Stay Clear and Focused on Your 2012 Resolutions with Visualization

The New Year is shiny and bright. Now is the time when we can look back on past accomplishments and mistakes of the previous year and start anew. Whether you are building on your previous Thoughts and projects or starting a new Brain, visualization software and mind maps enable you to formulate clear and doable plans for the New Year in a way that captures your best thinking.

Getting Outside Your Head

We all need a place for ourselves, a place to work, sleep, eat… but most importantly to think. You can make that place for thinking and translating your goals into action in your Brain. And it’s easier than you think. But first a little on the why…

David Allen, bestselling author and creator of Getting Things Done® talks about how you can develop a positive shift in your energy just by identifying what you need to do… i.e. when you are stressed out think about the relief you feel just by creating a list. In GTD Times he referred to this as “The value of getting things out of your psyche and into a more objective format”. Creating a place for your 2012 resolutions in your Brain not only gives you a digital space to start working on them, collecting information etc., but more importantly takes them out of your mind so you can work on them in a productive fashion. Therefore, the first step in your 2012 Brain is to identify and create Thoughts for all your key goals and resolutions for this year.

Creating Thoughts for your goals also helps solidify the commitment. In fact, I’m not sure if you can even have a resolution if at the very least, you don’t write it down. Though jotting a key goal down on a piece of paper may mentally provide commitment and relief, your digital brain provides a network for you to elaborate on your idea, remind you when to take action, and turn it into reality! Once you have created a Thought for your goal, the next step is to add other Thoughts that support and elaborate on your goal. This is where perseverance and planning come into play.

Perseverance and Planning in Your Brain

The news media reports that yesterday (January 9th), nine days after people make their resolution, is the day when most people give it up. So clearly without the right backup system for your goals things can slip away. In order to stay the course you need to focus and create Thoughts in your digital Brain for concrete action items and tasks that will lead to your ultimate resolution. In my blog entry entitled “7 Steps to Making Your Creative Vision a Reality”, I identify several key steps that can help turn your goal into reality. But the main takeaway of this post is that success begins by breaking down your dream into manageable chunks and making each piece an actionable step. And luckily segmentation of ideas is what information visualization and mind mapping is all about. When you mind map the possibilities, this imagined future becomes more real because you have captured and elaborated on a vision outside of your mind. Think of it as digital self-awareness.

To begin planning in your Brain ask yourself: what are the key components of your goal… then begin to segment your larger goal into smaller actionable steps. Each one of these steps should be a Child Thought under your resolution.

Experimenting with TheBrain’s outline view enables you to see all necessary steps for your goal.

For instance, “Living to be 100” is a very nice goal but unless you define key steps and milestones to get there, it’s just a pipe dream. Under this Thought you might include key research on longevity and health, as well as key action-oriented Thoughts that will help you achieve your goal such as nutrition, exercise and stress management.

References and Inspirations

Even though you think you are committed to your resolution, research suggests otherwise, and over time your motivation may waiver. Therefore, it is absolutely critical to setup reminders and inspirations in your Brain. I suggest creating a Thought called “Why” under your resolution and use PersonalBrain’s Notes tab to capture your key reasons and motivations behind this goal. You can also link to some friendly “Propaganda Thoughts” to reinforce your plan… For instance if you are losing weight, add some research in your Brain on how important weight loss is to health. In this way your digital Brain trains and convinces your wet brain on the benefits of achieving this goal.

References and inspirations are an absolutely critical step in actualizing your creative vision. Of course, unlike conventional mind mapping software, there is no limit to the number of Thoughts or files that you can add to your Brain. This means that you can create an ever-expanding unlimited knowledgebase for your vision. Collecting and organizing key ideas and important examples will enable you to harness abundant information sources and put them to work for you. Once key source material is in your Brain, you can simply type in a name and get to the information you need instantly.

Your reference Thoughts will not only help you define your vision for the project, but also serve as important guidelines and benchmarks to ensure that your requirements are met. For instance, if you are designing a Web site, link and create Thoughts for Web sites that represent your ideal aesthetics and business goals. If you are working on a kitchen renovation, link to photos of all the key design elements.

Reminders and Monitoring Your Progress

Goal maintenance is key to success and your Brain can help you stay on top of things. Setup action oriented Thoughts that demand your attention periodically. For example, if your goal is losing weight, add additional Thoughts on number of steps walked or an exercise log that you update each week. You can use PersonalBrain’s Notes built-in time stamp to record your key metrics. You can also setup Thoughts and reminders in your Brain for periodic reviews so when you get busy with other stuff your goal is never forgotten. I suggest you setup weekly reminders with TheBrain’s built-in calendar. The reminder Thought ideally should lead to some action you need to take, even if it’s just a journal entry in PersonalBrain’s Notes. If your goal is more elusive, like taking your business global, your weekly action item can be more research oriented, like finding three new web articles on your goal. In this way your knowledgebase grows to serve your resolution and you in turn will use this newly acquired knowledge to meet your goals.

