PersonalBrain helps you concretize business relationships and see otherwise invisible factors that will affect your company’s success.

 With PersonalBrain you can:

•  Visualize your business strategy and procedures
• Connect key departments, people and responsibilities
• Track and organize marketing projects and operational domains
• Integrate all information sets and resources
• Brainstorm and generate new ideas
• Plan and start a new business

Resources for Building your Business Brain 

Webinar Recording

Thanks to everyone who explored this subject on yesterday’s webinar.

Here is a link to our recording.

Business Brain Templates

Use these three examples to get started on your own business Brain. (Please remember that you need to have PersonalBrain installed before opening the BrainZips you download here.)

Marketing Plan Template      New Example

This example covers 10 key steps for any marketing plan.

     Browse this Brain Online

     Download this Brain

Company, Staff, Clients and Department Brain  

This Brain is an example mapping of company departments, clients and people. Notice how one client or project can now be organized under multiple topics.

Browse this Brain Online

Download this Brain

Sales and Business Development Brain 

This example includes a “Sales Playbook”, pipeline visualization and business development Thoughts.

Browse this Brain Online

Download this Brain

For more example Brains go to http://www.thebrain.com/apps

Accidental Autobiography:  Your Digital Mind

Navigating through someone’s PersonalBrain gives you a very intimate look at who they are. You can learn a lot about that person not only by the Thoughts they’ve chosen to add, but also the way things are connected.

Creating a Brain that moves beyond the sum of its parts usually happens by accident as your Thoughts and ideas grow. But actually taking on the task of self-reflection and exploration using PersonalBrain can be just as fun and rewarding. With this in mind, let’s explore some ideas for purposefully mind mapping yourself.

Other Tools for Digitizing Your Life?
When I googled digital memories a lot came up on storing photos and of course computer processing power. As a culture, it seems to me that we spend a lot of time capturing the moment through pictures and making sure we have the capacity to store a lot of information. However, linking everything together and assimilating the big picture on life events seems to be largely ignored.

I also searched for autobiographical software and found a few apps that looked interesting but they were focused on asking you questions, required filling out forms and didn’t enable integration of large external file sources. The stuff I found didn’t look fun or creative – more like a job interview in fact.

Conventional mind mapping applications seem like a natural choice. However unless you are under the age of 10, you will surely run out of space or need to create separate maps for each part of your life to be comprehensive. And that left me to wonder if perhaps one of the most powerful applications and uses of PersonalBrain could be your autobiographical Brain. According to David Allen the answer is yes.

Intentional Autobiography: The David Allen Brain
The idea of creating an autobiographical Brain was triggered by David Allen after our GTD Seminar.  One of David Allen’s primary Brain’s was his “Autobiographical Brain”.

During the seminar he posed the question, “How do you map all your dreams, people, and everything that you have done in your life?” His answer: his PersonalBrain. Now this Brain was in fact separate from his other working Brain (“The World of DA”). It had the clear intent and purpose of looking back on his life. He had several interesting sections that would add depth and self-reflection to any PersonalBrain.

A Thought for Each Decade
David’s Allen’s autobiographical Brain organized sections of his Brain by year. Under each year he listed key events that defined this year.

What David has in his Brain under 1959

Now it’s understandable that you may not want to go back to every year of your life, though if you do this might be pretty cool.  However, I do recommend at least a Thought for each decade or maybe stage of your life: childhood, youth, college, single, married, parenthood, and so on will be an inspiring launch pad for organizing important life events and reflecting on your personal growth.

Life Themes
Like any great novel your life will have many themes. You can create some key themes to guide your content creation.  As you develop your Brain, don’t forget to come back to this area and interrelate other Thoughts by theme. Connecting and organizing your Thoughts by themes might lead to some interesting discoveries. You can also use Thought types or Thought tags for key themes in your life. Themes might include: Family, Religion, Learning, Romance, Business, Money and Exploration.

Your Jobs
David also had an interesting section in his autobiographical Brain for all his jobs. It was really full.  Creating a section like this will enable you to reflect on your jobs and add any lessons learned. You can also have a few laughs adding in all your part-time jobs you had to work your way through college!

