How I Organise My Balanced Life - Part 1 - Mind Mapping

Ive decided to write a series on Organisation and what tools I use to help keep me on track to My Balanced Life.

In this first blog of the series I want to go over something that I blogged about in one of my other blogs called "Mind Mapping Experiment". In that blog I wrote that I was using a peice of paper to make my Mind Maps, since then I have found an online programme that is FREE www.mindomo.com

I currently have 3 maps going

1 - My Lifestyle Design Map
This map in short is my long term goals map

2 - My Weekly Intensive Schedule
This is the map I use to plan my day to day project work, its my "to do list".

3 - My Ideas Map
This is where I stick all my ideas, inspiring or otherwise. At the end of each week I go through this map and log the ideas into either my Lifestyle Design Map or my Weekly Intensive Schedule, or both depending on the idea.

Today though, I want to share with you the 2nd map, my Weekly Intensive Schedule just to give you an idea of how I use this map as an organisation tool.

For the first 2 weeks of using it, I was scheduling up to 7 different tasks for the day and I can now say that for me its too scattered. Jumping from one project to another durring the day can sometimes mean that I have to stop something that I am doing to ensure that I meet my schedule.

Therefore I have re-evaluated my schedule and will now be focusing fully on one project per day. I will still keep my normal daily chores locked in, but the majority of my concentration will be focused in the one area rather than scattered between 4 or 5 different tasks.

This will also help to organise my thoughts. It will keep me on track and I wont feel guilty for not finishing every task on the list.

I dont slot tasks into certain times of the day, instead I allocate an amount of time to tasks so that I can work around my family. As long as I am working on the one topic I am hoping it will give me more momentom.

Unfortunately at this time I have no idea how to screen shot my mind map but as soon as I do I will be sure to add it to this post.

So, all in all I feel that the mind map is going to be a great asset to my life its just going to be a matter of the best way to use it.

If anyone uses another type of automated programme please feel free to share it in the comments section. I would also luv to  hear about the reasons why you use a particular system or site.