We Are What We Think

As you work on your 2012 resolutions your expanded view of your thinking will enable you to go full circle with your digital Brain. That is, you start off using your digital Brain to capture your goal but by directing your own ideas and thinking in TheBrain towards your goal you are actually training your mind to focus and absorb what is most important to you. Thus your digital Brain moves you to a deeper level of commitment and strategic thinking on that “2012 Thought” you created. It is this symbiosis of deliberate and selective brainstorming that takes you to a higher consciousness of an idea. This mindset makes the difference between a resolution and an accomplished result. So to all of you who seek more in life and work, may you forge a better, more intelligent future this year with new directed Thoughts and ideas in your digital Brain. After all, we are what we think we can be. So be the most you can be… in your Brain.

Happy New Year and Happy Digital Thinking!

Use PersonalBrain to make your summer shine, by capturing and growing your creative ideas and projects.

 
What Is Creativity?

The connections in our mind converge and new ideas are generated. But there is a certain mystery and awe in our creative facilities. This intangible process makes our creative process and output somewhat unpredictable and serendipitous.

How do you maximize such an ephemeral and yet essential process? I don’t claim to know all the answers, but there are some easy things anyone can do and PersonalBrain can help you with all of them.

Clearing the Deck for New Ideas for Creative Connections
I’ve noted that August can be a great month for creativity due to less intense deadlines. However, if you are in the construction industry or have kids at home from school you might actually have less time. But regardless of your workload or season, if you’re pre-occupied with mundane tasks and commitments, they will take up precious space in your mind. Creative opportunities will be missed. As Dee Hock said, “Clean out a corner of your mind and creativity will instantly fill it.”

This idea of clearing your head for more productivity is an essential theme in David Allen’s Getting Things Done methodology. A key aspect of GTD is having a trusted place to put things away along with a system of organization and prioritization so ultimately you can focus on what really matters to you. Not only can PersonalBrain capture your creative vision but you can use your digital Brain to store information, tasks, allowing you to sift through the data clutter that might be holding your creativity back. 

For more information on how to use PersonalBrain to “Get Things Done” see my blog post.
For more information on dealing with information overload see my article on “Digital Sanity.”

Thinking Outside the Box with Lateral Connections
Creativity in many cases is simply putting together existing ideas in a new way. As Albert Einstein put it, “The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.”

From Einstein to Edward de Bono to Tony Buzan, many an insight on creativity relates to how making connections between two seemingly disparate concepts can be the key to that “Eureka” moment. Your mind and imagination are the ultimate source for these nuggets of gold.

PersonalBrain enables you to capture your thoughts anytime, when they come to mind so you can leverage them when the time is right.

There’s really no better place to get your creative juices flowing on a project, hobby or interest than in your digital Brain. PersonalBrain makes linking together information fun. You can connect any idea to anything else so your creative ideas aren’t stuffed into folders. This lateral thinking enabled by non-linear connections is the hallmark of creativity and is easily achieved in PersonalBrain.

Fill your PersonalBrain with the concepts that are important to your business or life. Whether it’s key points in your supply chain, new ideas for your manufacturing process, or key principals that separate you from the competition, each of these Thoughts forms a foundation for a network of lateral connections that can lead to your next breakthrough.

For example, if you are a software engineer being able to link development ideas to applications can trigger new features for customers. An architect might link building specifications to new materials to come up with the best design. What PersonalBrain provides is a new perspective beyond mundane folders to organize information. This gives you more possibilities to see connections in a new light.

Inspirational Warehousing and Idea Incubation
Now that you’ve started to build a structure that encompasses your business goals or passions, you should capture and link up all the ideas you have, no matter how fanciful they may seem at first blush. Much our modern world is built on ideas that must have seemed crazy even to their creators. In the case of your Brain, these ideas don’t need to get in the way and if they never lead anywhere, there’s nothing lost. Your PersonalBrain can hold hundreds of thousands of “Thoughts”.  On the other hand, keeping them connected to the topics they are about allows them to incubate and keeps them accessible when a catalyst for making them into reality happens or something comes to mind later.

A snapshot of Jerry Mickalski’s 160,000+ Thought Brain on creativity as published on WebBrain.com

Harlan Hugh the inventor of TheBrain, puts all his ideas in his PersonalBrain, regardless of how trivial. These ideas incubate, grow and build connections over time. Some might be used in the future and others are just there to trigger more ideas. This expansive knowledgebase has resulted in multitude of technical innovations of TheBrain software. Sandy Ping, CEO of VentureForward, and one of the inventors of billion dollar commercial successes such as Cascade Action Paks and Swiffer WetJet uses his PersonalBrain to make connections between market research, products, patents and new ideas to foster his own innovative thinking.