“If you’ve had this many jobs it was either consultant or flake that show up on your resume, so I decided to do the consultant aspect of it”

-David Allen

People
Everyone’s Brain should have some Thoughts for people. Here you can add in family and friends. Remember to include key influences in your life - this could include visionary college professors, Pop icons and even your favorite authors and philosophers. If you want to turn this into an active area, you can drag and drop your outlook contacts and/or Facebook pages of all the relevant VIPS in your life.

For more information on adding people to your Brain see my blog post http://blog.thebrain.com/peoplenetworks/

Education
If you have old papers written when you were in school or if you are still in school, add them here. It is always fun to go back and read your views and essays from another decade. You may want to scan and drag and drop diplomas and award certificates to highlight key milestones.

Events
You might want to start with the day you are born. This can also be linked under your time based Thoughts. It’s fun to collect historical events and technologies that were hot the day you arrived on planet earth.

Future
This is where autobiographical Thoughts can turn predictive. The past can be linked to the present and future. As you look back on your life you can create new Thoughts for key goals and objectives you want to achieve.

Why Bother?
Well, I asked a few historical VIPs and they said:

“No one can give you better advice than yourself.”
– Cicero

“There is only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving, and that’s your own self.”
– Aldous Huxley

And the most extreme answer was …

“The unexamined life isn’t worth living”
– Socrates

Sometimes knowing where you want to go depends on where you have already been. As companies, countries and individuals an analytical look at our past can illuminate where we want to go in the future.  You can put aside old tendencies, expand your mind and be armed with the knowledge of your past right in front of you.

This idea of historical context is something that Jerry Michalski talks about a lot. This is the guy with the PersonalBrain of over one hundred thousand Thoughts. When he’s thinking about a new social networking site or technology, he wants to see every other thought in his Brain on that subject for a complete context. The same principle applies to life and business decisions.  This meta-awareness can enable you to be very decisive and provide massive intelligence on what you need to do next. If you want to plan where you’re going, it certainly helps to know where you’ve been and perhaps more importantly, where you are.

Besides which, if you don’t mind map yourself who will? Ten years from now pulling up your thinking from a decade ago will be pretty cool.  You know Socrates would agree.

Resources for Knowing Thyself

Online template

Download BrainZIP template

“Getting Things Done”  Recorded Webinar Featuring David Allen

David Allen Best-Selling Author and Acclaimed Productivity Expert discusses “the Art of Stress Free Productivity” and shows his own PersonalBrain. This seminar is about the groundbreaking work-life management system GTD and your PersonalBrain.

Part 3 Touring David Allen’s Brain ——Most Relevant to this blog

Part 4 Q&A with David Allen

Full Recording Now

Jerry, Harlan and I had a most entertaining and productive get together at TheBrain corporate headquarters last month. We’re so used to bumping into Jerry at every tech event on the planet and cruising through his virtual Brain that it was really nice to sit down with him in person to do a complete Brain dump… and with a video camera no less .

My Brainy Interview of Jerry and Harlan
Watch Jerry Michalski, the guy with the world’s largest digital Brain, and Harlan Hugh, TheBrain’s inventor, answer your questions about TheBrain.

Jerry’s Guided Video Tour
Enumerated Wisdom Is the Place to be in Jerry’s Brain.

 
Watch Jerry’s Guided Video Brain Tour

The Real Thing Baby!
    Browse Through Jerry’s Online Brain 

One Brain to Rule Them All:
Creating a MegaBrain.

There are many types of Brains you can create from your favorite hobby to visualizing mission critical business strategies.

For some people your PersonalBrain is for organizing documents, for others its research projects or keeping organized at work. And then there are the MegaBrain users.  Oh yes.

Mega Brain users (who I personally adore) have reached what we describe in our stages of Brain development Webinar, Level 4: Mind meld.

At level 4 your Brain becomes more than the sum of its parts, a reflection of your life, your digital identity. Just how does one create and become a MegaBrain user?

Just ask Jim Keravala, entrepreneur, CEO and cofounder of Flaii.

       “It can take several months or years to fine tune your
       system.  The trick is not to rush it nor to succumb to
       the mindset of trying to ‘complete’ your brain. It’s a
       journey, a blueprint of your mind or an entire journal
       of your thoughts if you like.”

