We’re all connected to a vast sea of information, so very, very, connected to: twitter, email, news and social networking web sites, blogs, online trading systems, discussion boards, corporate portals…

With all this information at our fingertips it begs the question:
are we getting smarter with all this data or just bogged down?

Here are a few strategies to master information overload so you can actually use what you have.

 
A Single Point of Access That Leverages Relationships
To overcome information overload, a single point of access for all information is essential. Just creating a Brain of all your key resources whether that’s public web sites or your company’s internal network, will save you time. This is where the planning comes in. Here are a few questions to ask yourself when creating your overarching view of information:  What are your key projects, what URLs and web sites do you launch? What files and documents will you need to access frequently?

Thinking and mapping this out in advance will save you and your team a lot of stress and time in the future when you are: up against project deadlines, have customers waiting on the phone, or encounter any situation where you are in a hurry to find the right information.

 
Organic Knowledge Hubs
If an overarching map of all data seems too daunting, create a variety of knowledge hubs, smaller information networks for your key projects and frequent tasks. Start with the projects that keep you up at night or the department mandates that amass folder upon folder of information.

The idea here is to create multiple contexts or workflows for the information that you need. You can start below your home or root Thought and create Thoughts for all your key projects. Then drag and drop all relevant URLs and documents you need to access. This way when you activate your project all relevant resources are immediately there. This also gives you the freedom to amass more data because you can instantly activate your project or idea and access all related information.

This Brain also puts you in the driver seat because rather than getting snowballed by massive amounts of information, you now have Thoughts to file your information under. In fact, now that your information has a place and context, you can file it away confidently knowing that it will appear when you are back in that context. This will enable you to set your own time and pace for getting to things rather than feeling the need to have to read and review every new, interesting web site or file immediately before it gets lost in the shuffle.

By controlling when you look at information you can optimize your day and schedule tasks actively based on your needs rather than passively responding to a never-ending data deluge. Useful Thoughts for putting things away and minimizing daily info distraction are “Interesting Articles to Read”, “Future Projects”, “Cool Ideas”, “New Trends”, “Health News”, “Around Town”. Basically, you need to create Thoughts for any category of information in your life and work that tends to distract you. This way when you have time, after 5 pm or on the weekend, you can get back to these articles without impeding your productivity.

Creating Thoughts for key areas of interest and responsibility help you stay on top of all information resources

 
A Network of Information That’s More Than Search
Essentially, the issue of information overload can be squashed by proactive organization, having a plan and natural structure for your information rather than reactively searching for that document when the need arises and/or reading every interesting web page or email when you see it. In fact, this passivity and lack of organization leads not only to messy desktops and folders but to an overreliance on search. In depth searching for files breaks your flow of concentration and requires you to now focus on information retrieval rather than your project.

Now search is great if you know exactly what you are looking for. However, it is essentially a black box. You can tell it to look for things and that’s about it. This leaves you and your user community with little to no recourse for additional information if search results are too limited. This is especially a problem when you need to go back in time to a project that you might have forgotten about. This problem is further amplified on your shared company drive or portal site where users and especially new employees are largely unfamiliar with the content and may not even know what keywords to enter into the search box. 

Text-based interfaces, such as portals, directories, and search results themselves, present another problem. They display information simply as lists. If the interface to your knowledgebase is not visual, you cannot see what additional information is available unless it includes your search term. Therefore you must resort to continued searching, which requires prior knowledge of what to search for, of course… This dart board approach is ad-hoc at best and makes you feel like you must remember where every single document is on your company network and hard drive.

 
Information Architecture and Visualization Combined with Search
Visualization tools like PersonalBrain and BrainEKP address this problem by presenting a context-rich interface that engages you and presents all relevant information about a topic.

The goal of your Brain is to give you a complete picture of all ideas and issues that can be quickly explored.  You still have a powerful search that works across multiple information sets but these results are augmented with the visual display to present related items so you can discover key issues that would otherwise never be seen.

PersonalBrain’s search synchronizes with a visual display of interconnected Thoughts for maximum context.

