Stress: Improve Your Life by Becoming an Imperfectionist - Lifehacker
You can free yourself from stress caused by the “burden of perfection” by embracing imperfection, according to the Daily Cents weblog.
A free webinar from Roger C. Parker. I’ve been fortunate to have taken part in his webinars in the past and can tell you that this will probably both inspire and inform you.
Learn how to use mind mapping to plan, write, promote, and profit from a book!
Attend this free webinar and learn how to use MindManager to Plan, Write, Promote, and Profit from a book that promotes your business and your career.
If you don’t already have Chuck Frey’s “Power Tools & Strategies for Mind Mapping Software,” it looks like this week is the time to buy it.
The Mind Mapping Software Weblog: Price reduced on my new e-book for one week only
In line with that mission, I have decided to reduce the price of my new e-book from $29.95 to $9.95, for one week only. This special price will only last until 11:59 p.m. Central U.S. time on Monday, October 1, 2007.
… this time with a fake palindrome name!
» Stealth: Imindi thought engine - Silicon Florist
Currently in stealth mode but scheduled to launch in the coming weeks, Portland-based Imindi promises to bring the visual aspects of traditional mind-mapping software to a broader spectrum of activities. The aggressive product vision, outlined on the Imindi blog, has the product helping with everything from collaborative writing to collaborative search to social bookmarking.
Note: In case you’re wondering about this series, one of my all-time favorite books happens to be “A Perfect Mess: The Hidden Benefits of Disorder.” It is not about “Chaos Theory” which actually discusses things that are extremely ordered but don’t seem to be so. It’s about how not being so fussy can be good for you. If you haven’t read it yet, do yourself a favor.
The Pursuit of Order Is Making a Mess - Newsweek: International Editions - MSNBC.com
In a small room at the University of British Columbia, students wearing headphones are listening to noise. No, it’s not an indie band’s shred solo blasting through an iPod. The students are participating in an experiment at the school’s Psychophysics and Cognitive Neuroscience Lab, and the noise consists of random static generated by a computer. The question at hand: how badly does a scratchy cacophony interfere with thought?
I don’t know if anyone else has done this yet, but I made these and I find them handy and maybe some of you will as well. They are GTD incompletion lists turned into MindManager templates. What I do is, I start a new mind map, add branches tagged as tasks to the branches in the templates, and then sync with Outlook. I then delete the maps, because I use a master Outlook task map. It is, for me anyway, a nice way to do a brain dump and get everything into Outlook in a visual environment. I use them as a cognitive funnel.
There are separate templates for business + personal, business only, and personal only.
Download: GTD Incompletion Trigger List MindManager Templates
Don’t miss the chance to participate in Chuck’s research. The results will be immensely useful and interesting.
Please participate in my new survey of web-based mind mapping tools
To better understand how people are utilizing these tools and what the potential impact of this type of online tool is likely to be, I’ve decided to conduct a brief survey on this technology.
I enjoyed this thorough and considerate article about concept mapping and education.
Coming from this class, I read the subtitle heading, “Tools for Negotiating Meaning,” and assumed that the teacher was using the tool of concept mapping to provide meaning to his/her students. I was interested as I continued to read to see how much deeper this subtitle truly went.
One of the most important things that you can do for yourself and your audience when you are considering a solution that involves visual mapping is to ask yourself the right questions about how your solution will be deployed.
One of the most important of these questions that you can ask yourself is:
What visual mapping methodology or mix of methodologies will best express the output of my thinking process in this situation?
There has been an incredible amount of work done in the area of visual thinking. Much of this is academic, or specialized to work in certain fields, but there are many choices that are appropriate for regular general use. Mind mapping is one of the most useful and flexible, partly because of its special limitations. It is easy to make a mind map that is overlarge, but it isn’t too easy to create one that is overcomplicated. Where mind maps are not appropriate, there is usually another excellent choice. I will ignore linear methods such as flow charts and very specialized methods such as Unified Modeling Language and Conceptual Graphs for now and concentrate on very general, dynamic means of knowledge representation.
