These days very few of us leave our projects at the office. Taking work home or working remotely, while giving you the convenience of writing a proposal in your pajamas, is not without its challenges.

When we work remotely our attention can become very fleeting: the call of domestic chores, the cat swiping at the cursor… We only need to gaze out at the yard and our mind wanders from completing the monthly sales report to weekend yard work.

Creating an effective information environment that extends your projects and thinking beyond your physical office is absolutely paramount for home office productivity. Use PersonalBrain to bridge the gaps so you can focus on your tasks wherever you are, and gain a visual network of resources that keeps you at the top of your game.

Create a Focused Context for Action
In the age of distractions context is king for deep, focused, productive work. When you are surrounded by a lot of distractions, whether at home or the office, just activating an area in your Brain will help you concentrate and stay on task. Your Brain gives you an immediate visual briefing regardless of where you are working from.

Get into the RIGHT mental zone… by activating your “Project Thought” from PersonalBrain with all relevant information.

With PersonalBrain you can map out your business and mental landscape so when you need to access a document or work on a project the structure of your information conveys a context for your actions.  You can start organizing these areas of your Brain by mapping out all your company departments, projects and teams. This gives you a more intelligent place to put things and think about them.  Drag and drop all relevant information sources, key people, related ideas and future implications. Online resources, supporting files and key documents can all be launched from your Brain.

In addition to key projects, intangible to-dos and vaguely defined responsibilities can impede productivity and add an invisible level of stress to your day.  Create Thoughts for key areas of your responsibilities. Be sure to link your responsibilities to the relevant departments and company initiatives they fall under.

Task Management Tools Keep Your Head in the Game
For most knowledge workers self-management is critical.  Our projects have gotten bigger, and we don’t have a boss hovering over our shoulders. Self-discipline is key, especially when we work remotely.  Your digital Brain will help prevent you from falling behind and provide an increased level of awareness on your tasks.

Create Thought Types and tag Thoughts to further organize your projects.  I like to use different colored Thought Types to convey priority level and project work tiers.

Thought Types for “Green Lighted Projects” and your “Action Items” convey a visual priority when juggling multiple projects.

Use PersonalBrain to avoid falling behind and forgetting. Set reminder Thoughts for key projects and ideas so you can come back to them well in advance before they are due.

 
PersonalBrain has a built-in calendar so you can manage your schedule. Microsoft Outlook integration lets you drag and drop calendar items, emails, and more. On Mac OS X, Apple iCal integration lets you link to events in iCal.

PersonalBrain 6 now has Google Calendar synchronization so any meeting set up on Google will automatically appear in your Brain and vice-versa. You can even use the Google Calendar to sync your Brain’s calendar with Outlook and iCal.

Jump Right in Where You Left Off, No Matter Where You Are
The key advantage of having this information context is the ability to be productive anywhere. With PersonalBrain 6 your projects and tasks don’t have to be stuck on your office computer, you can work locally from any machine or online. Synchronize between home and office computers, even if you are using a PC at work and a Mac at home. PersonalBrain gives you secure synchronization across multiple platforms.

To synchronize your PersonalBrain across multiple machines setup a WebBrain account at http://webbrain.com  then click synchronize from the File menu to synchronize your Brain across the Web.

For more information on how to synchronize your Brain you can watch our WebBrain tutorial.

PersonalBrain synchronization makes ending your day at the office even easier. When you need to leave, you can take your Brain with you and resume your tasks productivity anytime.

                        Dr. Jonathan Schooler,
                        Discovering the Virtues of a Wandering Mind,
                        New York Times, June 28, 2010.

 
The media and experts alike are reporting on the virtues of a “wandering mind” to rise above daily hardships and keep people on course with long term goals.

To break through barriers you need to think beyond the immediacies of your day, generate new ideas and plan for the future.  But as Dr. Schooler notes – equally important is capturing ideas when they occur.  PersonalBrain can help you with both tasks: “productively wandering” and brainstorming, while serving as an easy capture tool so you can always remember your ideas.