Organizing ideas is central to evolving your creative process. With PersonalBrain you can organize by connection rather than separation which preserves and captures lateral thinking that is often necessary to innovate and create.

(To learn more about PersonalBrain’s Big Thinkers go to: http://www.thebrain.com/community/big-thinkers1/)

Expanding Your Mind and Talent
By consciously adapting your workflows with the intent to be creative, you will find that you are. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy when you have the means to execute it. The simple act of capturing you ideas will spawn others and PersonalBrain’s ability to remind you of those ideas when you are thinking about related concepts will enhance your own innate creativity.  You can not only capture your ideas but the overall business and creative processes. This is especially relevant for project managers. Becoming conscious of your processes and methodologies will enable you to gain a level of control on your thinking and projects.  We just did a webinar last week entitled “The Ultimate Performance Network” demonstrating how to explicitly mind map business processes.  Understanding your workflows and project cycles helps you evolve and build on current thinking so you can improve and streamline things.

And for people who have no defined processes whatsoever, PersonalBrain can be even more useful. I know creatives in Hollywood who dread Microsoft Project but can organize a project like nothing in their PersonalBrain!  With PersonalBrain anyone can take a basic idea or vague objective and start visualizing specifics: hammering out next steps, contingency plans, key documents all visualized together. For more information on how to realize the results of creativity see my blog post on “7 Steps To Make Your Creative Vision a Reality”

So clear out a corner of your mind by putting it all into your digital Brain. Two Brains are always better than one. With PersonalBrain you will never run out of space, so add your most outlandish ideas, inspirations and connections. Let the idea germination begin!

This unique ability of PersonalBrain makes it ideal for visualizing and organizing large information networks as well as moving beyond standard mind mapping applications

Many users take advantage of PersonalBrain’s scalability and create an all compassing Brain for everything. While others opt for smaller, separate Brains. In this article I will explore each approach to creating a Brain and provide some guidelines for what might be best for you. 

 
One Brain for Everything
The idea here is to digitize your mind. It starts with a single Thought and grows more powerful as you use it. The best way to get started on this type of Brain is to start with your  name as the first Thought, then create a business and personal section, and continue creating Thoughts for all aspects of your life.

Now there really is no limit. This is your mental space.

In fact Jerry Michalski. a well known technology analyst has a Brain of over 123,000 Thoughts

Browse through Jerry’s Brain on WebBrain.com

To best represent the one brain approach I asked Jerry Michalski the following  questions for our users: 1.       What approach or goals did you have when you started your Brain? “I was an analyst in the tech business when the Internet showed up, so I started with wanting to note the many players and their relationships. I discovered quickly that I could have a startup, their investors and PR agents, their industry category and competitors, all neatly tucked into one screenful and very easily navigated. That had been impossible for me with prior tools like Ecco, HyperCard, FileMaker and several others. I was happy.”   2.       Do you recommend starting with one Brain or many? “I’ve poured all my Thoughts into a single Brain, which is all I recommend doing. The pleasure of adding something to an existing rich context is immense. It compares very favorably with starting from scratch every time.” 3.       How did your Brain evolve over time? “Every now and then, consistently, I get an Aha! experience that leads me to add a new Thought, or divide some Thoughts into sub-categories and move them around. I call it gardening, and it’s constant. That plus natural growth of new areas is how it grows.” 4.       How often are you adding new Thoughts and how do you maintain your Brain? “I’m at 123,000 Thoughts added consistently over 12.5 years, so a little under 30 Thoughts a day, every day. Slowly ”

I also have one large Brain where I store all my information and then a few topic oriented Brains for presentations I do and things I want to publish on WebBrain.com.

For me having one Brain with everything allows me to move very quickly to different topics throughout the day and shift focus quickly. My day changes a lot. I might be in the marketing area of my Brain and my contractor calls me about some work. I can activate that Thought in a second and have a more productive conversation by referencing the area for the renovations I’m planning. It’s also very interesting to go back to an area that you haven’t been to in a while. PersonalBrain becomes your digital memory. You will discover ideas about your life that would otherwise be forgotten. And yes there is a degree of ego in this. I love having a big Brain. It’s one of the best gifts you can give yourself.

Even if you don’t have one Brain for absolutely everything, I do recommend having a single Brain for all the Thoughts you will use within a single setting or workflow. For example, if you are a marketing executive you probably want to have a single Brain that has everything on marketing including sales and customer service since you will probably be juggling multiple projects in all three departments throughout your day.