This way your ideas remain your central focus. Instead of losing concentration in a list of search results, you gain a broader picture of your concepts and ideas. Moreover, the visual display is created by your ideas, connections and projects, so the display of information has a very significant context and deeper meaning to you. It can become your visual briefing for the day or even help other users of published Brains understand key business processes.

 
Digital Minds Supersede Digital Boxes
One of the advantages of your digital Brain is that it allows you to forget. The stress of information overload comes from the anxiety of thinking there’s all this stuff you need to remember. In reality, however, you should only need what’s important to what you’re currently doing. If you can put stuff into its proper context and then return to that context later, at anytime, all that stress can be erased. You can allow your mind to focus on what is truly important. That’s why having a solution that scales to the amount of data you accumulate over time is critical.

With PersonalBrain there’s no limit to the number of Thoughts or connections you can make.  You can also link any file to anything else so you don’t have to fret over what folder things need to go into. Your Brain can capture multiple perspectives. You can create large networks of information that match your style of thought and timeframe, finally putting you in control of the flow and deluge of information, instead of it controlling you.
 

   The Power of Multidimensional    Information Organization for    Visual Thinkers

There are a wide range of information management tools that can help you get organized. Even just creating a folder of all key documents and web links is helpful for any project manager. However, the problem with your computer’s folder structures is that they are very linear and incapable of representing your multidimensional thought process.

PersonalBrain moves beyond folders by letting you create a network of information, organized the way you naturally think about it.  Furthermore this network’s visual interconnected links let you see all related information and thereby assimilate context instantly.

 Almost all interfaces today, with the exception of TheBrain’s visual user interface, are limited to organizing information into hierarchies, where a piece of information can only be categorized in one place. 
 

 
Flexible Knowledge Mapping: Networks Versus Hierarchies
However, in most cases a topic may have a variety of implications, attributes, and contingencies – with folder hierarchies you cannot see all these relationships without multiple copies of the information. This makes it impossible to see a complete context for each case and makes discovery of new information cumbersome.

PersonalBrain’s visual interface provides ideal knowledge capture because you can visually convey all scenarios and the relationships for your ideas.

For instance, in the Brain above “Camping” is organized under Hobbies, Outdoor Activities, and Vacation and Travel. If you were to store this information in a folder, you would be forced to decide which category it would go under and thereby limit its context.

Normal, Distant Thoughts, Expanded and Outline Views
Visual thinkers will benefit from several different information viewing options within PersonalBrain. Here are some tips on how and when to use each view:

• Normal View is a dynamically centered, multiple purpose navigational view, that offers rapid visual navigation and an easy to understand spatial display. All relationships in this view are always relative to the Thought in the center of the screen.  (For more information on Thought relationships see “Parent Child Jump which relationship should I choose?”)

• Normal View with Distant Thoughts is like normal view but with an additional generation of Thoughts visible. So if you like seeing a little more data on your screen you can simply click the expand all button, next to the switch view icon, to show these Thoughts. 

• Expanded View lets you expand and collapse any number of connected Thoughts and move the Thought clusters around your screen. This view is great for a broader look at all your Thoughts or to analyze interrelationships.

• Outline View lets you see a dynamic hierarchy based on the active Thought. In this view you can expand and collapse sets of Thoughts like a conventional outline. If you want to see more Thoughts but prefer a simple, more directed layout, try using outline view from time to time.

For a video tutorial on all PersonalBrain’s views watch the  Thought Display Options Tutorial.

Images and Thought Types for Instant Identification
In addition to visual connections you can also add an additional level of instant recognition to information sets by color coding your Thoughts and Links, or even better doing this systemically through Thought Types. By setting a Thought Type for certain information you can quickly specify both a color and an icon.  This way when you are looking at large groupings of information key types will stand out. Thought Types can even be used to signify status or urgency of certain Thoughts and can readily be changed.

The above Brain uses classification oriented Thought Types to show Phylum (orange), Class (purple), Order (blue), and Family (green) in the Linnaean Taxonomy. Note that by using Thought Types you avoid the need to create additional Thoughts for these classifications.

In the above example Thought Types give prominent ideas salience and are readily identifiable.

