Getting Things Done With Simple Mindmaps

By Meredith Eisenberg

This is the simple story of how I finally managed to come up with a task management system that works for me based on five simple principles and a great planning tool. Using this system, I had my most productive month ever last month. Here's how I did it.

My addiction to productivity systems goes back a LONG way. I was one of those "one armed bandits" who wandered around with my gigantic day planner (thus, effectively disabling one arm and limiting my ability to get things done. In the online world, I have tried many different flavors of getting things done and used systems ranging from remember the milk, toodledoo, basecamp, priacta, etc. I would do great for a month or but then my lists would once again get completely overwhelming.

This past August, was my busiest month so far in my practice. Lots of new clients and exciting projects -- but not so much time. Fortunately, in a particularly desparate moment (funny how the universe works that way), I got an e-mail from Bob the Teacher offering up a fabulous "productivity package" with mind mapping tools (using a free mind mapping program called freemind) at a reasonable price. I bought the package - because I wanted his pre-done productivity map.

My new mindmap has branches for each month, then each week, then every day. Within the day, there are three "buckets" now, later and finished. As I went through the day, I could move tasks from one branch to the next. Using the now branch, I can keep track of the task that I'm currently doing (very handy for coming back to work after an interruption. The finished section is also a morale booster -- it is great to look back and see what you've gotten done for the day. I tweaked Bob's model, by adding "delegated/waiting for branch". I work very closely with a select few clients. I needed to have a place to park things that were "in progress" and/or waiting for a response from someone else before I could proceed.

Mindmaps are also good for people with mild ADD (like me). I can collapse the individual branches and only work on the task at hand. Looking at the whole map at once can seem very overwhelming.

After using the mindmap for a few weeks, I decided that the reason why my past time management systems didn't work was because they were way too complicated. I used to slice and dice my tasks by client, by context (phone, computer, home, errand) -- but all the sorting caused tasks to fall through the cracks. Giant lists of tasks that are "someday/maybe" can also be demoralizing if they are in view all the time. For my actual to do list, the mindmap is working very well for me. I still use Basecamp to track and monitor individual client projects - I move my to do's from those projects over to my mindmap.

In playing with productivity systems for almost 30 years (could it be that long? I guess I started young....) I've discovered different methods work for different people. What works for you?

JOB, JOBS, EMPLOYMENT

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