunneling method of problem solving discussed previously.

In adapting the process into “reverse tunneling,” I’ve used a looser time frame. You should not skip the stepping backwards process, but you do not have to bind yourself to a month by month timeframe. You also can just set goals for one or two years from now. Many people get intimidated by having to produce five-year plans, even though that’s fairly standard advice for entrepreneurs starting a business. Still, there’s nothing wrong with easing into the process by setting goals for a shorter period.

So step backwards, to break your goal down into sub-goals. Decide later when certain sub-goals need to be achieved by. Make the process organic, leaving room for some changes in timeline. Determine bottleneck goals.

To summarize:

1. Keep a short time span. Apply the reverse tunneling process to 1-2 years of goals first. After solidifying your action plan, you can think about longer-term goals.
2. Step back at comfortable levels. You do not need to step backwards only one month at a time. If what you need for month X requires something to be achieved 3 months back, that’s okay. But steps of one month backwards tend to be less overwhelming.
3. Apply a final timeline afterwards. This is less intimidating and helps you to gauge what’s realistic. A particular achievement might take more than a month.

The diagram above shows a loose action plan followed by the same plan with a timeline applied to it.

Benefits of the Reverse Tunneling Approach
The benefits of this approach is that you have a visual process for setting your goals, and a loose timeframe in which to achieve them. You can adjust your timeframe as necessary. This breaking down of goals is far less intimidating, and it’s easier to feel that your end result can actually be accomplished.

Examples
Because my life and work are so intertwined at the moment, I tend not to separate work and personal goals. Do whatever works for you. This method applies equally well to both personal or professional goals. My feeling, though, is if you’re going to plan, plan big. Just keep in mind that big plans can be and usually are overwhelming, which is why breaking your big goals down helps. You can have personal work goals or goals to be achieved with a business and or life partner. Just be clear, for your action plan, who is being included.

Example 1
The image below is a bird’s eye view of my approximate plans professionally and personally. The timeline runs across most of the width of the image. The thin blue lines running down from the timeline attach to personal goals, many of which are in turn driven by professional goals.

Don’t be concerned with my actual goals (since you cannot really make them out in the images below). Just get an essence for the process and apply it to your goals to produce an action plan.

Example 2
Here are some slightly larger views of pretty much the same example as above. The focus is on the professional goals. While I have goals for what I’d like to achieve in gross revenues per month for all my efforts, either on my own, with my fiancee and with other partners, I’ve also broken down daily achievements (first image) as well.

Here is the professional goals action plan fleshed out a little bit more, minus the daily breakdown.

It’s old wisdom but it bears repeating: the big problems in life are best solved one step at a time. You don’t even have to have a detailed solution right away, but can build up to it from general options.

That’s the gist of the “tunneling” method of complex problem solving described here. The idea is to start by describing the current problem, writing down the desired resolution, and then exploring your options and building upon them. The entire approach uses what some people call continuous improvement, incremental change, stepwise refinement or even Kaizen. They all amount to doing things one step at a time. [Note: my use of the term tunneling is not the same as Ben Popken's use in The Consumerist, when talking about how to move to NYC and stay sane, but you could use visual tunneling described here to map out the solutions he provides.]

You can use this approach to solve very complex problems, starting with partial solutions. As you accumulate more information or additional options, you can expand your problem solving map accordingly.

Tools

This approach to problem solving is very visual. I’ve used the MindJet MindManager Pro mind mapping software (some alternatives: FreeMind, Mindomo, Mindmeister, Comapping), though you can pretty much use any sort of diagramming application (MS Visio, Smartdraw, Gliffy). Many of these apps either have free trials or free options. FreeMind is entirely free and multi-platform.

Problem Definition Process

1. Define your problem. This is your “start” state.
2. Define your ideal solution state. This is your “end” state.
3. Draw two nodes, “Start” and “End”, and sketch a path between them. (See the top half of the diagram above.)
4. List all the solution options for your problem that you can think of. Do not rule anything out just yet, no matter how absurd. Brainstorm if you have to, talk to people, research. Spend as much time as you need (within the timeframe that you have to solve a problem.) Keep in mind that a “solution option” can simply be a few words suggesting a solution. You do not yet have to come up with a complete plan.
5. Incorporate these solution options into a revised version of your problem map.

Here’s an example of the type of map you’ll end up with:

Tunneling Process

Now comes the “tunneling” part, as shown above. You have a basic solution map at this point, which is the “big picture, ” focusing on the end result. Now focus on the small picture, the details. How can you get to your desired result from where you are now? Which options seem most feasible? Do you know what each option requires?

Use whatever techniques you have in your problem solving arsenal to explore each option: brainstorming, visual thinking and diagramming, critical thinking, idea generation, etc. From this point until you decide on a final solution, you’re going to explore each option, adding in greater details, tunneling your way to a full solution plan.

The gist is that you do not know which option is best yet. That’s what you’re exploring. Add increasingly more specific details to each option in your problem map as you go. If an option is in itself complex, recursively apply the same approach to it as to the entire problem. Break it down into sub-problems and sub-options. Create a separate map for an option if necessary. The overall result is similar to a decision tree, but if you’re “tunneling” your way to a solution.

Here’s a look at the type of map you’ll have now:

Each solution option has a different level of detail, though any of this could change. This is an organic process. As one option very obviously becomes nonfeasible, eliminate it. Add new options if they occur to you. Add option details as you decide upon them. Draw diagrams, add charts or images if they help you. Break all problems and options down to their most “atomic” level.

This iterative, visual approach to problem solving is far less intimidating than mentally trying to solve complex problems. Each step of the refinement process gives you small “wins,” motivating you to keep exploring.

On the other hand, the mental approach to complex problem solving usually becomes overwhelming, making it far easier to give up. Even simply writing down your problem and options is an advantage over a mental approach. The power gained from a visual approach to problem solving should not be overlooked. A visual approach helps stimulate both the logical and creative facets of your mind.

Example

Up until this point, there’s no mention about what type of problem you can solve using this tunneling method. The answer: pretty much any type of complex life and work problem. Though since life problems tend to take longer to solve, at least in my experience, there’s a lot more time to collect and explore options and filter out what will and will not work. An example tunnel diagram is shown below, which for personal reasons have the details blurred out. It is “in progress,” and still has to be fleshed out some more, but the ultimate goal is starting to show a few clear option pathways. It should show you the essence of the tunneling method, visually speaking.

Final Thoughts

The tunneling method can be a valuable tool in your problem solving arsenal. There’s a great deal of room for flexibility to apply the methods you prefer to use, so use it as a basis for solving the more complex problems in life and work.

How long you take for the entire problem solving process really depends on how complex the problem is and how much time you have. I use this approach for very complex problems that might take 9-12 months to completely solve. Shorter-term problems can be solved the same way.

References

A tremendous resource for visual thinking and modeling is at Idiagram. Start at the home page and explore the rich collection of visual models, and try to absorb some of the processes described there. One section to focus on is The Art of Complex Problem Solving, which has some impresive visual aids.