I am into mind mapping, that’s true. I use it for only several months now but the boost in my creativity was huge.

I come to the level where I am mapping almost any important activity. The result is fantastic. It helps me stay focused on doing, as well as letting me enough room to actually improve what I’m doing. Let’s say I want to kick-start a project in my company, just a little completion or add-on to one of my sites. The first thing I do is to fire my mind mapping application of choice (and that would be now Mind Manager), quickly draw some topics, save the map, and take a break. I review the map after a certain interval. Some times it can be several minutes, sometimes it can be several days. But I am always sure that I will find in my mind map all the thoughts related to that project. It’s only after carefully crafting my mind map that I go to the next level, of actually organizing and planning it, assigning resources, establishing deadlines, etc. And you know what? It’s actually working: it saves me time, and it let me focus.

Well, as we all know, blogging is one of the most interesting activities these days, right? I think you wouldn’t be reading this if it wouldn’t . Why it can’t be mind mapped? Why not make a template, or a list, or a guideline – ok, now, you could name it whatever you want – and keep it close to my eyes whenever I am into blogging? It took me barely one hour to quickly draw this map and start detailing it a bit.

It’s pretty clear that blogging for me is a 5 steps action: writing, presenting, promoting, interacting, and monetizing. All those steps are topics in the mind map, and from each first level topic other sub-topics are branched, until each habit, intention or sub-activity related to blogging is exhausted. The number and the deepness of each topic also shows how important is that topic for me. It’s pretty obvious that the left part of the map, involved in the actual creation of content, is more important now, as I am still at the beginning of the journey.

You can freely use the map as a quick-start for your blogging activities. You can also add your contributions to this map, if you find other interesting activites or approaches. And keeping me posted about those additions would be nice, by the way .

The map in MindManager format is available for a free download here: Blogging With A Mind Map (2100) .

If you don’t have MindManager, you can download a free viewer from here. But if you really want to have the real stuff, you can download a 30 days trial version, start mastering it, and then take a chance in our contest. We do have a free license for the most innovative use of MindManager. Submissions ends on March 10th, so hurry up!

[tags]blogging, mind mapping, contest, productivity[/tags]