For more information on Thought Types see: Thought Types and Thought Tags 

Bottom Line: Why Visualize Information Relationships?
Associative information networks can capture and make visible key relationships that cannot be made explicit in standard information lists or folders. By gaining a complete picture of all information resources you can improve your thinking and dramatically affect your productivity and innovation.

Visualization can:

• Facilitate discovery of information that would be overlooked
• Simplify and capture complex business processes and perspectives
• Leverage existing information assets
• Help employees get up to speed faster
• Foster understanding and new learning
• Decrease incident handle time for support centers
• Reduce time to resolution for helpdesk and IT issues
• Help sales personnel gain more business by leveraging their full network of contacts
• Provide a meaningful context for collaboration and project management

TheBrain’s network interface provides a comprehensive view and new level of understanding that instantly broadens your perspective. Organizing information in a manner that more directly matches and captures your thought processes will open up a new world of insight and personal productivity.

Adding People and Mind Mapping Social Networks in Your Brain

If you don’t have your family or colleagues in your Brain you are missing out. Adding people in your Brain whether it’s their name connected to a project or their contact info will help you get the big picture on your relationships. Creating a people centric Brain will improve the quality of your interactions so you can remember key details that might otherwise be forgotten.
Visualizing Teams and Organizational Expertise

Getting a handle on complex projects can be challenging. Part of the equation in any large project is people. Connecting people to projects will help you understand who is responsible for what and yield more productive meetings.

Create a Thought in your Brain for your team and create Child Thoughts below for all team members. Once a team member is in your Brain you can then start to link and connect them to all aspects of your project that they are related to.

Thought Types can be used to illustrate company position or role.

Based on TheBrain’s display you instantly see who Terry Mason reports to (the person above) and who he manages (the people below). You get a complete picture of his role in the company immediately.

Link types let you see how people are related. You can further specify connections with labels.

Connecting people as Jump Thoughts to key project information is a good way to depict expertise for escalation.

Then when you click on Fred you can see who he manages and his role in the company.

Link thickness and color can be customized to convey the strength of relationship.

For large organizations I recommend mapping out your employees.

If your employee directory is in a relational database you can use BrainEKP’s database connector to dynamically visualize large information repositories.
Integrating Outlook, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Salesforce.com Contacts

You can drag and drop contacts from Outlook or select multiple contacts and add them in all at once. This creates a direct connection to the information inside Outlook. Additionally contact information is copied into your PersonalBrain notes area for your convenience.

Drag and Drop Contacts from Outlook in your PersonalBrain

Remember, any item with a unique URL can be dragged into your Brain. This means you can drag and drop people from social networking Web sites such as Facebook and LinkedIn.

Dragging and dropping URLs from Facebook and LinkedIn let you further contextualize people networks.

Adding Connections for Expertise Location

As you are building a team activating the right people in your Brain can save loads of time and get projects off the ground faster.

Moving a Contact from Outlook into your Brain enables this information to be connected to anything else.

Once you add a contact in your Brain you can create a full context for this person so you have a complete understanding of their involvement in your company or personal life.

This context can be especially important for managers who are building teams for new projects. For instance I spoke to a CTO who has a very extensive list of people in his Brain. As a contractor his network is large and timing for new jobs fluctuates. He uses his Brain to find the right people for new business projects. When a project comes up that requires an SQL DBA he simply activates this Thought, and all DBAs in his Brain appear and he can easily staff up. This skill is connected to other related skills so related expertise can be leveraged.

Seeing Your Family Matters in Action

Having a Thought for your family members gives you a conceptual space to store and organize all your information and thinking on them.  For instance you might be helping your sister with her résumé or receive a copy of her travel itinerary for her next visit. You can drag and drop her email, PDF formatted itinerary and Word formatted résumé all under her. Now when she calls you because she lost her résumé again you can come to the rescue by activating her Thought in your Brain.

Link all relevant Web links and files related to important people in your life.

This is also the area where you can add information on important health matters that any family member might be dealing with. For instance, if one of your parents has diabetes or a heart condition you can use PersonalBrain’s built-in search web feature and get the information you need to learn about their medical condition and then add it all in under their Thought.

