His goal was much more modest than that. He wanted to create a kind of online noticeboard where San Francisco techies could let each other know about social events. The site picked up, companies used it to look for employees, and before you knew it Craigslist was offering everything from resumes and real estate to restaurant gear and old Renaults in 550 cities and 50 countries around the world. It was part-owned by eBay and newspapers were begging for mercy.

Not bad for a simply-designed website that began as free public listings and remains gratis for the vast majority of its users.

The same kind of community spirit drives School of Everything, a recently-launched educational service that aims to help the curious find people with knowledge to share. Anyone can join the site, complete a profile that describes their skills – whether those are guitar-playing, personal development or permaculture – and offer to teach people in their area, usually for a fee.

And if you can’t find a local teacher of spoken Sanskrit or Malaysian martial arts right away, you can create a learning profile and the site will notify you when one signs up.

Network Online to Learn Offline

That all sounds very straightforward but the principle behind School of Everything is much more ambitious. Under a section titled “The Big Idea,” the website characterizes the education system as being designed to prepare people for factory work and describes itself as trying to create a new bottom-up approach to teaching in which knowledge is shared in the community instead of being passed down by schools.

“At School of Everything, we believe that learning is personal, and starts not with what you ’should’ learn but with what you’re interested in. So we’re building a tool to help anyone in the world learn everything, and teach anything, how and when [it] suits them - by putting people in touch with each other, not with institutions,” the website says.

The service itself was created by five friends in the UK who, in co-founder Dougald Hine’s words, were “policy wonks, community activists and Drupal geeks.” In their spare time, they edited an email magazine about DIY culture and used the Internet to organize local events.

“I’d been reading an amazing book from the seventies called ‘Deschooling
Society’ by a guy called Ivan Illich, [co-founder and CEO] Paul [Miller] was talking about experiments like the Free University in Palo Alto in the sixties, and we realized that you could use the Internet to organize those DIY learning networks on a massive scale,” Dougald told us in an email.

The friends rustled up funds from the Young Foundation then completed a £350,000 round of seed funding. They also picked up a New Statesman New Media Award and UK catalyst Award for their website and, more importantly, they’ve so far attracted around 6,500 students and 2,500 teachers who offer information on around 5,000 different subjects. The site is particularly popular with music teachers and driving instructors but languages, photography and crafts like gardening, cooking, knitting and sewing generate plenty of interest too.

With such a broad choice based on open access to anyone who thinks they have knowledge and believes they can teach, one issue is always going to be the quality of the teaching available. Students will soon be able to supply feedback on teachers, and organizations representing accredited teachers will be able to vouch for their members on the site. In the meantime, students will have to rely on their intuition and the teacher’s offer to gauge their seriousness and professionalism.

“We advise people to use the same kind of common sense they would when finding a teacher through a card in a shop window or a poster on a café noticeboard,” Dougald says. “You can usually tell quite a bit by how professionally someone presents themselves on the site — and it’s the teachers who put most effort into their profiles who get most interest from new students.”

Money though is likely to be more of an issue. The School of Everything now has eight full-time staff but no monetization system. It does however plan to offer paid services to businesses and organizations that want their own branded network within the school and to add an optional payment system for teachers from which it would take a small commission from each transfer.

Virtual Classes Offer Flexibility… and Brevity

That could be particularly useful for the 10 percent of teachers on the site who also offer online classes. Dougald himself seems ambivalent about this method of learning, linking the School of Everything with physical networking services like MeetUp and FreeCycle rather than distance learning schools.

“We built the site with offline learning in mind, because we like the idea of using the Internet to do new things in your local area, rather than spending more time in front of a screen,” he explains. “It’s what I call the “Why Don’t You?” web — that was a children’s TV show they used to have in the summer holidays in the UK — the full title was “Why Don’t You (Just Switch off Your Television Set and Go Out and Do Something Less Boring Instead)?”

But that doesn’t mean School of Everything is opposed to online learning, Dougald stresses, and notes that it’s particularly useful for language teaching. In fact, the site is about to launch a service that lets teachers and learners post materials they’ve found helpful, including videos, links, books and notes. They’ve also been experimenting with incorporating Skype Prime into the site so that learners and teachers located far from each other can communicate.

It would be ironic though if the convenience of online teaching meant that even local teachers and students preferred to chat online than meet in person. Stephanie Kable, a 30-year-old French teacher who now lives in Israel, has taught English and French to around fifty students online through Myngle and “a few hundred” through her own language sites www.Live-English.net and www.Live-French.net. Classes, at 30-45 minutes, are shorter online and more focused on results, she says, offer a flexible schedule and are more convenient when neither side needs to travel.

School of Everything might offer a raft of reasons to turn off the computer and kiss goodbye to the desk, but whether you want to teach or learn, it’s still often possible to do it all virtually.

If you see a profile from someone with an old Renault offering to teach you to drive online though, you might want to give it a miss.

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 you’re in career planning mode right now, you’re not alone. Even entrepreneurs occasionally need to find opportunities. The economy has people scrambling to find new jobs, new careers.

Approaches

Career planning does not have to be a daunting task. Here are some suggestions and preparations to consider.