Capture
Your PersonalBrain isn’t just for storing information. It’s your conceptual space. So don’t be afraid to create Thoughts and ideas in your Brain for their own sake. Any cool Web site or idea you stumble across should be added to your Brain. There is no limit to the amount of stuff that can go into your Brain. This is also a useful practice to stay focused because you can put things away with confidence and return to them at anytime. Information can be instantly retrieved in your Brain. Over time all these little snippets and additions form your digital memory.

With PersonalBrain’s easy capture and associative linking, your digital Thoughts become a semantic context for information retrieval. This will help you digest larger volumes of information faster and shift focus easily, because each Thought in PersonalBrain is surrounded by all related information in a meaningful context.  This context can further spur new ideas and connections.
 

You can also do more formal brainstorming in PersonalBrain. 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.

For more information on Brainstorming read: No Limits Brainstorming

Connect
New perspectives and in-depth thinking require expansive views and interconnections. The last thing any project manager or artist wants to do is limit their mind and overlook future possibilities. Yet by storing critical project details in linear folder hierarchies we are organizing by separation rather than connection.

PersonalBrain is designed so that any node can be linked to anything else. This flexible linking is an absolute requirement for creative thinking and innovation, just like how our own Brains connect ideas together in novel ways.

To be effective, information management and productivity tools must capture human meaning, those otherwise invisible, non-linear relationships and associations that impact all aspects of our projects and lives.  Gaining a broader picture of your ideas will help you draw new conclusions and gain a deeper understanding of your work. 

James Burke, science historian, author and television producer of the PBS documentary television series Connections advises to: “watch the news, and every day you see proof that the world is increasingly interlinked. Nowhere is too far away to matter. More than ever, we need to understand how other people and events across the world affect the way we live. Technologies like TheBrain are essential to help us do this.”

For more on James Burke and his use of PersonalBrain read:
Cogito Ergo Sum. I Think Therefore I Am

Wander into Your Mind
OK here comes the fun part. Once you have a Brain with some ideas and possibilities in it you can sit back and watch your Thoughts and connections with PersonalBrain’s Wander feature.  Just go to the Options menu and select “Wander”. Now see where your Brain takes you. 

To learn more on how to set your Brain up for “Wandering” watch our tip of the month.

So take a step back and reflect on your ideas. You will surprise yourself, remembering and discovering ideas that would otherwise be overlooked. This summer in your travel planning be sure to take a vacation into your own mind. It’s free of charge and quite possibly the most productive escape and ultimate adventure.

So often we have the most amazing ideas but sometimes our plans are only half realized.  If we don’t capture key ingredients before they are forgotten or overlooked, our projects won’t reach their full potential.

With PersonalBrain you can leverage the power of visual thinking to make your goals a reality. Here are seven essential steps to making your creative vision a reality. Be sure to download the template Brain and watch the recorded webinar at the end of this blog entry.

 
1. Identify Your True Passion
Sometimes we become preoccupied about an issue at work or a personal passion but never take the necessary steps to making it a reality. If you fall into this category then harnessing an obsession into a productive endeavor can literally change your life.  So take some time during your day and use PersonalBrain to identify key goals and challenges that will transform obsessions into productive new projects. Here are some Thoughts to help identify your passion or cause:

• I Spend the Most Time Thinking About…
• When I Grow Up I Want to Be…  (A Thought for all ages!!)
• In Two Years at this Company I Want to Be…

This is a really fun exercise and it’s your own PersonalBrain, so nothing is off limits.

For more information on creating a Brain on yourself read “Your Autobiographical Brain”

 
2. Define Success
The key to making your vision a reality is defining success. Your grand vision is probably really amazing, but to get things off the ground you need to get your ideas out of your head and into a system where you can reflect, expand and work on your goal in a more explicit fashion.

Success begins by breaking down your dream and making each piece a workable reality. Now, I’m not suggesting you create some mundane spreadsheet or MS project file. Keep your creative juices flowing and digitize your ideas… Fun right?