You can also use the parent-child relationship to visualize family tree structures.

Expanded View lets you visualize and customize your Relationship Map

Adding Images for your People Thoughts

Adding pictures to your people Thoughts enhances your connection to them. And PersonalBrain’s zoomable images are simply awesome for this. You can drag and drop JPGs and PNGs or copy and paste the image in as a Thought icon for the Thought.

PersonalBrain’s zoomable icons can help you visualize the person you are thinking about.

 If it is a well known person or blogger that you are creating a Thought for, you can copy their image from the web and simply right click on the Thought and select “Paste Thought Icon”. In the age of Web meetings and telecommuting I find that this really helps me remember more business colleagues and journalists that I speak with and whom I am skyping and meeting with over the Web.

People + Ideas = Good Things

As you build your Brain and connect all kinds of interesting ideas and trends don’t forget about the people who created them or contributed. We think about people every minute of the day. Putting them in your Brain will help you focus, hone your thinking and see these relationships in a new light.

From Edward Leedskalnin’s Coral Castle to product design, let your PersonalBrain bring your ideas home.

Where do you put your ideas and fledgling memories that mean the most but don’t really need a folder? There are snippets here and there: that interesting web site, or cool new car design…not always that important at the time, but always completely you.

As we surf the Web, meet new people and travel, we are exposed to new ideas and familiar ones that give us comfort and validation. Even though our minds process and retain these key events, over time and with our hectic lives, it’s easy to forget the most important project details and these new insights can get lost in daily tasks. Creating a digital memory or mental map of everything that is important to you will give you an expansive digital world new for inspiration and ideas.

When you think about your computer operating system you have folders to store documents and folders to store your bookmarks.  However, aside from the fact that all these information types are separated, I think we can all note that clicking through folders is less than inspiring, if not downright frustrating for people dealing with large volumes of information.  That’s where mind mapping and creating a PersonalBrain comes in. The idea is to create a meaningful context for the information you need to access and this context then serves as a springboard of discovery for both key documents and whimsical concepts that get your creative juices flowing or drive a project to success.

PersonalBrain’s flexible and visual links make it a powerful tool for organizing reference material for designers, researchers or technicians. For instance, Michaela Sachenbacher, CEO of Acronym, uses PersonalBrain not only to organize all her projects but to track new design trends and reference works that then lead to new product innovations in urban street wear.  Likewise, Christopher David, former CTO of Arlington County Virginia, not only uses PersonalBrain to organize IT projects and teams of people, but has also mapped out Harry Potter’s world with his daughter.

You can make your PersonalBrain a place for reflection and contemplation. Thoughts specifically designed for this can include future plans, hobbies and special interests. In addition to creating a network of Thoughts about your interests and passion, having a “trusted” conceptual space to store your ideas for later helps you stay focused on your task at hand. For instance, I research technology trends and, of course, while browsing the Web one can’t help but be distracted by all the election coverage. With PersonalBrain, rather than switching gears and loosing my train of Thought by reading these articles, I simply drag and drop them under my Politics Thought or Daily Reading Thought. This way I can get on with my project at hand with the confidence of knowing I haven’t lost that little snippet that interests me and I can activate it whenever the time is right.

PersonalBrain helps you put stuff away for later so you can clear your mind for your work. This idea is popularized in David Allen’s “Getting Things Done” methodology. For those of you practicing GTD, you will be about to clarify your tasks and focus by using PersonalBrain as your trusted system for reflection, personal organization and completing your tasks.

But perhaps where I enjoy my Brain the most is for the very wild and uniquely different ideas that grab my attention that just couldn’t go anywhere else! For instance I had a meeting with Phil Chen, the bass player for the Doors. I noticed at his office he had signs posted all over that said “Mr Can’t is Dead”. When asked about this very peculiar yet inspiring sign he told me the story of Edward Leedskalinin, the extraordinary man who built a  Coral Castle  dedicated to his beloved with his bare hands and all alone. His castle is now a tourist attraction and monument in Florida.