1. Have a plan. Execute your plan one step at a time, and don’t get discouraged. Part of your plan should include updating your resume, writing a strong cover letter to sell your skills, and creating a schedule for job hunting and sending out applications. This is common advice but bears repeating: treat your job search as a job in itself.

2. Take job retraining.
Retraining does not have to cost a lot of money.  Your options include government-funded retraining (based on various eligibility requirements), interning, or any number of open courses online that are offered by numerous top colleges and universities. Some of these courses might be relevant to your desired job retraining.

If you’re currently working for a company, check to see if your employer has a retraining program. Ask your boss or colleagues. If you’re asking your boss, make it clear that while you’re enjoying what you are doing, that you would like more of a challenge. Start there, gain their confidence that you are not going to quit, then ask for their suggestions. Carry on from there.

3. Use the right tools.

Get tapped into social media. Use social media. LinkedIn, Twitter, Plurk, Facebook, MySpace, etc. The writing’s on the digital wall, and a lot of opportunities are found through social media.

The key to surviving the work force changes is to embrace them, embrace the online age. In face, it’s utter crucial. Older workers who are not comfortable with social media or even just searching for work online will lose job opportunities to those who make it part of their career improvement toolkit.

Learn to leverage your networks. Newspaper career sections are thinning out where they are not disappearing altogether. Sure, it’s not easy searching online for work that you don’t even know is there. It’s not like grabbing a newspaper and a red pen to circle possible jobs to apply to. That’s why social networks are so valuable, allowing people to pass on job alerts.

Use an RSS job search Radar. Most job listings websites allow you to either receive alerts by email or to subscribe to an RSS feed. You can go one step further by employing a tool such as Yahoo Pipes to build a custom RSS Radar for your job search RSS Radar. An RSS Radar is a web agent that aggregates and filters the RSS feeds of multiple websites (in this case job sites). Supply your own filtering criteria (location, salary, title, etc.) to  only produce the job listings that you really want.

Alternatively, you can use Google Alerts to search the web, or something like Google Reader to subscribe to various job site RSS feeds.

4. Build your own business. Moonlighting used to be widely frowned on, but having a side business is so much more common now, especially since job security is dwindling. There are many opportunities online, though this approach has negative connotation thanks to the hucksters. If you’ve been reading Geekpreneur in the past, you know that there are legitimate ways to earn money working online.

5. Write about it. If you happen to be one of those fortunate types who saved enough money to coast through a period of joblessness, put it to good advantage. Take some time off, maybe even write about your skills, to share your knowledge with others in online articles. Depending on what and how much information you share, not only might you get a regular following of readers, you might earn some income from it, either as a freelance writer or by monetizing your own website. It’s not for everyone, but it is possible.

Job Search

Here are a few more specific approaches to career planning.

1. Make a list of terms used in your industry. Are there any types of jobs directly or indirectly connected with those? For example, “health” has work in the medical field, pharmaceutical, and even fitness. There’s a lot of room in there to find a career.

Explore work that’s peripherally related to niches you like. There might be something you’ve overlooked. Brainstorm a list of the types of jobs in your current industry. Think also of related niches not being satisfied, and what kind jobs might be there for the filling. You might even be able to create your own job - that IS the entrepreneurial mindset.

It’s been said that sometimes you find your dream career quite by accident. But in fact, it’s often not what you’d set out to do.

2. Track trends. There are many ways to track trends (job, technology, consumer, society), and doing so could lead you to opportunities that you hadn’t thought of before. Some tracking tools to consider:

1. Headlines. TV, newspaper, websites.
2. Google Trends.
3. Digg, Reddit, Mixx, and other social media voting sites where fresh articles are headlined.
4. Job boards.
5. Freelance job listings.
6. Yahoo Pipes for custom filters.

3. Brainstorm opportunities. List 100 possible ways to make money in the niche/ industry that you are interested in. Write down everything that comes to mind without judgement. When you have 100 items, filter out those that don’t interest you or are not feasible. With what’s left, compare to any trends you’ve been tracking. Opportunities might reveal themselves.

Whatever approach you take, and whether you’re looking for a salaried career or something more entrepreneurial, learn to be resilient and pragmatic. Consider multiple sources of income instead of relying on just one, and you might find far more opportunities suitable for you than you had considered.

Blogging Strategies

1. Blog for fun.
Okay, that’s what a lot of writers are doing, with passion, and they’re quite satisfied. However, it’s obviously not going to earn you anything, so it’s not much of a blogging strategy, without some form of monetization. What it does for you is build up your writing skills, style and personal brand. Treat it as a starting point.

2. Blog for donations.
If your passionate writing brings you lots of loyal readers, play a game of numbers in terms of monetizing your popularity. Putting up a donation button does take a certain type of personality and generous readers to boot, but it has been done. A few writers have managed to generate surprising amounts of funds, though usually for very short periods of time before the donations evaporated.

3. Paid reviews.
Some writers declare they’ll never do paid reviews on their blog. Others do it happily and find that they can earn a decent amount of extra income monthly, provided they have the web traffic to justify it. Where you live decides whether it’s enough to live on.

