Get out the (mind)map

I realize it is a strange personality quirk of mine, but I have always loved maps. I was drawing maps of the lower 48 states before I was in kindergarten. I could spend a few hours just perusing Google Earth–and by a few hours, I mean an evening. Give me a crayon and a restaurant’s butcher-block tablecloth, and I will probably draw up a county map of the northern half of Illinois. (You can imagine the looks wait staffs give me.)

There’s just something about maps that have always appealed to me. They have it all laid out there for you. It’s what they do. So when it came time to raze my personal site to the proverbial ground and start anew, there was little doubt as to which tool I would use–the mindmap.

The concept isn’t exactly new, but in case you aren’t familiar with a mindmap, think of it as a traditional top-to-bottom, left-to-right outline forcefully thrown to the ground. The result is a splattered, non-linear mess bearing only a slight resemblance to its more structured state.

There are a couple of ways you can go about building a mindmap. Wikipedia describes one such method:

1. Start in the center with an image of the topic, using at least 3 colors.
2. Use images, symbols, codes, and dimensions throughout your Mind Map.
3. Select key words and print using upper or lower case letters.
4. Each word/image is best alone and sitting on its own line.
5. The lines should be connected, starting from the central image. The central lines are thicker, organic and thinner as they radiate out from the centre.
6. Make the lines the same length as the word/image they support.
7. Use multiple colors throughout the Mind Map, for visual stimulation and also to encode or group.
8. Develop your own personal style of Mind Mapping.
9. Use emphasis and show associations in your Mind Map.
10. Keep the Mind Map clear by using radial hierarchy, numerical order or outlines to embrace your branches.

Mindmap created for the planning of Michael-Gorman.com.

Personally, the way I was taught was much less structured–not that it is any better. For my site, I had to determine what parts of my life I was going to include on the site. You can see how it turned out on the right.

Now, the project has morphed a bit since I drew this map up in early February. The web design sub-site was spun off into the site you see now. The music section has been put on hold for external reasons, leaving the site currently as a part-time blog/full-time social aggregator.

Still, once things calm down in a month or two, I can refer back to this map as the skeleton for the parts I have yet to build. And let’s not overlook the fact I used the “Web” part of this map as the example for building the site you are currently browsing.

Here are some online mindmapping tools:

• Mindmeister.com
• Bubbl.us
• Mindomo
• Mind42

Or you could read GigaOm’s review of some of online mindmappers.

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