 
Create One Brain for Everything When:

• You have an intermingling of personal, business and everything under the sun projects happening throughout your day
• You want to activate different subjects/Thoughts concurrently. Make sure those topics are all in the same Brain to take advantage of PersonalBrain powerful Instant Activate feature
• You want to create an expansive knowledgebase or digitize your thought processes on your entire life

This approach of “One Brain for Everything” will be quite different for those of you coming from a mind mapping perspective. Mind mappers are forced to create topic specific maps because mind maps are file based rather than database driven.  Practically speaking a mind map cannot hold more than a few hundred topics. If you’re used to conventional mind maps, PersonalBrain will open up a new modus of thinking and working for you. With PersonalBrain you can even import your mind maps into your PersonalBrain to get that master view of everything and leverage all the work you have done in other programs.

That being said, you can, of course, continue to create separate Brains if you prefer, which I will discuss next.

 
Topic Specific Brains
If the thought of having one large Brain on everything in your world seems daunting, you are also in good company. There are many PersonalBrain users who create separate Brains for their projects, areas of study and life. In fact, there are many situations where a topic oriented, separate Brain might work better. 

Matt Caton, our director of customer solutions, prefers to work with separate and distinctive Brains. Matt has a Brain for support, hobbies, special projects, travel and dozens more. Each of these Brains is separate with different wallpaper and topic focus. Matt also uses PersonalBrain’s Brain buttons to move quickly between each Brain.

Matt’s Topic Oriented Brains help him dive into the separate projects and responsibilities of his life

When you have a topic focused Brain your instant active list is more targeted and you can share this file based on its topic easily.

 
Creating a New Brain is Recommended When

• You are publishing or sharing a specific topic with other users
• You would like some firm lines between business and personal projects
• You need a fresh start on a new topic or want to take a new direction from your existing Brain

Like most users, though Matt has multiple brains, he still has one major Brain he has opened. It is his “CyberHome” Brain.  Matt also imports several of his smaller brains into other brains from time to time.  (To learn more about Matt’s Brains join Matt every Friday for PersonalBrain 101)

 
Going from Small to Big Brains or the Reverse…
Not sure which approach to take? Don’t worry about it. We make it pretty easy to change your mind. If you already have multiple Brains and want to bring them all together you can import one brain into another. Just go up to File and select Merge to get the Brain you want to add and merge it. Conversely if you have a larger Brain and decide you want to make a set of Thoughts into a separate new Brain, you simply select all the Thoughts in that area and copy them into a new Brain.  The first tutorial below covers both these scenarios:

 
Related Tutorials and Tips

1. Copying Thoughts and Merging Brains. Simply right click to copy and then paste Thoughts. You can do this between Brains or within one Brain.

   

2. Brain Buttons. Setup Brain buttons to switch between your favorite Brains easily.

Regardless of the approach you take, your PersonalBrain will help you see and organize information in ways that just aren’t possible with lists and folders.

How to Ensure your Best Thinking is Leading the Way.

Today we are all under pressure to do more with less, and to do it quickly. This is why getting the big picture on projects and not losing sight of new ideas is challenging. Visualizing key decision points, company objectives and business processes can ensure that higher level goals are reached and that you are taking the best approaches now and for the future.

Visual Brainstorming
Critical business decisions and key drivers can be intelligently identified through free flowing brainstorming and visualization of key decision points. By seeing and exploring all possible outcomes, PersonalBrain can help you resolve issues faster and plan your success without overlooking anything.

Brainstorming can be done as a group with PersonalBrain projected on your conference room wall or individually on your desktop. To begin an idea generation Brain, create the key goal or objective of your session as your starting Thought. Under this Thought create child Thoughts below for all ideas that may lead to achieving this goal or support this objective. At this point anything goes so don’t be too analytic or discriminating. The idea here is to free your mind and capture all ideas. Then you can see where they lead.

Under these Thoughts, you can even create another level of child Thoughts that your initial ideas might lend themselves to. (To learn how to create Thoughts quickly watch our previous tip of the month) 

Once you have a set of possibilities, it’s time to start reviewing them and fleshing them out further. Typically there will be some new ideas that may not have been considered in the past. Your next step is to decide which ideas make sense to expand on.

Visualizing Decisions
You can create “Pro” and “Con” Thoughts to help your analysis on important or far reaching decisions.

In the above example a clothing company is evaluating a new material for their winter line. An actual “Pro” and “Con” Thought is used to distinguish each side of the debate. When making these decisions you can use PersonalBrain’s expanded or outline view to see additional generations of Thoughts.

If you prefer more of a free flowing brainstorming session you can simply Brain dump all your thinking about an issue as child Thoughts below and then come back and move your Thoughts under “Pro” or “Con” areas.