When I returned from my meeting with Phil “Mr Can’t’s death” received a Thought in my Brain under personal motivation and Florida, with some jump Thoughts and connections to Earnest Hemmingway’s house in the Florida Keys (which is under Vacation ideas). Now where else could I put all this stuff and its infinite connections other than my Brain?!

So you see there really are no boundaries both technically and conceptually on what can be added into your Brain. The possibilities are endless. If you would like some additional ideas on Thoughts that will help capture your thinking read my previous blog post on “Must Create Thoughts for your Brain”.

But beyond these suggestions, what is really great are those nagging preoccupations that you are secretly obsessed with.

Whether its technology trends, Sarah Palin as Vice President of the United States, BMW’s shape shifting car, pharmaceutical research, or  Mr Can’t…as your Thoughts come together over time, your PersonalBrain becomes greater than the sum of its Thoughts.

One of the most powerful features that PersonalBrain offers is Instant Activate. Just type in the first couple letters and up pops the Thoughts you need. Then simply click on that Thought and you’re exactly where you need to be in seconds.  The power of this feature should not be underestimated. It gives you the ability to get to any Thought and its related content in seconds. This is especially critical for users juggling multiple projects or tasks. Anyone who needs to shift contexts, respond and bring up information quickly will love this feature.

Instant Activate

Just type in the first couple letters of what you need and a list of your Thoughts appear.
Click on the Thought and get your information instantly.

Why I Love this Feature and How It Saves Me Time
In my typical day I will activate 20 to 30 different Thoughts. Everything from a vendor I need to call, a proposal I need to reference, to a flight itinerary for a trip. With Instant Activate your PersonalBrain is like a remote control for your mind, able to pull up what you need in seconds. Your Brain moves to the right Thought, you get the information you need and see related connections. So in addition to fast information access you get this “ah ha” feeling because in addition to getting the detail you need by visualizing and seeing how this information fits into everything else you gain a sense of control, an immediate visual briefing on how everything fits.

How Is Instant Activate Different from Desktop Search?
With PersonalBrain all your Thoughts are only a few keystrokes away and appear without the delay and long list of results typical of a standard search. Note that PersonalBrain does index your documents and you can do a full search by hitting the search button. However, this article is talking about Instant Activate that offers not even a second of delay. As you move from one topic to the next, this time savings make a huge difference in your day.

In fact, even if you are not into visualization I recommend you store mission critical documents in your PersonalBrain because you can get to your Thoughts so quickly.

Setting Up Your Brain to Maximize Instant Activate
To take advantage of the Instant Activate that PersonalBrain offers I suggest you do a little infochunking with your Thoughts and Notes. Infochunking is the art of breaking down or deconstructing information into all essential components. We also call this cognitive indexing. Why does infochunking optimize Instant Activate? Because creating Thoughts on things you need to access lets you get really specific with your activations. If all your ideas are in one document (not visually indexed) you can’t activate key concepts on their own.

Get started by creating Thoughts for all key ideas or persons that warrant thinking or action.  For instance, let’s say you have some key metrics and sales figures that you need to reference that are in a word document.  Create a Thought for this information and cut and paste these key points into notes under that Thought. This way when you activate that specific idea you will see this information immediately without having to wait for Word to open the document and then scroll to find this information embedded within the file. 

This works great for email message also. I don’t think I’m the only one who gets long winded messages with only two or three ideas or sentences in them that you really need. When using Outlook, you can drag and drop the email message into your PersonalBrain and the full message will appear in notes. From there you can delete irrelevant content and simply have just the paragraph you need with a key project requirement etc. With this approach sometimes it may not even be worth dragging in the full email or file, if all you need to access is a key metric or bullet and the idea itself. This optimized view enables you to laser in on the information that is most important during your busy day.

This cognitive indexing is critical for:

• Podcasters who need to remember a variety of subjects and issues throughout their broadcast. Their PersonalBrain becomes their dynamic teleprompter.
• Sales or client services managers who need to pull up information or recall details as soon as their client or prospect calls.
• Business owners and executives who are managing wide ranging tasks and need to find the details immediately.
• Technicians and Engineers who are troubleshooting complex products or issues. Each step of their solution can be broken down in TheBrain so they can hone in on a particular part or component of the process.
• Project Managers dealing with multiple variables and requirements. All phases of a project can be broken down so instant recall is possible for any aspect of a project.