John Chow recently noted that he earned about $4,000 in Oct 2008 just for his review writing. Of course, he’s got a large readership and a reputation for discussing how much money he makes online, but he had to build up to that point.

One drawback is that your site needs to meet some criteria before you’re allowed into the “pay for review” service. Another drawback is that a few of these services allow review buyers to ask for a positive review. Try to pick one that lets you decide, as long as you’re honest and provide constructive criticism.

4. Freelance blogging.
If for whatever reason you don’t feel you can monetize blogging for yourself, you might consider freelancing. If you have writing skills, you’ll be in demand. However, there are drawbacks:

1. The online market rarely pays anywhere close to what you’d get as a freelancer in print. For this reason, you might find yourself with high client turnover. (I.e., clients who don’t understand how social media and link building work, and don’t want to pay very much for your services.)
2. Even if you can keep a stream of clients, because your effective hourly rate is probably fairly low, you might find it difficult to come up with fresh content all the time. However, this is also true if you’re trying to build up your own site to blog for ad revenue. This way, you’re getting paid sooner.
3. Little time left over to work on your own projects at the end of the day.
4. Extra client requirements, beyond writing: commenting/ moderating comments, participating in forums, social media promotion or more. Sometimes the income earned is not worth the overall time spent.

If there are bloggers out there surviving solely and prosperously on this monetization method, they have not revealed themselves. It’s recommend that you combine this approach with some other revenue streams.

5. Blog for ad revenue.

There’s an alphabet soup of terms for the types of advertising you can use: CPC, CPA, CPM, flat rate and more. That’s if you are using ad networks. If you have enough popularity, you can sell private ads. If you’re really popular, advertisers will beg to pay you to run their ads.

Examples of successful ad revenue bloggers are Darren Rowse (Problogger), Steve Pavlina, and John Chow. (Note that they also earn revenue in other ways.) This model can be extended into a blog network where you become the publisher and can leverage the collective synergy into greater private ad sales or even your own ad network.

6. Blog to sell other people’s products.
Affiliate marketing is becoming hugely popular, but it takes a different kind of approach to writing. The idea is simple: join up with various companies or “comission” networks to get an affiliate code. Then write about their products and link to the product’s landing page using your affiliate link. If you really like the product and think it has high conversion potential, you can sacrifice screen space on your web page(s) and run affliiate graphic ads. If you really want to succeed as an affiliate marketing blogger, your writing style has to be convincing. You become more like a copywriter than a blogger.

7. Blog to sell info products.

People have been selling their own books, audio and video training and other information products for years before the Internet. If you want to do this online, use a blog to draw readers over. As with offline sales, not everyone who reads what you write will buy your product. At least not right away. So in addition to free article content, you need to also offer something like a free ebook and/or free newsletter - both of which will promote your proudcts. The latter, because it requires a subscription for delivery, gives you more chances to “convince” readers. So the more frequently you publish a newsletter, the more benefiical it’ll become to you.

An example of how to do this is on veteran filmmaker Peter D. Marshall’s Film Directing Tips blog. At the bottom of nearly every article he posts is either a reminder to sign up for his free subscriber newsletter or a short copywritten blurb about his info product and how it’ll benefit new film and TV directors.

8. Blog to sell subscriptions.

Selling an info product one time to lots of people is fine. However, what if you could get regular monthly subscribers? If you have a service (consulting, live support), forum, or regular fresh content (articles, ebooks, audio podcasts, vodcasts, screencasts) that offers something to a target market who will pay for ongoing access, then using a subscription-based model can produce truly amazing income. Just do the math and see.

Keep in mind that not every regular reader of your blog will be won over by your charm or great writing. Some experts suggest that a 10% conversion rate or less is normal. So if you’ve won over 10,000 regular readers (regardless of source), then you might be able to get a 1,000 subscribers.

Now it’s not that simple, of course, as you still have to create buzz and offer something that’s actually of value to those thousand potential subscribers. You also have to keep them satisfied after they subscribed, possibly by setting up a community support forum and definitely by adding fresh content to justify that they keep paying a subscriber fee.

However, “volume” works its magic here, and even if you charge only $25/month, those thousand subscribers produce $25K/mth in revenue for you. That’s $300K/year. If you build up this subscription service to become self-sustaining by hiring other people, appointing forum moderators, etc., it can all become passive or semi-passive revenue.

One example of this approach is the Teaching Sells program, which uses the popularity of Brian Clark’s Copyblogger blog as its potential market. The Teaching Sells program teaches you how to build a subscription-based publishing model. (Brian also sells his copywriting and consulting services, using Copyblogger as a vehicle.)

9. Blog to sell online or offline services.

It seems that the most prominent members of the blogosphere who leverage this model are typically web designers. (Though this also applies to writing, copywriting, personal coaching, consulting and many other niches where you offer consulting and other services.) Their website is their showcase, and in addition to demonstrating their skill, they often share their knowledge in quality articles about design and web development. Then they leverage that into selling website themes, plugins, and design/ consulting services, either on an hourly or per project rate.

If you build enough of a reputation with your blog, you can leverage into enough work to keep you really busy. An example of this approach is Chris Pearson and his Pearsonified blog.