An alternative method is specifying “Pros” and “Cons” with Thought Types as shown below.

In the above screenshot Thoughts are further defined using Thought Types. Green for Pro and Red for Con.

You can also use Thought types with colors and icons to highlight your best ideas. For more information on how to create Thought types watch our recorded Webinar. 

Thought Tags can also add a level of priority, feasibility or timeframe for execution. This works especially well if you are not necessarily using a Pro/Con format.

 
Tagging Thoughts as a follow up to your brainstorming session helps clarify the practicalities of your ideas.

In the above screenshot once all ideas for the company’s “Market Expansion” were captured, Thought Types are used to signify a primary attribute of an idea. In this case, something that is a “Greenlighted project” or a “Hot topic” has generated much debate is identified with a Thought Type.

Often the ideas generated aren’t necessarily a clear “yeah or nay” so you can create tags that will highlight the feasibility of each idea. In the example above there are Thought Tags for “Cost” and “Timeframe” because these are key factors on executing these ideas.

By categorizing and further classifying ideas, unconscious reasons why something is a good or bad idea becomes more concrete, and an objective criterion for making decisions can be readily identified and implemented.

Creating Decision Trees with Thoughts and Links
Even if you know the right steps to solve an issue, crystallizing the process will ensure that key contingencies are accounted for and your desired outcome is achieved by all team members. PersonalBrain’s visual interface can act as a decision tree. Clicking on a Thought triggers other dependent issues or next steps as Thoughts so you know what to do.

Creating Link Types that depict preconditions can help you readily identify the best course of action.

You can use PersonalBrain’s “Link Types” to specify key contingencies that you don’t want to create other Thoughts for. In the above example, whether or not a drug is FDA approved is an important factor in prescription. However, if the client resides outside of the United States, and also has “Condition C”, “Medication Z” may be a better choice.
 
Visualizing all options and the applicability of products and services in PersonalBrain can help customer service and sales reps make better recommendations to clients, boosting company sales and customer satisfaction.

A special offer is connected as a Jump Thought to the company’s most commonly sold health product. The Link type “Valid if under 30” specifies eligibility, so the agent can make the best recommendation to customers depending on their age demographic.

Your SWOT Analysis Brain
Understanding and visualizing market strengths, weakness, opportunities and threats can be a very effective method to reach key decisions and spur new ideas for growth. You can create a SWOT Brain for your company or project to ensure that all aspects of your plan are iron clad and that you are moving in the right direction.

Furthermore because all Thoughts can be connected associatively you won’t have any problems of running out of space like you might with conventional 2D mind maps. Something that fits under one idea can be under as many other concepts as you need. For instance, in SWOT analysis you should try and look to see how you can turn threats or weaknesses into opportunities. To visualize this you need an associative interface like PersonalBrain.

For example an auto manufacturer might have “slowing economy” listed as a weakness. This could be linked to a corresponding opportunity: “new low cost models”. Something that if developed is an opportunity, but is related to and driven by the fact that people are more cost conscious because of a slowing economy. With PersonalBrain this idea can be connected under both Thoughts easily.

PersonalBrain’s flexible, associative interface enables ideas to be linked under many categories without limits.

One of the advantages of PersonalBrain is that there are no limits to the number of Thoughts or connections you can make.  This means that your brainstorming results are not simply a throw away sheet of paper or static poster on your wall. You can now add documents, web pages and all necessary research to make your plan a success. Your Brain becomes your information portal for all the right data.

So when you go and access the files you need, you will not loose sight of the big picture and strategy, because your information now is stored and accessed in an intelligent and meaningful context.

Smarter Context = Better, Stress Free Results
Whether you are deciding on the best treatment for a patient or hammering out a new market strategy, thoroughly examining and capturing all possibilities will not only lead to smarter decisions and those “eureka” moments, but it will also enable you to execute on them in a stress free, productive manner. Capturing everything in your digital Brain helps eliminate anxiety so you can use that energy to focus on completing the task at hand.

With PersonalBrain you can execute in an intelligent manner because when you click on any idea it will trigger all the right information and you get a complete visual briefing on your strategy. Everything you need is right there. Your strategic Brain keeps you on course by showing you where to go next and why you are going there in the first place.
 

Clear Your Mind. Get It Out of Your Head and into Your PersonalBrain.

“First of all, if it’s on your mind, your mind isn’t clear. Anything you consider unfinished in any way must be captured in a trusted system outside your mind, or what I call a collection bucket, that you know you’ll come regularly back and sort through.”