 With 50,000 thoughts and growing I decided to ask him a few questions.

How big is your Brain and how long have you been using the software?
My brain is currently around 50,000 thoughts and it is still the same one I started back in 1998! Since that time I’ve not lost a single thought or file from my brain, even with the occasional hardware glitch.

Why do you use PersonalBrain? What do you use it for?
I think PersonalBrain stands alone in the field. Its astounding capability derives in part from its conceptual simplicity. I’ve always intuitively appreciated that the value of information lies as much if not more in its context rather than simply the information alone.

I use PB because it seamlessly allows me to capture my thoughts, ideas and content and acts as a hard-drive for my mind! I don’t have any directory structure on my computer for my data; everything is internal to PB in my single brain file. With this approach my PB covers everything that is relevant to me. I include personal items, business projects and ideas. I link it comprehensively with Outlook so all my contacts are embedded in the brain in the relevant locations, as well as emails. All my files are of course there too so I only have to click the relevant thought and my data opens automatically. The only external files I have are shortcuts to software that I also open from within PB! 

Was their a particular moment after you discovered PersonalBrain that it “clicked” for you?
That’s easy, about 15 seconds after first running v1.
 
What are some of the key areas in your Brain?
When deciding to nurture a large brain, this is an important question. Three of four times over the last 10 years I undertook a major overhaul of my brain’s structure as my requirements expanded and my reliance on it became all encompassing. When working on multiple projects and commitments at the same time it is impossible to keep track of everything without some cool organizing.

In terms of information I tend to think of passive and active. Passive is stuff I’ve drawn into PB. Mostly like websites, documents, references and all sorts of other reference information. Active is stuff I’ve generated, photos, documents data, ideas etc. Now I have one of my Study sub topics called Business Studies. Under this thought I have 63 other thoughts; about half of those thoughts have dozens under them too and so on.

However, if I’ve started a company on building widgets, I don’t want my accounting, project management, plans and documents generated to be mixed up with wikipedia sites, general providers web Thoughts, external reports etc. This issue crept up on me slowly over a couple of years until it reached a critical mass of inconvenience. Over about 3 months I then separated hundreds of thought classes out of the Study and created a new class of Thoughts called Portfolio. Under that I created separate numbered Portfolios for different projects and activities that I am specifically doing. From that point on I had the basis of active and passive dimensions as well. So for the most part now I hang round my Portfolios and then jump to different parts of my PB as required.

What are your most used Thoughts?
The most used are the Portfolio thoughts that are the door ways to specific projects. I have 42 Portfolio thoughts and 19 of them are currently in use. My physical library of books, documents etc also then reflect those Portfolios, so in effect the structure of my brain is reflected in the structure of my physical data. Each Portfolio project is then jump-linked to various reference and study thought sections

 
How did your Brain grow to over 50,000 thoughts? 
I carry my laptop with me wherever I go. Although not such a high level of propinquity as a PDA for example, it is just the way I do things now. Every thought gets added in as I think of it. If I don’t have that handy then I use my windows mobile phone to scribble notes and sync it in later. Every piece of information, file, data even thought that I have I now automatically think of it in three dimensions: content, context and time. That is the data, where it sits, and what action do I do with it. If it’s reference then I just link in context with other thoughts, If it’s actionable then I use Outlook tasks with Taskline added. I also have the Getting Things Done module for Outlook which I use at the same time. So for the most part it is a constant flow of additions as a way of life. There have been blocks of thoughts added. When I’m researching a topic, I ususally spend a few weeks doing so and can pull in dozens if not hundreds of webreferences, files, notes, documents etc.
 
How do you maintain your Brain?  
All my files and data are internal to the brain; that’s key. For the most part I don’t go scouring thoughts to correct or augment links or other metadata. I don’t mind a certain amount of fuzziness although the whole thing is quite lean now and everything connected well.

What advice would you give to new users?  
It can take several months or years to fine tune your system.  The trick is not to rush it nor to succumb to the mindset of trying to ‘complete’ your brain. It’s a journey, a blueprint of your mind or an entire journal of your thoughts if you like.