10. The mega approach.

If you’re really bold, you can wrap together several of the above approaches and leverage your readers’ own influence as bloggers using an affiliate program. Quite possibly one of the most successful companies using this approach is Envato (formerly Eden.cc), founded by Collis Ta’eed and other family members.

Collectively, they’ve leveraged the popularity of several quality blogs - as well as an ebook - targeted to a few niches of readers, into subscribers for several content marketplaces including FlashDen, AudioJungle and ThemeForest, as well as a freelance jobs board, a digital publishing house and premium content access via subscription model.

What makes things work for Envato is their loyal following of readers on every one of their sites. They share great content and link love, pay top dollar for the articles and tutorials they buy, and allow their readers to make money in their marketplaces and job board. If you want a lesson in how to make website publishing work and only have time for researching one success story, study the Envato model first.

Final Thoughts
All of these strategies, regardless of monetization methods, require a constant flow of web traffic. If you’re not at the point where you are earning income from any of methods #4-7, try to maximize your streams of income - whether through different ad networks or different monetization methods. The key ingredients are good content that has value for a particular readership, promotion of that content, and sharing the income opportunities with readers.

Incentives for readers to stay readers and to promote you include:

1. Opportunity to write for pay.
2. A marketplace to sell their content.
3. A forum to meet new colleagues.
4. A job board for paying opportunities.
5. An affiliate program so that if they evangelize your content, products, and services, they get to share in the wealth.

How you market and monetize your online publishing model depends on the niche you are focusing on and the products you are selling. Some types and formats of content lend themselves better to a certain type of model. If you’re just getting started, first study the sites, bloggers and companies mentioned here. You can always experiment and move upwards towards more powerful marketing models. In fact, many of the bloggers listed here did just that, starting with blogging for ad revenue and moving towards selling info products, services, or subscription content.

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.

“I could be doing this at home.”

It’s a thought that’s becoming increasingly common among office workers. When you can email, phone, teleconference and even video conference, who really does need the pain of the daily commute and the hassle of office politics? Wouldn’t we all be a lot happier making our own schedules, working from our home offices, and sending in the completed work without ever seeing the boss, the gridlock or the line in the staff canteen?

Well, perhaps. Although one recent survey claims that 42 percent of US companies operate some form of telework system, working from home isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. There’s the feeling that you’re never away from the office, the discipline required to stay at the keyboard when the television, the bed and the refrigerator are all just a short step away, and the belief, still held by many, that working from home isn’t working at all.

Above all though, there’s the solitude. Colleagues might be irritating, infuriating and often in the way, but they’re also friends, and those are much harder to find when you only need to leave the house to go shopping.

Virtual Working, Real Results

As virtual working – a term used to describe the method of work rather the work itself — has taken off, a new solution has sprung up. Co-working involves groups of telecommuters finding a communal office space and sharing it. The advantages are clear: co-workers get all of the social benefits of working alongside other professionals but none of the drawbacks of dark looks from the boss when they come in at ten or leave after a couple of hours. They also get the technical help and creative inspiration that can come from sharing a space with other skilled types, and the networking can be useful too.

“Working socially in a co-working setting can be really fun and a great way to break out of working alone or just with your partner in your living room every day,” says Ryanne Hodson,  a former children’s television editor and videoblogger. “It’s nice to see and interact with other people and have a schedule.”

It’s an idea that’s taken off. Jelly, a co-working space created by Amit Gupta in New York in early 2006, has already franchised itself across 20 cities around the world. The co-working wiki lists dozens of locations from Krakow in Poland to Campinas in Brazil.

The formats – and the rates – vary. Co-working spaces often consist of a communal office in which everyone works together but may also contain individual rooms where workers can enjoy privacy and avoid distractions while still being able to leave the house and pop out of the door to see familiar faces. The Hat Factory, the co-working space in San Francisco that Ryanne co-founded and worked in for six months before moving out of the city, offers lockers, a full kitchen and a “comfy living room/lounge area” for $200 a month – significantly less than the usual office rent in San Francisco. According to Ryanne, the site would see around 20 people a day when she was there, most of whom were either “tech geeks” or vloggers and filmmakers like herself. A small number of regulars, including Ryanne, functioned as “anchors.” They paid the rent regularly and received keys. Drop-ins would leave a small amount in a tip jar to contribute towards the costs.

Who Makes the Coffee Round Here?

The result wasn’t just the chance to communicate with something livelier than the keyboard. There were professional benefits too.  Sharing a space often developed into sharing knowledge and creating new work as well.

“Because you are in a more social setting… if something is funky with your website, you’ll inevitably shout out ‘Does anyone know why my page isn’t validating?’” explains Ryanne. “You get to know people’s skills pretty quick and can recommend them for jobs and vice versa.

“A lot of times, because you were working alongside someone you would end up working with them on projects.”

One question though is whether co-working spaces offer more than cafés. Both provide coffee and both tend to have wireless connections, which means that laptop-wielding workers have all the office they need. But café-working tends to come with two-hour limits, the most you can reasonably squeeze out of a single cappuccino and tend to be much less sociable than a co-working space which brings in the same faces day after day. And when you’ve paid $200 in advance, you’re much more likely to make the most of it and spend as much time there as possible. Remembering that you’ll need to cough up a few bucks for a cup of something hot and frothy might well put you off leaving the house.