David Allen, Getting Things Done

A central premise of David Allen’s Book and cultural movement, Getting Things Done, is that you can experience a tremendous sense of relief and control by moving your tasks and ideas outside of your mind and recording them externally in a place you can trust and where you will review them regularly. This frees your mind from remembering and allows you to focus on completing your tasks. Capturing and improving your thinking of course is what PersonalBrain is all about.

I have often felt this sense of relief and insight when organizing key strategies and ideas in my Brain. I think that is why, beyond getting instant access to key data, we like to mind map things like our marketing plans, the economy, personal finances and the like. However, there is another level of organization and efficiency you can take your PersonalBrain to by applying David Allen’s principles of “GTD”.

It’s all about creating a Brain that focuses your information on results enabling you to track everything you have to do, instantly access everything you need to do, and do it more effectively. So how is the GTD approach different from how you would normally use PersonalBrain? Well, as you might have guessed, GTD is a systematic methodology for capturing the things you need to get done… When you build a Brain for GTD, anything you consider unfinished (what David calls an “open loop”) is added as a Thought in your Brain. The idea is that your head is not the place to hold these things since keeping even the smallest unfinished tasks in your mind will literally stress you all day long.

I started implementing a basic GTD structure in my PersonalBrain and it has already cleared my mind and made me more organized. Keep reading for an overview of how I am implementing GTD in my Brain. For more about GTD, I highly recommend that you buy the book and visit David Allen’s Web site.

GTD in PersonalBrain

So that those of you not already familiar with GTD can follow along, here is my own very simplified interpretation of GTD. Of course, there is much more to GTD than this, but I hope this is enough to demonstrate how PersonalBrain can be applied effectively and to get you interested in learning more about GTD.

• Capture everything that is running around in your head in an external system.
• Categorize each of these things appropriately: if it can be done, when it should be done, and in what context.
• Review things systematically using the categories you have defined.
• Execute on actions at the appropriate times.

If this is your first time hearing about GTD, you might be thinking, “I already do all that.” However, I believe the power of GTD is being explicitly conscious of what you are doing and systematically improving it. With GTD and PersonalBrain, you can become fundamentally better at…well…everything.

When implementing GTD in PersonalBrain, the processes of capturing and categorizing are tightly intertwined. Essentially, you want to create a comprehensive set of lists of items to execute on. You don’t have to capture every action – often you will simply define a project which might imply a set of many actions. Examples of projects are “write a novel”, or “increase sales”. Discrete actions you might want to capture would be “go to the spa”, or “file sales report”.

Tracking Projects in PersonalBrain

Create a “Projects” Thought with child Thoughts for each of your projects. It is useful to break projects into personal and professional subcategories and then into short term (say within the next 3 months) medium term (within a year) and long term (longer than a year) groups. This will allow you to review your nearer projects more often while keeping an eye on longer term goals. I used the names “Now”, “Soon” and “Someday/Maybe” to designate these. Of course, you can use whatever categories you like.

Figure 1. Projects can be organized by area and timeframe.

For some projects, you may have documentation, lists of goals, brainstorming that you need to do and more. PersonalBrain naturally fills these needs with its ability to attach virtually any type of digital information to your project Thoughts. You can keep all of your short term projects at hand by creating pins for the “Personal, Now” and “Professional, Now” Thoughts.

Visualizing and Zeroing in on Your Next Actions

Armed with a system to organize your projects, it’s time to start defining discrete actions. These are definite physical things you can do, what David calls “next actions”. They may be independent of projects, or they may be a direct result of a project. When you review your projects you should define the next actions to be taken for your active projects.

Create Thoughts for each action in the context in which you will execute it. For date specific actions, use PersonalBrain’s calendar. Add an event in PersonalBrain’s calendar for the action. PersonalBrain’s reminders will alert you when this action is due. For actions that are not tied to a particular time, create child Thoughts for them under their project. This will allow you to easily see all the actions associated with each of your projects. Actions that are associated with more than one project can be linked to multiple parent projects.

Actions should also be tagged with a context based on when they are done so that you will be reminded to do them when most appropriate. For example, you might create tags for “at the mall”, “when talking to Marie”, or “errands”. Using tags is useful for tracking actions because you can easily see how many outstanding actions there are for each tag in the tags tab. Of course, you can easily pull up the list of actions for any tag by typing the tag’s name into the instant activate feature or by clicking on the tag. Tags will also be visible when you look at the list of actions for any project, giving you a quick overview of the types of outstanding activities you have for each project.

Figure 2. The Tags tab show the number of outstanding items of each type.

Figure 3. Next actions are linked under projects with the tags indicating the contexts for action.

One tip you may want to implement is to start all the tags you are using for action contexts with a special character such as “@”. This will let you access the list of action context tags just by typing that single character.