Remember with PersonalBrain there is no limit to the number of Thoughts or ideas you can add. So you can literally create your digital memory for anything and everything. This is unbelievably useful. You will be able to find and see the smallest details that would otherwise be forgotten. For instance last month I was looking for a reasonably priced restaurant in Beverly Hills. So I simply activated Beverly Hills in my Brain and there were several Thoughts on restaurants that met my needs. Now I hadn’t been to this area in my Brain for awhile, but it was sure handy! This is the way it goes when you create a network of information on stuff that interests you and things that you need to get done. Like you wetbrain, when it comes time for retrieval it’s all right there, when you need it. 

Read Gran’t Blog at The Intersection of Anthropology and Economics.

-Matt

Many of our users ask if PersonalBrain is mind mapping software, file management software or something else… According to Mac|Life Magazine this month, PersonalBrain is the “most compelling computer adaptation of mind mapping encountered”. So I thought it only fitting to blog about: whether or not PersonalBrain is in fact “mind mapping software”, what exactly is PersonalBrain, and where does it fit into the array of desktop applications that you have running on your computer.

Flexible Knowledge Mapping – Networks Versus Hierarchies
Before we get into what PersonalBrain does, I think it’s important to reference some current issues with information management and your computer desktop. Almost all interfaces today, with the exception of TheBrain visual user interface, are limited to organizing information into hierarchies, where a piece of information can only be categorized into one place. For simple applications this is fine, but for users engaging in more complex business processes, it is simply inadequate. A document will have a variety of different issues or people associated with it – with hierarchies one cannot show all these relationships without multiple copies of the information.

File management systems on virtually all operating systems use folders and focus on separating information—they force you to divide information into containers.

Traditional directory trees confine information to a strict hierarchical organization and are incapable of expressing the multi-layered relationships that exist in the real world which people think about and draw meaning from in their ordinary Thought processes.

TheBrain takes the opposite approach—it enables you to link information into a network of logical associations. Any piece of information can be linked to any other piece. The power of TheBrain lies in the flexibility of these links. Users can quickly create structures of information that reflect the way they think about information. With PersonalBrain you can drag and drop files from folders or folders themselves. So you don’t have to abandon your filing system but you can visualize it in a manner that reflects your unique thought process.

Mind Mapping Software
Mind mapping helps you visualize concepts and ideas. Mind mapping was popularized by Tony Buzan and it is now offered by several software providers. These products are geared toward brainstorming and idea generation and are useful to convey decision processes and lateral thinking. A typical mind map interface displays topics horizontally branching out from one root node which does not change.

(Image from the Wikimedia Commons Image:MindMapGuidlines.JPG )

With most mind mapping software something at the bottom of one branch cannot be elegantly linked to something that is categorized in a distant branch unless your mind map is really small. So “mind maps” essentially have the same linear limitation that your computer filing system does. Because it is a spatial representation of information it simply runs out of space… However, they are an improved and better looking information hierarchy.

Visualizing Information Flow
In contrast to folder systems and mind maps, PersonalBrain provides the ability to display information in multiple categories and associative relationships. Items in TheBrain are called “Thoughts,” which can represent files, Web pages, or database records. TheBrain’s display is organized around a Thought, surrounded by all its related Thoughts. Clicking on any Thought brings it to the center of the display, and the interface is automatically reconfigured to new related Thoughts.

As you navigate through data, the information displayed on the screen is always related to the selected data. TheBrain lets you follow a train of Thought, flowing from one item to the next.

This approach provides several major advantages:

1. Information can be dynamically loaded as it is needed, enabling infinite scalability so that vast amounts of information can be mapped.
2. There is always a context for the current item, so details such as contact information can always be synchronized with the display and usage of the system can be accurately measured and reported against.
3. Non-hierarchical relationships can be displayed. Because of the self-referencing nature of networked information, it is impossible to represent non-hierarchical information visually unless the display is rendered from the perspective of a selected item.