But co-working does break one of the most important of our rules for café-working: the rule against talking to people. Chatting to other telecommuters might be informative, entertaining and occasionally even beneficial but it does get in the way of work. According to Ryanne though, it’s still more productive than trying to do it from home.

“The great thing about co-working is that it didn’t have the distractions that home often does. When you’re taking a break, you go back to work. Sometimes at home, you take a break and never go back to work.”

And there is one more advantage that co-working spaces have over cafes: they’re expanding. Starbucks outlets on the other hand, might soon be harder to find than a telephone booth.

Twitter, as you probably already know has taken the Internet in a frenzied storm. Everywhere you look, bloggers advocate Twitter and how cool this micro blogging tool really is.

I must confess that they are all right. But if you are anything like me, you probably get addicted to the Tweets and therefore never get anything else done.

But what type of tweets do people send each other anyway?

In short, those can be anything you like. The idea behind Twitter is to find out what you are doing right now and publish that to the world. While we don’t really want to know your most intimate information, many Twitter users use this medium to lighten up their day and stay in touch with their online friends, family and business partners.

For the best tweets ever, check out the following list:

1. Will You Marry Me

A Marriage Proposal In True Twitter Style.

Thinking of proposing through Twitter for the world to see? Why not. Do as Sean Bonner did and have the world celebrate with you. Of  course she will have to say YES first.

2. The Power of Twitter

See The Power Of The Twitter Community In True Style.

Amazing how one distress call can help you out of a tight spot so fast with the help of the Twitter community. See how one guy was able to solve his urgent problem within the hour! Now THAT is called immediate solution provision with a little help from your online friends.

3. Arrested Development

No, It’s NOT What You Think!

Imagine being stuck in a foreign country jail with only a computer at hand. Here is an idea for you if that should ever eventuate.

4. Pay Per Tweet

Haha.

This is one of the occasions when Problogger Darren Rowse played a joke on the whole Twitter community. It happened - you guessed right - on April Fools Day.

5. Don’t Tweet When You Are Drunk

Celebrity Shamble

Imagine you are in the spotlight of the Internet and thousands of people worldwide know who you are. Now take this one step further and get horribly drunk, then go and tweet to the world how to ban this one guy you can’t stand or are jealous off. All I can say is oops!

6. Bitch Slapping

Be Warned!

Calling people names when the world is watching is perhaps not such a smart idea. Especially if your name is Evan Williams and you are the founder of Twitter!

7. Lights Off!

Fancy Controlling Your Home Lights With Twitter.

Smart people are inventive and Twitter user Justin Wickett has taken invention to a new level by allowing Twitter to switch on or off his lights at home. See how it is done…

8. Tweets in eBook Form

What A Cool Idea.

Now here is a way to take your past tweets to a new dimension - by creating a long lasting and a good looking comic eBook like the one featured here.

9. You’re Fired!

Or Are You?

Reading this tweet makes you wonder why people have to do their fighting in the public eye. Just remember, don’t sack your staff through Twitter, it might have complications.

10. Be Aware Of Your Date!

First Date Madness.

Imagine you go on your first ever date and then get asked to do a threesome with the guys wife?! Eek, whatever next. On the “badfirstdate” tweets you see the unbelievable come true.

As you can see, all these tweets amuse, shock, or anger us in some ways or another. It is interesting to see that Twitter followers throw all caution into the wind when they present themselves to the world and act like they were on Big Brother. Perhaps Twitter is a reality show of its own anyway.

What do you think? Do you tweet?

—ed. note:  Make sure you follow us on twitter and read our free twitter ebook. You might also want to look at our post on the Best Spam Messages Ever.

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 probably been said countless times: humans are visual-oriented creatures. Yet, many people do not use any form of visualization capabilities, whether for goal-setting or simply solving problems.

My research and personal experience shows that problem-solving is easier when you approach it from a “visual thinking” process. This can be as simple as creating a few sketches or as complex as a structured diagram using predefined symbols.

Diagrams stimulate both the creative (right) half of the brain as weil as the the logical (left) half. Using colors helps, too, especially if there is some structure in how you use color. For example, you could use different colored text to represent different types of solutions, or colored lines, backgrounds, borders, etc.

Some Elements of Visual Thinking and Diagramming

Here are some of the more common elements you’ll find in diagramming or visual thinking methods in general.

1. Text - for node, line, and callouts.
2. Color - borders, connecting lines, text, backgrounds.
3. Shapes - typically for nodes.
4. Borders - node border shape and color.
5. Texture - backgrounds.
6. Connecting lines - with/ without arrows and end symbols.

Visual Thinking Styles

Not all of the following are part of pure diagramming but they are part of visual thinking processes.

1. Doodles - These are less formal than sketches/ drawings, and often aimless.
2. Sketching and drawing - Sketches are “practice”, whereas drawings are a finished product.
3. Diagramming and schematics - E.g., UML diagrams, state diagrams, flowcharts, blueprints.
4. Mind mapping - Sophisticated mind mapping packages can double as diagramming tools.
5. Image snapshots - e.g., computer screen snapshots produced with a tool such as SnagIt.
6. Presentations - E.g. slideshows, PowerPoint presentations.

