Are you a visual thinker with a lot on your mind? Try mind mapping to get all your thoughts out of your head and onto a screen where you can connect, rearrange, and elaborate.
What is a Mind Map?
You’ve probably drawn a mind map without realizing it had a name. (To be honest, organizing information in similar visual ways has been used for thousands of years.)
A mind map collects and organizes the details related to one concept. It works for outlining presentations, narratives, planning projects, conducting marketing campaigns, building org and team charts, and more.
This map from Wikipedia is a little crude, but gives you an idea of how mind maps work.
As another example, the image at the start of this post maps out the structure of topics for this blog.
Online Mind Mapping with MindMup
MindMup is a free, easy yet powerful mind mapping tool. I used it to create the map at the top of this post.
With MindMup, it’s intuitive to enter ideas and have them automatically connected. You can drag items to rearrange your map. It’s simple to insert new ideas anywhere along your map as well.
The easiest way to use the free version of MindMup is to install it as an app for Google Drive. Then, a mind map becomes just another type of new document you can create in Google Drive. Unlike other Google Drive documents, though, these mind maps cannot be collaboratively edited.
If you want collaborative editing, you’ll need the Personal Gold version, which is just $2.99 per month. It also lets you save your maps in the cloud.