Mind Mapping With View Your Mind

Mind mapping is a powerful way to stimulate the creative thinking process. It is a form of a complex doodle with ideas generating out from a central word or phrase. The process can be infinite as the new child words become hubs to generate more ideas. Mind mapping can be done by hand with nothing but a supply of paper and a set of colored pencils or felt tip pens. However, I think it is a lot more fun and much easier to manipulate ideas with one of the many software programs which range from free to expensive.

While playing with a linux distribution, I discovered View Your Mind. It is free and available in all the distributions I have looked at. There have also been several downloads available for windows. It is easy to generate a complex diagram in just a few minutes. After a first few branches, you will find yourself looking at ideas you had never thought of before. It gets better. In the top toolbar, there is a set of icons that can be clicked on to add one or more after any heading in the diagram.

Just thinking about whether or not to add an icon is a great aid in evaluating your ideas. It also leaves a trail to remind you of your preferences. Each icon comes with an alt tag for its suggested use. Here they are:

Red Exclamation Mark - Take Care!
Red Question Mark - Really?
Green Check - ok!
Red X - not ok!
Stop Sign - This won't work!
Smiley Face - Good!
Sad Face - Bad!
Surprised Face - Oh no!
Clock - Time Critical
Telephone - Call...
Light Bulb - Idea!
Blue Arrow Up - Important!
Blue Arrow Down Not important!
Double Blue Arrow Up - Very important!
Double Blue Arrow Down - Not very important!
Thumbs Up - I like this.
Thumbs Down - I don't like this.
Rose - Rose
Heart - I love this...
Gift Box With Ribbon - Surprise!
Lightning bolt - Dangerous
Infomark - info
Life ring preserver - This will help.

These can be your own personal code. There is no reason that they have to mean exactly the same thing to every user. It is your doodle or mind map. I like to use the clock for ideas I have just thought about but which must be acted on today or they are worthless. The heart is good for marking those ideas that you are passionate about. You are more likely to produce a higher quality and quantity of work if you focus on these. These are just a few suggestions. Start mind mapping and you will find a use for all of these cute little icons.