FreeMind Mind Mapping Software

Greetings,

Over the years I have learned about the concept of Mind Mapping and have at various times used this process to solve problems or create a website. Most times I just use a pen and a pad of paper. The problem I've run into is that I have too many sheets of paper with ideas on them.

My process for organizing these sheets of paper is to stack them and then shuffle them. I have stacks of papers and notebooks and even a napkin or two with what I am certain are brilliant ideas and money making schemes. Every so often I shuffle through these papers and try to read my handwriting and get an idea of what I was thinking.

Obviously, this has not worked very well. I have hundreds of sheets and a dozen yellow pads and notebooks full of things I can't read or understand.

While Googling for "mind mapping", I came upon an open source program called FreeMind.

With this free program, I am able to create mind maps on my computer of all my brilliant and not so brilliant ideas and projects.

As an example as I was brainstorming about a recent training session I was planning I was able to type in all my ideas as they came to me. After I had about 20 items I was able to organize them by type or catagory and create a heiracrchy of tasks.

A great feature of the program is the ability to add hyperlinks. I can link to either a web page or a file on my local hard drive. This saves valuable time trying to find a source.

Give it try and let me know what you think.

Marc