The Thoughts in PersonalBrain are designed to mimic the way you think and they will keep you focused.  Create a Thought for every outcome you wish to achieve. Then add child Thoughts that will begin to further support and visualize a course for achieving your goal.

 
3. Recognize Obstacles
If our goals were easy, we would have already achieved them. With any project there are challenges, risks and obstacles. Create Thoughts for key issues and risks. This will help you devise a plan of attack and implement a strategy to deal with the issues. Moreover, these Thoughts will ensure that relevant obstacles are not overlooked when things are running smoothly. Example Thoughts for this area can include:

• Obtaining Management Approval
• Overcoming Objections
• Disaster and Risk Management Planning
• Securing Funding
• Finding the Right Experts

 
4. Craft a Plan
Once you have a defined goal and identified risks you can create Thoughts for execution.  What’s key for creative project management is setting up a natural but diligent system of organization. You need to implement a project management process that doesn’t impede results.

Microsoft Project and Gantt charts are the conventional solutions here. However, in my experience working on creative projects I’ve found that many people feel stifled by their lack of user friendliness, tedious contingencies and rigid displays. PersonalBrain is great for project management regardless of how you feel about these applications.

• If you have project documents and charts, go ahead and drag and drop them into PersonalBrain. You can keep track of versions, add notes and connect them to other resources.

• If you are not keen on Microsoft Project and similar project management software, you will find PersonalBrain to be a refreshing alternative. Create Thoughts in your Brain for key milestones, phases and team members. Now you can stay on top of key steps and phases in a more inspiring context.

You can even visualize other project management methodologies in your Brain like the Natural Planning Project Model from David Allen’s Getting Things Done.

For more information on Using PersonalBrain for Project Management read “From Ideas to Action”

 
5. Capture References and Inspirations
References and inspirations are an absolutely critical step in actualizing your creative vision. 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 knowledge base 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 PersonalBrain 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: what things should look like, and what they shouldn’t. This is where PersonalBrain’s zoomable icons and screen capture feature will come in handy.

To learn how to add images to your Thoughts in PersonalBrain watch our video tutorial on Adding Images and Thought Icons.

 
6. Rally Your Alliances
Another key ingredient to making your creative vision a reality is alliances:  people, colleagues and friends that you can call upon to help you achieve results. Create Thoughts for people that can help you succeed. Alliance Thoughts include:

• Executive Sponsorship
• Friends and Family
• Industry Associations
• Past Work References
• Academic and Industry Leaders

Once the key people are in your Brain you can link them to their roles in your project, and add notes on their tasks. This will make your meetings and interactions with them more productive.

For more information on visualizing people networks read “Everyone Is Connected. It’s Time to See the Links”.

 
7. Track Outcomes and Lessons Learned
Finally for every project it’s important to evaluate your outcome and results. The good news is by organizing everything in PersonalBrain your vision becomes part of your digital memory so months from now you will be able to retrieve critical thinking and information like it was yesterday. Now you can identify critical elements that lead to the right results and instantly reference past work.

In fact, you can even set your Brain to “Wander”. This feature puts your Brain on self-navigation so you can sit back and look at your thinking. It’s like dreaming but you are wide awake. I use this feature after brainstorming. You can adjust the speed of animation in Preferences > Advanced.

Whether you are activating a Thought for your next project or using Wander, your digital Brain will pleasantly surprise and inspire you. You can take an idea from inception to its fruition, and your digital Thoughts will always remain a reflection and testament of your personal vision.

Creative Vision Resources

Watch the webinar “By Design with PersonalBrain” Download the “Creative Vision Template Brain”

Accidental Autobiography:  Your Digital Mind

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What David has in his Brain under 1959

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

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

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

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

-David Allen

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And the most extreme answer was …

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

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

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

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

Resources for Knowing Thyself

Online template

Download BrainZIP template

“Getting Things Done”  Recorded Webinar Featuring David Allen

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

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

Part 4 Q&A with David Allen

Full Recording Now

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sincerely… Droku

Contact Droku via email: droku@droku.com