You will notice the need for changes to your brain as they become apparent, in the meantime just let the stuff flow. In order to start, I would spend 10-15 minutes thinking about the main classifications of your life that are important. It can be Work, Family, People, Projects etc – whatever works. Also realize that these are just starting points to be built upon, in many ways you could consider them scaffolding for your building rather than the structure itself – that follows. Allow your thoughts to flow.

At first it may appear harder because there is less context – every new thought is beating a new path initially. Stick with it and within a few weeks the associations become more obvious as trunk thoughts start to crystallize – those main arteries of context thoughts that content thoughts connect to. I’ve actually sat down with a few folks and helped them structure the first one or two hundred thoughts in a brainstorming environment which really helps too. If you can find a PB user then steal an hour from them for this! Also check out the webinars on the PB website. I would also recommend (as with anything) a clear backup strategy for all your data. The PB Forums have plenty of advice on this.

You go by Spacenexus on the discussion boards what does this name mean?
In true DaVincian fashion, I believe everything in the world is connected and so am fascinated by everything; primarily I have a great passion for space and our future adventures exploring beyond our cradle. On the other hand, I could have just thought it was a cool webname to have many years ago!
 
 
What is the most ridiculous, outrageous Thought or area in your Brain?  
I have a ‘Fun’ thought which is a dump for all the crazy stuff folks send – I could probably do a two hour one man show with my laptop on my knee going through some of the jokes and videos. It’s also interesting to see how evolution of taxonomies transpire. For example, area on Politics has a section on extreme politics and then conspiracy theories.

From another location the History trunk thought has a sub thought called History, which in turn has one called Mysteries (ancient civilizations etc). There’s some fun stuff there for sure. What is interesting is that there are thoughts that then sit in Mysteries and also Conspiracy Theories. Subtle connections start to appear after such a critical mass of thoughts and previously unconnected information finds common context from completely different starting points. The outpouring of ideas at these junctions is part of the immense power of human augmentation that PB enables and is extremely difficult to generate otherwise.
  

 
What is the biggest impact your Brain has had on your life?  
I would say the biggest impact is the shear volume of information I have at my fingertips and the speed at which I’m able to retrieve deep connections and information. It affects the way I think and organize and I do believe lays the foundation for future interfacing and semantic technologies. As the state of the art of artificial intelligence increases I believe my brain file will form the kernel of my own self aware neurally connected personal cloud. But that’s for another conversation….

19 years ago Korrahn Droku was paralyzed from the neck down. Despite the challenges he faces on a daily basis Droku prevails and even coaches people on overcoming their obstacles in life. This blog entry is in his words, from an email he sent me about his use and success with PersonalBrain.  I hope it will inspire you as much as it did me.

Just to tell you a little about who I am, and what I do…

I am KorrahnDroku… simply known as ‘Droku’ (http://www.Droku.com).  I’m doing my coach training through the CoachVille Schools of Coaching , and the Center for Coaching Mastery.

I have been a member of the CoachVille coaching community since the summer of 2001, and a member of the Schools of CoachVille since winter 2002.  I served in the role of Assistant Community Coach for the Personal Environments Community for three years, and facilitating assistant for the Environmental Design Tele-Course for the last two years.  In 2006, I was honored to be the recipient of the Thomas J. Leonard "T" Award for Volunteer of the Year.

19 years ago, I was paralyzed from the neck down by a gunshot wound to the neck in a drive-by shooting. Being a disabled user, I am constantly looking for assistive technologies that will not only assist me in my training, but enable me to have a visual means of integrating my knowledge with my information resources. TheBrain is proving to be one of the most productive tools I have acquired.

What I consider my "major" in my training is "Personal Environmental Design" which is the study of The 9 Most Influential Areas of Your Life Experience. PersonalBrain, has proven to be the perfect tool for analyzing, defining, and designing Personal Environments.

I would like to use the brain as a "learning environment" for teleclasses, and a means of collaboration between "my network" individually and collectively.

