Idea Magic – Why I need to start using mind maps more

I just recently wrote my article Productivity Pitfalls, and it took me quite a bit longer to finish and post than I expected it would. The article is nearly 5,500 words long, which is pretty damn long, and while writing it, I kept thinking of more content to add to it while I was in the process of writing it. With pretty much all of my articles in the past, I would choose a topic and just start typing the blog post. For most of my articles, this method worked just fine. I think this was because my essays were traditionally pretty short. Well, this time was undoubtedly different… but more on that in a few minutes.

Watched “Idea Magic” by The Sweet Setup

The Sweet Setup held a live webinar that I believe they invited me to attend. I wasn’t able to participate in the live webinar because of things going on at work (it was in the middle of the workday). I started to watch the recording of that webinar recently (you can watch it here), and the genius of using a mind map set in very quickly. While watching, I realized how much easier my life could have been on my longer article.

Hindsight is Always 20/20

As they were talking through the reasons why to start with a mind map, it hit me like a ton of bricks. I fell into all of the traps while writing my long articles. Here is just a shortlist of them:

• Kept having to re-read my content and adjust, lengthening the time it took to finish
• Kept adding additional topics to discuss as they occurred to me while writing, which didn’t happen early on because I wasn’t looking at the overall bigger picture
• Had to edit the flow of the post several times
• Missed my (self-imposed) deadline by two weeks
• I’m already always short on time to make my deadline

I will touch more on each of these below.

Elegance in Free-Flowing Thought & Ideation

As I watched the “Idea Magic” video, which is essentially an ultra-condensed version of the pay-for mind map course, my eyes began to open even more. The elegance and beauty of the mind map process became obvious to me. I also was kind of blown away at all of the use cases they were bringing up that I never thought to use a mind map for. Mike Schmitz, who is the main person delivering the pay-for course, talked about using a mind map for book notes, or any type of learning. Taking notes was one example that hadn’t occurred to me, but once I saw what he did and the reasoning behind it, I adopted that method for my notes on the whole Mastering Mind Maps (Pro) course as I started to go through it!

The more I use mind maps for various use cases, the more comfortable they become to create. I am using them these days for all kinds of thought processes.

What was I waiting for??

I knew the mind map training that I had already bought would be useful, but I guess not knowing what I would learn and not knowing what kind of time investment I was in for held me back from starting. The “Idea Magic” video, with its one-hour run-time, felt like an easy way to see what it was about.

Once I started seeing all of the great things you can do with a mind map and how I could apply it in my life and specifically writing my blog, I felt like a bit of an idiot for not having started going through the training already.

I don’t even think I got past 50% of the Idea Magic video before I logged into my account on The Sweet Setup and started digging into the actual pay-for training. Based on seeing how Mike Schmitz used MindNode for recording his book notes, I decided to create a mind map of the mind map training itself! I like how using a mind map in this way flows and allows you to capture notes about a topic. I can see myself using this for most of the non-fiction books I read too.

Minutes on the Front-end Saves Hours on the Back-end

As I got through some of the mind map training, I had ideas firing about how I could have saved myself a ton of time if I had simply created a mind map of my long Productivity post and got to see the article as a whole. Looking at the big picture in this way allows you to flesh out all of the different topics and sections of the material.

I started this post as a mind map and was able to fiddle with the various ideas I wanted to share. These became the sections for the post and would then prompt my brain to write the content related to it. I was able to rearrange things freely, and it allowed me to see how things should flow. Once I was finished with the mind map, writing the content was quick and easy.

Using this method on my previous article/s would have saved me a ton of time. I probably would have been able to finish it closer to on-schedule, if not even delivering on the day I originally intended to.

Playing it Loose

What I have always done is what I would call “playing it loose.” Meaning, the only “plan” I had was writing content around an idea. Like I have said, when things aren’t complex, this generally works fine. But when things are more significant and complex, it is hard to wrap your head around the big picture when you are writing linearly. It causes you to have to re-read things to both make sure you are still on-topic or figure out where that new thought you just had should go in the overall post.

My long post took a really long time

As I mentioned earlier, I ran into several problems that slowed me down. I will cover them here in a little more detail.

• Kept having to re-read my content and adjust, lengthening the time it took to finish
  • As I was writing, I would think of something else that I wanted to add to the article. Not knowing exactly where it fits within the content meant that I keep having to stop, re-read most of the article, and then figure out the best place to start writing the new content. If the article was short, this might not be a big deal, but once you are 2,000 words, it becomes an arduous task… each time.
• Kept adding additional topics to discuss as they occurred to me while writing, which didn’t happen early on because I wasn’t looking at the overall bigger picture
  • The reason I highlight that my thoughts and ideas didn’t arrive early in the writing phase is that there is a significant difference in how this plays out. When creating an outline of headings without content, you can see how things fit together and the flow reasonably easy. Once you have hundreds of words and headings are reasonably far apart, you have to scroll a lot and don’t have the same overall vision of the content together. One might argue that creating an outline alone could have solved this issue. That is true to a point, but mind maps are radiant thinking versus linear thinking of outlines. The process is different and more freeing.
• Had to edit the flow of the post several times
  
  • I’m sure it’s evident by now, but as I was re-reading and adding things, then re-reading again to make sure it made sense, then having to make changes and re-read again… it added a ton of time. Time I didn’t have.
• Missed my (self-imposed) deadline by two weeks
  
  • While I don’t make any money off of my blog, I am still trying to be consistent with my regularity of posting. The fact that I didn’t post another article until three weeks from my last post isn’t great. Not that I have people following my blog closely, but if I did, they might have wondered what happened… or even went elsewhere. Again, not that I’m in this situation, but I guess I am seeing if I could get there with perseverance.
• I’m already always short on time to make my deadline
  
  • This was the key and eye-opener for me. Since I only write my blog in my personal time, and because I have other responsibilities in my personal life with five kids and a wife that also need me, anything I can do to speed up my creative process is a massive win for me. What I have noticed is that creating a mind map is pretty quick and painless. This provides my outline for the article, and then I just write the content for each section. Because I already thought those primary ideas/topics through during the mind map, the material flows freely when I sit down to write.