Benefits of Diagramming and Visual Thinking

Here are just some of the benefits of approaching problem-solving from a visual thinking mindset.

1. Stimulates both creative and logical halves of the mind
2. Easier to absorb visuals than a mass of text.
3. More universal than words. (See #2.) Back in the late 1970s, many common signs in North America changed over from text-only to having an image and text or sometimes just an image. E.g., bathroom signs. Visual lexicons were created and often used in various parts of the world.
4. Easier to modify/ update/ transform a diagram than to have to rewrite text.
5. Starting with, say, a sketch, you can transform it to a diagram to a drawing to a solution, or something along those lines, depending on your need.
6. They’re a great memory trigger for a more complex concept. So if you only have time to sketch out an idea but in your mind you have some complex thoughts about your idea, a diagram can help you retrieve your thoughts at a later point.

Downsides of Visual Thinking

For those of you inclined not to think visually, trying to adapt visual thinking to your problem-solving approaches might initially have its downsides.

1. Might suffer from blank-page syndrome.
2. Might feel compelled to be an artist.
   Just sketch, use schematics. This is not a drawing. Don’t doodle, as that usually is not a productive activity. Even professional artists might sketch elements several times before they decide to finalize a piece of work. If you’re embarrassed about your sketches, there’s no need. Who’s going to see?
3. Might feel like you have to get it right immediately.
   Maybe you don’t want to waste paper. For this reason, I often use recycled notebooks for initial drawings. Ultimately, I end up finding I switch over to a clipboard full of printer or scrap paper.

If you want to use a formal approach, you have to either learn or develop a set of symbols to represent various elements. This is the hardest part for some people. Some diagrams look suspiciously mathematical, which tends to scare a lot of people. It takes a certain “geek” mindset to want to even work this way, but hey, this is Geekpreneur.

What type of symbols you use really depends on what types of problems you are solving. For structured diagrams, there are different approaches for different purposes, each with its own tightly-bound set of symbols. For example, many of you might be a bit familiar with flowcharts from when you took that college computer course. Then there’s  UML, or Unified Modeling Language, which is a general-purpose diagrammatic “language” used for software engineering. Basically, it’s a much more advanced form of flowcharting, but has its computer and business analysis elements.

What I’ve done over the years to take elements of various diagramming approaches and come up with my own hybrid visual thinking process. My version only means anything to me, just like Leonardo da Vinci’s drawings at one time probably meant something only to him. My diagramming approach is organic, and it changes frequently, when necessary. Overall, since I use diagramming/ visual thinking to solve all types of problems, including writing, coding, design, finances, and even goal-setting and achievement, I’ve found that not worrying too much about structure appears to be the best approach. I do often use mind mapping, but my paper-based mind maps usually turn into some sort of hybrid diagram that looks like a combination of football plays and wizard incantations. And it works for me.

Visual Thinking Tools

Some people prefer working with pen(cil) and paper, others like to work digitally. For me, it depends on whether I’m just sketching or producing a finished visual. Unless I have access to a sketch tablet, it’s easier to sketch on paper. Sketch tablet prices seem to go up exponential as they increase in square inches of drawing area. So it’s not always feasible to have a suitable for all types of visualizing. What’s more, paper doesn’t feel so restricting. You can always tape pieces together if you have to. However, for finished diagrams/ visuals, I do use digital tools.

Here are some of my visual thinking tools, past and present.

1. Paper - loose sheets in a clipboard, or a bound sketchbook.
2. Pilot HiTecpoint V5 Extra Fine ink pens. As a hardcore pen addict, I’ve wasted a lot of money on pens over the years, but these seem to work the best for me, both for writing and for visual thinking.
3. Sketch tablet - I always keep a couple of small ones on hand but rarely use them. If you’re going to, get the biggest one you can afford, and then design your workspace with the tablet in mind.
4. Visio - Visio, part of MS Office, is probably the granddaddy of digital diagramming tools.
5. Gliffy - Can’t afford Visio? Gliffy is web-based and free, though not as powerful.
6. SnagIt - SnagIt is a powerful screen capture tool from TechSmith.
7. Smartdraw - SmartDraw is like Visio on steroids. It probably costs more, but it’s worth every cent because of all the extra features.
8. MindManager Pro - MindJet’s MindManager Pro is not the only mind mapping package nor the first, but in a 1.5 year study of about twenty packages, I found it to be the most sophisticated.
9. Adobe Illustrator - One of the kings of vector-based drawing tools.
10. Adobe Photoshop - One of the oldest and most comprehensive raster-based image tools.
11. Adobe Fireworks - Fireworks is like a combination of Illustrator and Photoshop, offering both raster and vector imaging features. Once a rival of Adobe products, now owned by them.
12. Gimp - The Open Source lover’s Photoshop.
13. Inkscape - An OpenSource beta competitor to Illustrator and some Fireworks features.

