Why do I like Mind Manager?
I seem to have fallen in love with Mind Manager, and I've only been using it for a month now. I have
tried Mind Mapping tools in the past, and have not developed my use of them. I fell to wondering
why Mind Manager is so useful to me.
The answer is not, strangely enough, in its mind mapping capabilities. It is fairly rigid in its layout
options, which is not very conducive to extensive free-hand mind mapping IMO (I may be wrong - I
am not good at it, being more literal than imaginative). As it happens, it is more of an 'outlining'
tool for me, but with a great deal of latitude in the layout.
This is probably why it works so well for me. I was using outlining tools avidly as far back as the
80's. When I had 640kb, I had 64kb in DOS RAM as a background outline tool at all times (I forget
the name, now). It ran my daily tasks, although I must admit to spending at least as much time
organising tasks as doing them (that has not changed a bit).
But an outline tool is not the only solution. Where Mind Manager really shines is in the linking to
all sorts of things: Files, URLs, Emails, Tasks, Contacts, Folders on my PC. This is just about
everything involved with my day-to-day activities. That means I can use Mind Manager to organise
all the peripheral details relating to my task.
How do I use Mind Manager:
As an example, I have to contact Fred about a meeting last week on Project 'X'
I have a Mind Map of Project 'X'. On one branch is a list of meetings. I added this meeting from an
appointment in my Outlook calendar. Start, end topic and location are imported. If there are loads
of meetings for a project I may split the map off to a linked map, which is really easy to do.
From there I wrote notes as topics during the meeting.
I received the Minutes, and imported them directly from the email. Opened the attached Word doc
in the browser, selected the relevant text and pasted onto another topic in the Meeting. I did the
same with the participants and action items. If the minutes are well laid out, I can paste it all in
one go.
If I need to contact anyone, I can just link the Outlook contact to the attendee name.
If I have any action items I can make a task in Outlook, or just set an alert and let the Mind
Manager alert me. An Outlook task would go to my phone as well, so I do that if it is time critical
(it hassles me more than my computer).
When I find the information I need, I just link it to the Action item Topic, say a URL, or a
document, or just a note. When the time is right, I open the contact and phone or email the
response, and set the task as done.
That is just one example. Another is for enhancement requests in the systems be develop:
I get an email requesting a change. I open the relevant Mind Map with the project. I add the email,
and set a task. I keep 'snoozing' the task until I relent and make the change. It's easy to open the
file from the Mind Manager map directly.
I make the change, copy the email text to explain the details of the change, and add the
functionality I added or changed to accommodate the request. I move the old update details and
build number to a 'history' topic, and replace it with the new details (there could have been several
of these) and increment the build number.
When all changes are made, I package it up as a Compiled Help Manifest (CHM) file, and it
includes the following:
Build number
Changes in this version
Latest files
The history of changes made to this system
All in one place, recorded and stored ready to be emailed to customer.
Importing existing or new data:
Another neat ability is to import data. Typically I will import Word documents such as
Requirements. I can also import or paste in any text. Typically each paragraph becomes a topic. I
arrange them under headings, then use Olympic Utilities to select sub-topic and make them into
combined notes (You can just copy and then make a note and paste it in, but I'm lazy).
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