Figure 4. Opening up the list of action context tags with a single character

Throughout your day, keep PersonalBrain open all the time so whenever you have something to capture, you can add it in immediately and get it out of your head and stop worrying about it as soon as possible. Use your action context tags to bring up the lists of actions you can execute as the relevant contexts present themselves. Usually your action context tags are temporary and the tags should be cleared when the action is complete. This keeps your list of outstanding items clean.

Capturing the Details with Notes and Attachments

When using PersonalBrain for your actions, the notes tool for your Thoughts is useful for adding those little snippets of information from your meetings or for jotting down the phone number you’ll need when you next place an order from your supplier. Adding file attachments to your Thoughts let you link in the relevant supporting files and web data that may be the inputs or outputs of your actions.

Tracking and Managing Pending Items

Capture pending items under a special “Waiting for” Thought. Sometimes you have things to do that you can’t do yet. David Allen calls these “waiting for” items and in many cases they will be associated with a person who is working on something that you need. Of course, you can break out categories under this Thought also if necessary. This Thought will be paramount for ensuring appropriate follow-up from those you are relying on. I’ve personally found this to be one of my most useful new Thoughts since reading GTD. For me usually this is about waiting for a reply to an email. So, I actually drag and drop these emails under my Waiting for Thought. Even if I have forwarded this email on to the right person this gives me a reassuring way to track responses without having to search through sent items or email folders.  The Waiting for visualization also lets me stay proactive about getting what I need done even when I have delegated tasks to other people.

PersonalBrain as Your Filing and Reference System for GTD

Part of GTD is having a reliable reference system so you are comfortable putting things away and getting them off your mind. This is the place for things in your day that do not require immediate action but need to be kept and organized for future reference. PersonalBrain becomes your trusted source for any material or ideas you might call upon or need at a later date. You can drag and drop files and add ideas for future reference knowing you can activate them at any time when needed.

Reference information that you research, generate, or receive should be linked to the projects and actions it is related to. When actions are completed, often the results may be captured in your Brain where you executed the action. For example, a proposal document created to send to a customer might be linked to the customer as well as the project you are doing for them. This information can be useful for future actions. The structure you create to manage your GTD process can serve as a means of finding this information easily in the future without any additional work.

Your Weekly Review in PersonalBrain

Review your actions and projects regularly. David Allen recommends reviewing all of your projects weekly and next actions daily or whenever the opportunity to execute a particular context presents itself. There is a waterfall cycle in the review process: actions are reviewed daily and executed, current projects are reviewed to generate actions, near term projects are reviewed to generate current projects, and long term projects, which may include less well-defined goals, values, or even an overall vision, are reviewed to set near term projects. Use linking and unlinking to move projects as appropriate. You may find PersonalBrain’s outline and expanded views to be very useful for these review processes.

Creating Thoughts for Horizons of Focus

David Allen talks about 6 levels of work which may also be thought of in terms of altitude.

PersonalBrain can visualize all horizons of focus. I have focused on the 10,000 feet and runway levels above since as part of the GTD philosophy David Allen asserts if your mind is pre-occupied with a number of open loops and daily tasks, you cannot effectively focus on higher level life goals. That being said, because of the visual nature of PersonalBrain, you may decide to create a Brain or a specific area in your Brain exclusively on one or more of these horizons of focus.

Stress Free Productivity with Your Digital Brain

From “Horizons of Focus” to the “Natural Planning Model”, David Allen’s GTD offers a rich set of principles and methodologies that go far beyond what I have touched on here. GTD is changing the way people think of productivity and time management. The combination of GTD and PersonalBrain is a formula for exceeding your own expectations. Some people start at the beginning of the collection process and have a complete visual workflow of “Getting Things Done” in their Brain while others decide to use PersonalBrain to obtain a higher level visual understanding of complex projects. Whatever degree of implementation you decide to incorporate in your PersonalBrain, it will no doubt help you rise about the fray of your daily task list to let you act with a more informed view and work more efficiently.

TheBrain will be at the GTD Summit, this March 12th to 13th. Join us for this event.

Download a template GTD Brain.

Note: This PersonalBrain Zip visualizes GTD Theory and offers some good template Thoughts and Tags for PersonalBrain users who want to practice GTD based on my interpretation of David Allen’s Theories.

I encourage all users to experiment, add, delete and evolve their own GTD Brain to whatever works for them personally. Also consider entering your PersonalBrain in our GTD Brain category in our “Seeds of Knowledge Contest.”

Using PersonalBrain for Project Management

Driving your ideas to completion can be a challenge especially when you are dealing with multiple data sources, complex and sometimes ill-defined requirements in addition to many stake holders. However, creating a complete context for all your project goals and information makes it easy to manage everything and bring projects to a successful completion.