Here are some basic guidelines when deciding how to express different kinds of visual maps. For each technique, I will list pros and cons, and a sampling of useful software tools.
2D Mind Map, or Idea Map
Nodes radiate out from a single central node. Each node may have an unlimited number of child nodes. Each node except the central node also has one parent and may have an unlimited number of siblings. It is sort of like a tree in the shape of a circle.
Strengths: Lending hierarchical structure to unstructured data or ideas, as in categorizing lists or brainstorming or certain kinds of problem-solving. Mind maps can be freely annotated with text and pictures.
Weaknesses: Mind mapping doesn’t work well when you need flexible relationships among nodes that are cousin or siblings or one another, or a child node having two parent nodes, or many nodes linking to one another in a single diagram that aren’t hierarchically related. It works best in a tree-like structure. Non parent / child relationships can only be indicated by drawing lines between nodes, which can be cumbersome due to the overall circular, nested shape of the diagram.
Software tools: MindManager, FreeMind, NovaMind, Cayra, MindMeister, bubbl.us, Tinderbox
3D Mind Map
Each node has an unlimited number of parents, children, and siblings and any node can be related to any other node in any way that is not paradoxical (a child can’t be its parent node’s parent, etc.). You could describe it as a sphere with a surface that may change almost entirely as it rotates. There is no real central node as in a 2D mind map. Any node can be centralized, contextualizing the presentation of the map, making the relationships radiating from the central node most prominent until another node is centralized. The relationships themselves can be annotated in some tools, similar to concept or topic maps.
Strengths: Almost arbitrarily complex relationships among potentially huge sets of nodes. Surprising insight can be gained into relations inherent to the data set being visualized by just moving around in the map and playing with linking things together.
Weaknesses: 3D mind maps can be challenging to present in printed form and can become overly complicated because so much data can be accommodated by them, all of which is somehow related.
Software tools: PersonalBrain, Cayra, Tinderbox
A Cayra hybrid:
Topic Map, Concept Map, Semantic Network
These are really three different types of diagrams, but they are very similar. They consist of set of typed or untyped nodes connected by typed or untyped lines that are either directional arrows or just lines. They can be more or less formal. There is an ISO standard for topic maps. They tend to be less friendly and a bit more complicated than mind maps, but sometimes convey more information. One node is related to any number of other nodes, and the relationships are usually described (”has a”, “is a”, “loves”, “begins with”). Concept maps are probably the most generally useful of this lot primarily because they tend to be the least formal.
Strengths: Fluid or no hierarchy. Descriptions of arbitrarily complex relationships can be represented. Attempts at combining seemingly unrelated ideas and topics may produce surprisingly useful results. These diagrams are often excellent for diagramming things that lead to complex, difficult-to-read prose.
Weaknesses: If you are not describing something that is pretty formal and limited, these diagrams can be sort of vague. They can also be hard to read if they are on the large side.
Software tools: Tinderbox, CmapTools, Cayra
Venn Diagram
A Venn Diagram is a picture of two or more interlinked circles representing contrasting ideas. Topics are placed in one circle if they apply only to one of the ideas. If a topic applies to two ideas that are next to each other, it is placed in the area where the circles overlap. This diagram has its origin in set theory.
Strengths: Venn diagrams a very good at illustrating comparisons.
Weaknesses: They are good for almost nothing else.
Software tools: Inspiration, SmartDraw, ConceptDraw
In part two of the Visual Thinking Skills: Architecture series we’ll discuss sharing the visual maps we create.
Via Ed Vielmetti, here’s an interesting story about the hidden benefits of disorder.
Town ditches traffic lights to cut accidents | U.S. | Reuters
“BERLIN (Reuters) - A town council in Germany has decided the best way of improving road safety is to remove all traffic lights and stop signs downtown.”