I also spend a great deal of time visiting David Armano’s site, Logic + Emotion, for incredible visual inspiration. I highly recommend his site, and you should also check out his L+E Visual Thinking Archive at Flickr. For more discussion about visual thinking, diagramming and sketching, be sure to check out Sketching is the New Black, which links to numerous articles on these topics.

What Is Bootstrapping?

Bootstrapping, in a nutshell, is a simple business self-financing process whereby an entrepreneur spends only what is absolutely necessary and reinvests most or all of the profits until the business is self-sustaining. Or sold. I.e., little or no outside capital is used, at least initially.

By bootstrapping, entrepreneurs have built many successful businesses. If the business means enough emotionally or financially to the entrepreneur, the lack of capital can be the impetus to run the startup as efficiently as possible. Or they can go broke trying - which does happen, of course.

One of the most entertaining examples of the application of a bootstrapping mindset comes from the website One Red Paperclip. The right-hand sidebar has a pictorial explanation, but it goes something like this… Canadian Kyle Macdonald started with one red paperclip and, through a series of swap transactions across North America, managed to end up with a house. He started with essentially nothing and kept trading up in each transaction.

The fact that other people participated made a huge difference, of course, but these people were likely fascinated by his mindset and were glad to participate. Now this is not exactly how bootstrapping works, but the mindset is similar: start with what you have now and build it into something better. Kyle Macdonald did “work” for each transaction by starting conversations with people and promoting his “cause”. This helped him achive the transactions he needed to increase his “value” until he got what he wanted.

You can apply a similar bootstrapping mindset to a business startup. Even for an offline business, you can leverage the Web to promote and build your startup.

Mind Mapping Your Bootstrapping Plan

Notes
For this article’s example, I’ve used MindJet MindManager Pro software to create the mindmaps. You can get a free, fully functioning trial of MindManager Pro for Windows (30 days) or Mac (21 days).

Alternately, you can use any other mind mapping package, including FreeMind (multi-platform), Mindomo, MindMeister, or Comapping. (The latter three are web-based and only basic or trial versions are free.) Note: Mindomo has a desktop version which actually runs on Adobe Air.

If you prefer not to use mind maps, also consider using a spreadsheet (MS Excel, Open Office Spreadsheet, Google Spreadsheet) or diagramming software (MS Visio, SmartDraw, Gliffy).

Mind Mapping Process Overview
The assumption here is that you are picking an entrepreneurial opportunity that has some potential, and that you’ve done your research already. You’re simply going to map out your current status and some of the goals that you hope to achieve. The example I’ve used below is for building a web video publishing business.

Step 1
Start with two nodes: here/there, start/end, now/then or whatever you prefer. I’ve used Now/ Then in the example.

Step 2
See the diagram above.

For the “Now” node, list what you have to start your business with, including equipment, skills/ knowledge, leads, partnerships, startup funds.

For “Then” node, list what you aim to achieve. Include a time frame if possible (but be flexible), what revenues you’d like to be earning and how, whether you’ll have any staff or freelancers, equipment, etc.

Step 3

This is an administrative step I’ve added simply for reader clarity. Here, I’ve split up each list to prepare them for Step 4.

Step 4

Pair up current and desired items as best as possible, using a “strategy” node between pairs. In some cases you might have multiple lines in or out of a “strategy” node, as per the diagram above. Use what’s appropriate for your business scenario.

Step 5

Now fill in each strategy node with a brief note about what approach you might take. Don’t get too detailed just yet. Keep bootstrapping principles in mind: spend only what you have to; reinvest as much of the profits as possible.

Final Thoughts

You now have a very basic roadmap for working towards what you want business-wise. By breaking down short- and long-term tasks this way, the process should feel less intimidating than, say, “achieve success in this venture”.

Of course, you’re not done yet. This is only a starting point.  You still need to produce a more detailed plan for each strategy node (not to mention perform all the necessary tasks over time.) If you’re using mind mapping software to produce the detailed strategy mind maps, you can link each strategy node to a sub-map. So your master map will be organic, growing as necessary, or linking to new sub-maps.

To produce the detailed strategy maps, use whatever methods of problem solving (e.g., brainstorming, visual thinking, etc.) that you prefer. Use diagrams and images in your strategy maps, to help visualize what you are working towards. Try listing multiple options and later filter out those which are not feasible. Let your overall bootstrapping plan develop.

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.

This of course comes in handy if you’re involved in any sort of creativity work or activity. Greater flow of creativity and productivity translates either directly or indirectly into greater income, especially if you’re a freelancer or work for yourself.

It’s also possible to lose the flow, if you don’t sustain the necessary creative environment. What’s necessary for achieving this state of mind? Mental stimuli and breaks from whatever you’re doing “right now”. At least, that’s been my long-standing experience, both as a programmer and as a writer.

The crucial ingredient is a constant stream of input. Back before the Internet, that might have been newspapers, books (fiction and non-fiction) and magazines. Nowadays, you also have your pick of countless websites.

My own experience is that when you “feed your brain,” with stimuli (text, images, video, audio) from several niches, you cause the opportunity for ideas to intersect. (A fascinating book called “The Medici Effect,” by Frans Johansson, discusses the intersection of ideas in great detail. You can get a free PDF copy at the main website.)