With PersonalBrain’s visual interface you can create an all encompassing view of your project to see even the most complex relationships more intuitively. Your project brain will help you take control of your information and execute more effectively. PersonalBrain and BrainEKP can be used from the initial stages of a project all the way throught to completion. Here’s how:

1. PersonalBrain for Starting Your Project
Defining success is the first prerequisite to achieving it. Using PersonalBrain during the initial stages of project management will help you solidify your ideas and gain a better understanding of where you are and where you need to go. You can use PersonalBrain for the following aspects of getting your project off the ground:

• Brainstorming
  This can be done as a group with PersonalBrain projected on your conference room wall or individually on your desktop. Start creating Thoughts for all ideas. Under these Thoughts create child Thoughts that your initial ideas might lend themselves to. Use the expanded view to enable everyone to see everything. You can create pro and con Thoughts to help your analysis. During later stages you can use Thought types with colors and icons to highlight the best ideas.

• Researching Possibilities and Choices
  Often before you can commit to a course of action there are underlying variables that need to be researched. Creating a section in your project brain focussed on these possibilities will help you make more informed final decisions. With PersonalBrain’s integration of files and web pages, you can drag and drop web sites and reference files so all supporting reference material on your research topic is right there. You can also link together a series of concepts to see how things are related.

• Setting Project Goals and Objectives
  Create a Thought for each project goal and objective. Under these Thoughts you can spin off additional Thoughts with all the resources you need to achieve each goal. Visualizing your goals and connecting them to their implications will help you gain a meta-awareness of your objectives as you work since each time you click through your Brain you will see the goals you need to achieve and the related ideas.

• Communicating Your Vision to Your Team or Clients
  Once you have mapped out your vision for this project use PersonalBrain to inspire your team or sell your ideas. Clicking on a Thought in TheBrain triggers all related information so your audience immediately sees how things fit together. PersonalBrain’s engaging animations will capture people’s attention and help everyone focus in on your ideas.

2. PersonalBrain for Effective Project Management
Once you have defined your objectives and started your project, PersonalBrain’s advanced navigation and instant activation of Thoughts will enable you to get to any aspect of your project within seconds and find the right information to complete tasks quickly.

• Visualizing Project Phases
  Create Thoughts for each phase of your project such as requirements, research, development, testing, deployment or other phases that you may have. Each phase will then have linked underneath it all relevant information and milestones that will enable you to move to the next phase.

For a demonstration, watch some highlights from our last project management webinar.

• Accessing and Integrating Disparate Resources
  Drag and drop all relevant files and web pages under the right requirement and project phase. One of the advantages of PersonalBrain’s visual interface is that one document can be linked under multiple categories and ideas. This will help you fully conceptualize your files and link all relevant Web pages in a way that reflect your project processes. (For more information how to integrate web pages and files watch my seminar Stop Searching Start Finding.)

• Clarifying Responsibilities and Expertise
  You should also create a Team Thought in your project brain and have Thoughts for all relevant parties. If you have an existing intranet site with bios you can link to their personal pages as attached Web pages for their Thoughts. Now you can connect people to their responsibilities and expertise so if you or your team has additional questions you will always know who to contact.

• Requirements Management and Impact Assessment
  By mind mapping out all your requirements you can visualize complex requirements and pieces of a process that can otherwise feel overwhelming. Furthermore, if requirements or other variables change you can instantly see what’s connected and therefore what impact these changes will have. This will help you anticipate any complications with changes and make more informed decisions about the future direction of the project.

3. PersonalBrain for Project Completion
Once your project is complete your brain has effectively captured your expertise through the process and will be a valuable resource and digital memory for future projects.

• Debriefing and Lessons Learned Thoughts
  After your project is complete adding in a Thought for lessons learned will help and your team evolve your processes and highlight what worked and what didn’t.

• Ongoing Responsibilities and Maintenance
  Many projects continue even after the original goals have been met. Create Thoughts for next steps or continuing duties. Now all your ideas and information resources for your ongoing responsibilities are instantly accessible and linked to all related information.

Success Visualized: This is What Thinking Looks Like
Overall whether you are collaborating on a project in BrainEKP or using PersonalBrain, the visual links and connections will provide you with the big picture on all your activities and next steps.

Gaining this kind of oversight and analysis enables project managers worldwide to rise above the inertia of daily tasks and keep higher overarching goals and key concepts at the forefront of their day. This will enable you to bring a new level of creativity and conceptual organization that just isn’t possible with a project file and scattered resources in various drives and folders. Additionally, your Brain’s instant activate feature and advanced search enable you to move quickly to different aspects of a project instantly so you can juggle many task and switch gears quickly.

Complete vision with integrated information assets…That’s knowledge driven project management and it will help make your project a success and take your vision to the next level with PersonalBrain.

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. 

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.