With conventional mind mapping software, each map cannot practically be larger than a few hundred items. PersonalBrain is designed to allow tens of thousands of items and files to be integrated into a single workspace. The software offers a dynamic visual display that is infinitely scalable. In fact, this same interface is in use at the Department of Defense, Encyclopedia Britannica and large Fortune 500s to navigate and visualize hundreds of thousands of objects and databases. It would be impossible to scroll through such large data sets with standard mind maps.

What Visualizing Non-Linear information Relationships Does for You

Networked data structures have been around long before the advent of computers, but today their relevance is surpassing that of the hierarchy. The explosion of social network analysis is merely a single example of how people are realizing the power of relationships in their information. Sales personnel need to see how key decision makers are connected to companies and other related executives for prospecting or to close a deal. IT managers need to see relationships between their servers and applications to support user communities effectively. The very Internet itself is based on not a linear structure, but on a flow of logical connections between concepts.

Every piece of information in a relational database, on a Web site, and even in people’s heads is a network structure yet today there is no way for users to display these critical relationships or allow users to interact with networks of information. The need to visualize key information relationships is further augmented by more powerful computers, the proliferation of information sources and increased pressure on people to juggle multiple roles and responsibilities.

PersonalBrain can help you link information together in a manner that captures these real world relationships and helps you make sense of them all. This also underscores TheBrain inventor, Harlan Hugh’s, original goal in creating a generalized software application that works the way people think. A system designed to capture thinking must represent information networks.

Our own organic Brains aren’t always linear. One Thought can lead to a cascade and convergence of many others, often leading to the most whimsical and brilliant of ideas. This is why so many of our users (including myself) have one very large PersonalBrain that is literally their digital Brain on their computer. For me, my PersonalBrain is a mental space that I’m creating and working in about me!! It allows me to make connections and remember things.

Mind Mapping Expert Opinions

So what do industry experts think? Chuck Frey, noted mind mapping blogger and mind mapping expert, uses PersonalBrain and said in his review “If you work with large amounts of information and have gotten frustrated by your ability to navigate and work with large mind maps, PersonalBrain 4.0 is definitely worth a look.”

Eric Mack, eProductivity expert, has suggested that we “might” call PersonalBrain a “true mind mapping tool”, knowing full well what most people think mind maps should be and how TheBrain is different. He was most recently quoted in Michael Totty’s article in the Wall Street Journal stating
“Often I discover new relationships and ideas that I was previously unaware of — ones that probably would not have otherwise become apparent,” using PersonalBrain.

James Burke, science historian and best selling author of “Connections” is not surprisingly a PersonalBrain user. It is the very core of visualizing nonlinear relationships that enables James Burke to connect historical inventions and thinkers together without limits. As James states “I chose TheBrain because after years of working on the Knowledge Web concept, with larger and larger sheets of paper, covered by spaghetti-like, criss-crossing lines, I was in danger of getting very lost in the maze. And worst of all, it wouldn’t move. TheBrain was just what I was looking for. And then some!”

What prolific thinkers like Jerry Michalski (owner of the world’s largest Brain) and James Burke are doing with their vast array of connections would not be possible in standard mind mapping software and certainly not possible with a folder directory. Moreover, since most of us are conceptual in nature I would venture a guess that your perspective may also need some web-like connections and go beyond basic subcategories.

The Bottom line

So to answer my original questions, I would feel comfortable describing PersonalBrain as dynamic mind mapping software or at the very least what mind mapping software ought to be, because moving beyond the limitations of static information hierarchies is critical to capture human thought. And yes, PersonalBrain lives very happily with other mind maps and most definitely your computer filing system. In fact, you can even store all your mind maps in your PersonalBrain and some of our users do.

For individuals, organizing information in a manner that more directly matches and captures their thought processes increases personal productivity. For companies, these benefits are further augmented by the collective contributions of many, increasing corporate IQ and yielding a new level of group collaboration (through our enterprise software, BrainEKP). But most importantly, seeing and connecting your information like this will inevitably surprise you and open up a new world of insight. Often, I’ll click on a Thought and see linked topics that I forgot about and now remember. You might even feel more at home, more connected, more like yourself on your machine.