Shorten the creative cycle

I now see that mind maps can help seriously shorten the creative process. For writing articles, it is not the entire act of writing, but it helps flesh out and organizes your main thoughts, which then accelerates the full writing process.

START with a mind map (after the initial idea, of course)

I am still capturing my ideas with Drafts. This is usually done on my Apple Watch unless I am literally using one of my other devices when something comes to me.

Once I have the initial ideas or topics, I choose one that feels right at the moment and then start mind mapping it out (now).

This allows me to:

• Flesh out the post before actually working on individual section’s content
• Move things around, so they make sense
• See the bigger picture
• Even come back to the mind map if something new occurs to me to make sure it fits in the larger picture

One of the other benefits is the ability to see early on whether or not the idea/topic is the thing I want to write at the moment. Sometimes I would start writing out a post and sort of get “writer’s block,” which I would then put in my “Backburner” folder to come back to later. However, with trying to write the article in this fashion, I might waste one or two days of my writing time, which then means I have less time to finish whatever piece I will finish.

If I instead use a mind map to flesh out my ideas, I will probably know within 20-30 minutes whether or not something feels off. This allows me to “fail fast” and get back on track.

Export my mind map?

I am not sure if I will continue with exporting my mind map from MindNode as a markdown file, but I did for this post. It’s a multi-step process, unfortunately, where I have to save it as a file and then open that file with Ulysses. I am sure I can automate this through Siri Shortcuts or on my Mac using something like Hazel or Automator, but it’s not a terrible process as is.

What this process does give me are all my hierarchical headings and even bullet points. All of the headings and bullets in this article came into Ulysses for me through the MindNode export. I changed what a few said, but the heart of what came in persists. And I guess that’s the point with mind mapping. It allows you to create and capture the soul of things without getting buried in the details. This is freeing in a way.

So, breaking this down, below is what I have learned in this short time using mind maps. Specifically, the MindNode software, along with using Ulysses for my writing. Based on this, I see my new workflow, and what I did for this article individually, the following:

• Mindnode provides the ability to export your mind map as a Markdown document
• Bringing the Markdown document into Ulysses offers a great starting point with all my headings (less to type)
• Convert basic thoughts (nodes that become headings or bullets) into prose

To break this image down into words (see my previous post on my workflow for additional details), it goes a little something like this:

• I get an idea or a thought for a blog post
• I quickly capture it into Drafts (usually through Drafts on my Apple Watch using dictation)
• I then decide on one of my ideas to use for a post
• I bring the concept into MindNode on one of my devices (it works on my iMac, iPad, and iPhone) and start fleshing things out
  • The image doesn’t include what happens if I am not feeling something for that week. In that case, it goes into my “Backburner” folder in Ulysses so I can play with it more later. If I play with it again and it still doesn’t feel right, it can go back in my “Ideas” folder if it only doesn’t feel right now, or I can decide it’s not worth anything and throw it out.
• While in MindNode I can move things around quickly, even changing the parent node, etc., and this creates my linear outline
  • There is also a sidebar in MindNode that shows you the outline, and you can move things around there
• At this time, I am exporting my mind map to a markdown file in iCloud Drive. I can then open this markdown file in Ulysses and move it to the appropriate folder. The result of the markdown export is all of the headings with the proper header levels. For the fourth level, it brings these in as bullet points.
• Once I have this, it becomes the bones of the article, and I can start writing the content for each section. At times it makes sense to change the headings to be more bold or concise.
• Once I am happy with the article, I run it through Grammarly to make sure I am writing correctly and not missing things (I don’t have a human editor). I am currently doing this on my iPad using the Grammarly iOS keyboard (I have even done much of this workflow from my iPhone in a pinch).
• Once things are polished, I use Ulysses to publish to my WordPress site as a draft.
• I try to give myself 24 hours to sleep on it and re-read it before I schedule it to post publicly, where you all get to read it.

I’m pretty happy with this workflow for now. As I said, I have started using mind maps for all kinds of things. Organizational topics, plans for a new fish tank, presentations I need to pull together, etc. It’s crazy how many areas of life you can use mind maps… and they never occurred to me until watching the video and training from the brilliant people over at The Sweet Setup. I am thrilled I found their site and invested in all of their training. It is money very well spent!!

Conclusion

This particular article is over 2,500 words. The mind map portion took me around 30 minutes, and the rest of the writing for this probably only took me a few hours to finish. That is seriously quick compared to some of my past articles that were similar in length! I am blown away with how easily the words flowed out. I really believe this is because I thought up most of it while creating the mind map itself.

MindNode is an application that I have owned since version 1.0 and kept buying the upgrades for. I couldn’t wrap my brain around how to use it well, but I knew it was an important app. When The Sweet Setup reached out to me, since I was a customer that had bought all of their training, and asked if I would be interested in a course on mind mapping and MindNode specifically, I enthusiastically said, “YES PLEASE!!” I related to them how I have continually bought MindNode and have wanted to put it to good use, but for whatever reason, I struggled to find methods for it. I may have figured some of this out on my own if I ever gave it the time it deserved or found other training/videos, but I simply LOVE the training style of the folks at The Sweet Setup. I highly recommend their training to everyone I encounter. I can say, much of their stuff has had a profound impact on me… as corny as that might sound. 😁