Some Tips for Revitalizing Your Creative Flow

Those of you who’ve suffered creative blocks for long periods of time get into a cycle of doubt. But the solution might be a lot simpler than you think. Here are some suggestions for stimulating your creativity, regardless of what kind of creative work you do.

1. Consume voraciously. Whether it’s newspapers, magazines, books, websites, movies, whatever. The more mixed, the better.
2. Surf the web. Browse at least 50-100 web pages/ articles in a short period of time, say 1-2 hours. You do not have to do this every day - just when you’re feeling your creativity and productivity turn to a trickle.
3. Take notes. Glance at article and section titles. Save links or snippets of text and notes to a mind map.
4. Feed your eyes. Take in as much visual stimuli as possible: images, diagrams, video. I like to mix in browsing of design sites with whatever other topic I’m trying to write about. Flickr is a great place to start.
5. Feed your mind. Don’t just browse; try to do some reading as well.
6. Feed your passion. Make sure that your consumption of information includes topics that you are passionate about. If you’re lacking this, no amount of input is going to help your creativity.
7. Take a break. Go for a walk and think of something unrelated to the type of creativity you’re trying to stimulate. If you can’t take a walk, take some other form of relaxing break: watch comedy, listen to music, take a shower. Physical activity is often best.

My preference is to build up a mind map while consuming information. Not everything you see/ browse/ read needs to be saved - only that which catches your attention or begs for further exploration. Keep building the map as you go. You don’t need a new mind map for each day, though you can break the map down by date if you prefer. When you’re finished with some bit of information, you can remove it from the map to reduce clutter. (Or you can move older information off to a separate mind map.) Keep your “research” mind map organic.

This process will help you to store trigger points for later creative thinking. The break from your research environment is critical to generating ideas. It doesn’t mean you have to go for a walk every time you want to generate ideas, but it doesn’t hurt. As odd as it might sound, walks and showers seem to a great trigger for coming up with fresh ideas.

Some Caveats

The drawback is that regularly absorbing all the stimuli that you need to keep your “creative flow” does take time. If you’re a freelancer or contractor, you probably know this more than others that “time is money.” However, the alternative to not taking the time is to suffer a creative block - sometimes for long, fruitless periods. Find the time, make the time. Make it part of your work.

If you use an RSS feed reader such as Google Reader to track articles on websites in one or more niches, just keep in mind that it’s possible to get carried away. As a word of caution, I’ll point out that RSS overload last year led me to abandon subscribing to 1000+ feeds and I went the opposite way: not following any. So even though I kept visiting sites on occasion, my source of creative stimuli dried up, causing a several months long creative block. Now, even though I’m still staying away from feed readers, I’m making sure I have a flow of stimuli to keep my creativity and productivity going.

If you find yourself in the state of mind of not knowing what to do long-term, consider using a mind map for career planning. Whether you’re a freelancer trying to supplement your income with online and/or offline gigs, or you’re transitioning between careers, you can apply the method discussed below.

Career Planning Approach

The mind map above shows an initial approach, though this is refined in later. In essence, you want to list all possible opportunities, then filter the list with criteria that’s important to you. Pretty simple, right? (Note: the above diagram indicates a “realstic” measurement scale of 1.0-10.0, which I did not use in later diagrams. The idea is to refine your mind mapping approach as you go, and as it suits your needs. This is what I wanted to illustrate.)

Step 1: Brainstorm Work Options

Start by brainstorming all possible sources of income that you are currently involved in or have an interest in. Don’t “edit” mentally as you list items. By “source” I mean type of work, not a specific client. In the example below, I’ve intentionally included both offline and online opportunities to better illustrate the approach.

Step 2: Add Filtering Criteria

Now you can start the filtering process:

1. Which of these are work options are desirable to you?

2. What’s the $revenue potential/ month? You can be specific or you can just put down high, medium, low. You can also add in “very high” and “very low”, or switch over to a numeric scale. Remember that you are only apply your own frame of reference, in terms of the work currently/ possibly available to you.

3. How is realistic is it that you will get any work from this source? You can apply a high/ med/ low or a numeric scale. Use what you feel comfortable with. Keep in mind that over time, the “realistic” measure of an opportunity might change. That is, say, three months from now, you might find something is far more realistic.

4. What are the drawbacks of pursuing this work? Include any thoughts about time investment, physical or mental toll, training, etc. For example, you might want to do something and know that there’s a market for it, but there might not be any direct revenue. (One example from my list is WordPress plugin development.) Note that every opportunity can have its drawbacks. All that matters is whether something is a problem for you or not.

Step 3: Sort Your Work Options

To make this step easier to follow, the diagram above is the same as the one in Step 2.4, except that I’ve added color-coded lines (dotted) between column critiera. What we want to do is rearrange the list so that our best options are at the top.

I’ve put “Desirabilty” as the leftmost column of the filtering criteria. This comes from years in the workforce, and the realization that work enjoyment matters far more to me than money. The beauty of this mind mapping method is that you can rearrange the filtering criteria to suit your needs. For me, “Potential” comes after “Desirability”, followed by “Realistic”.

Consider: not being happy in what you are