The image you are looking at is from a program called PersonalBrain.  Under environments, you see the nine most influential areas that determine our choices and behavior.  What the brain allows you to do, is inventory your tangible and intangible assets and liabilities in all of these areas of your life.  While on the surface it may appear as "Just Another Mind Mapping Program"… the power of the brain comes from its ability to access and dynamically link information and resources.

As an example, if I were to access my Memetic Environment…

This is the environment of ideals, concepts, paradigms, ideologies, social norms, tradition, passed down and passed on customs and cultural beliefs, ways of mental analysis, evaluation, and judgment.  Each entry in my Memetic environment is a Thought, and each thought can link to associated thoughts in any of the environments.  When I think of the Memetic environment, I realize everyone learns things differently.  One of the thoughts I use to increase my awareness of learning styles is… Multiple Intelligences, if I access that thought…

Not only will it show me what they are, but each thought can have a active link to a website, application, document, image, video, recording, or any other connection I might want to make.  You can also include Notes for each thought, which you might find very useful.

Another environment that a lot of people seem to have complications with is the Network Environment.  This environment represents your awareness of Who You’re Connected to and Why, while the Relationships Environment represents Who You’re Connected to and How.

TheBrain allows you to enter someone into your network, and also associate them to any other group or environment, without duplicating any information.  Let’s say, I add Dr. Eve to my network, but since I also rely on her for medical information, I also want her listed under Health, which is a thought under the Body Environment.  It’s easy to associate her to any thought in my brain without having to reenter her information.  And any changes made to her information will be immediately updated wherever I have a thought referencing her.

This is a view of the program with the Notes section viewable where I can include images, or any other information I feel is relevant.  All of this barely scratches the surface of what this program is capable of and the application of intelligent environmental design.

I’m creating a new training program focused on personal environmental design, that uses TheBrain as a layout tool for information management.  I’m going to be Seeking 10 Participants to work with over a three-week period as a focus group for Exploration and Discovery of Personal Environments.  This program Is Not designed to… "Teach You about Environmental Design". If you really want to learn what environmental design is, and how it can be applied to the work you do with your clients… I highly recommend that you register for CoachVille’s "Environmental Design Course", which can be found in the registration center at… http://www.CoachVille.com

What this program will help you do, is to get clear on what each environment means for you Personally.  It will give you the opportunity to look at the wide variety of People Places and Things in your life, and where you see them fitting in the scope of your overall objectives.  It will provide you with a system for developing new habits of environmental awareness, and give you a more meaningful look at how you manage your personal and professional information.

Participants will also need to be willing to install the PersonalBrain program on their system. This is a free download from www.thebrain.com, that works on Windows or the Mac.  For the first 30 days, the program will have all the functions of the professional version.  After 30 days, the program will convert to the "feature limited" free version unless you choose to upgrade.  However, the free version itself is quite a powerful tool, and more than what you would need to benefit from this programs capabilities.

While I will not be training you to use all of the aspects of this program, I will be covering everything you need to get set up and started using and designing brains of your own.  Once you grasp the overall concept, the interface and operation is almost intuitive.  And I’m always more than willing to share tips and pointers and answer any questions that I can.  TheBrain support team also offers a free interactive Web training session every Friday.  I will also make available to you a… "Your Project Brain" Template File to get you started.  I think you’ll be surprised at all the ways you’ll find to benefit from this program.

I find myself using it constantly, here are just a few more screenshots of how I use it to increase my productivity.

At a glance, I can see what’s going on around my 100 Day Challenge activities.  I can also keep focus on my objectives…

Or maybe I just want to see who in my network is in my support group…

Or, what if I want to find out about a certain episode of CoachVille Caffeine…

Right away, I can see that on February 20 during Transformation Week, Dave’s Guest was Alan Fried and they were discussing the environmental shift from willpower to world power.  Also, there is a live link to a recording of the call.

You will never run out of ways to utilize this system.  It becomes a constantly evolving environment that starts giving physical dimension to your thoughts.  If any of this is of interest to you, please just send me a reply e-mail, and I’ll make sure you get all the details.  If there is a large enough interest, and if Dave isn’t booked up for Technology Week, I’ll try to arrange to present this on one of the CoachVille caffeine calls.

Sincerely… Droku

Contact Droku via email: droku@droku.com