Mind Mapping for Beginners, 2021. Learn how to effectively Brain Dump and Manage your To-Do list.

1. Mind Mapping: Hi, and welcome to the course. Now if you're watching this, then you may already have some understanding about mind mapping. But before we jump into the details, get our hands dirty and start building maps, let's agree on some of the basics. A mindmap, at its most basic, is a diagram of pieces of information which are connected to each other in a patent. And the purpose is to visually organize that information to help you quickly and easily achieve a goal. Now, that goal might be solving a problem or brainstorming and new ideas. Taking meeting notes, documenting a book or a course that you might be studying. You could be performing research. You might be planning a project, or you might simply just be keeping track of your to-do list or the to-do lists of your employees. Basically, if you're doing anything that requires some form of organization, then a mindmap can really help. It can even help you reduce work or project related stress. Taking all of the noise and the loose ends up bouncing around your head and helping you document them, prioritize them, and get them done. And in fact, we show you specifically how to do that later on in the course when we talk about brain dumps. So why is a mindmap a better option than a simple to-do list? Well, by using a map, you get a picture of your information, which helps you understand patterns and similarities between items, the status of different items, priorities, groupings, and relationships between items. Now a mind map is actually made up of a pretty short list of different elements. And those elements are the building blocks of a mind-map. Learning about those elements and how to use them is key to effective mind-mapping. And there's only a shortlist of these elements that you need to know about. So don't worry, this isn't a long learning curve. So as my mapping is a memory organization and learning tool, it makes perfect sense for you to learn about my mapping by actually making a mind map. So when you're ready, meet me in the next lesson, where I will introduce you to some free mindmapping software that we're going to use. And then you and I are going to build our first mind-map together. Thank you for your time. 2. Download Xmind: Well, hello and welcome back. In this lesson, we're going to download the software that we're going to use for the remainder of the course. And it's called X mind. And you can find it at x mine dotnet. Now the version we want to download is the X-Men 2020 version, which you can click on the menu at the top here. X my 2020 is a free download. You will be able to use this software for as long as you want without making a payment. Hello, from time to time when you log into x, it will show you this subscribe window. However, this is not compulsory to get past this a tribe window. You can simply close the window that displays that subscribe message and continue to use x mine in trial version, you don't have to pay for it. So once you get to act mine dotnet, and you've chosen the X-Men 2020 option, simply click Free Download. Once you click that button, you'll be able to download the software to your computer. And then once your software has finished downloading, please simply install it as you would any other piece of software. If you get any pop-ups asking you to give permissions to the software to make changes on your system. For example, in please say yes to those problems. Once your software has installed, please open it. And you will see a screen that looks something like this, asking you to create a new account with X mind. So why don't you go ahead and open an account for free right now and then login the x Mike. And if at that point you're presented with another window that asks you to take a tour or a trial of the software, simply decline that and meet me in the very next lesson. Thank you very much. 3. The Parts of a Mind Maps: Welcome back. In this lesson, we're going to look at the elements that make up a mindmap. Now this lesson is about the individual elements, the structures that we use inside a mind map in this course. Don't worry yet about how we use the software to actually add these elements into the Maps. Or how we actually use each of these elements correctly and how they interact with each other. We will get to that little later on when we start building our roadmaps. For now, this lesson is just an introduction to the elements themselves. Every mind-map begins with the central topic. Think of this as the title of a book. The central topic describes what this particular map is all about. So here's our central topic, and in our case, we're going to be making a mind map that describes the mapping elements. So there's our central topic. While the first topics that come away from our central topic are called main topics. Think of these as chapter headings. You break down the information that goes into your mind-map into large groupings. And those large groupings are described by their main topic. As an example, here is a to-do list might map where we've got five main topics, which are family, work, health, school, and holiday planning. If we need to make changes to those main topics later on, because we choose to reorganize our map in a certain way. We can do that very easily. Underneath main topics comes subtopics. And subtopics are really the first level of granular information that you put into a mindmap. This is where you start to really break down a piece of information or a problem or a task into its component pieces. And subtopics are the component pieces. A subtopic can have subtopics of its own. And in fact, you can keep going in theory infinitely. But in practice, you're going to run out of screen space eventually. And here are some examples subtopics that fall under the main topics in our to-do list. These are all pretty straightforward tasks. If one of these tasks was a little more complex than that task could have multiple subtopics as needed. Now, as you can see, once you start branching out with subtopics, that design can become quite complex. So in our mind mapping software, we have the ability to collapse or expand branches as needed. Because obviously you're not going to need to see all of this information at any one time. So for example, in Subtopic 2 here, if we were doing a cascade or working on our map, and we simply didn't need to interact with subtopic 2 at this point, we could click this little minus sign. And we could collapse this branch. And when we need it to open it, we just click on the number that here, and we expand it again. And that number represents the number of items that are collapsed within this branch. So that's main topics and sub-topics. And this entire grouping of information and the main topic one here is referred to as a branch, or more commonly a node. And then the rest of this course we will be referring to groupings of information under main topic as a node. So what other data structures are there that we will be using in our maps? It's come to mean Topic 2 and add 3 quick subtopics. Let's say that in our mind map, each of these subtopics has a relationship with each other. They all contain similar pieces of information. Or these three subtopics are similar tasks that fall inside the same project. In which case, if we wish to, we can summarize this information and we can add a summary tag that allows us to describe the relationship between these pieces of information. And here's a quick example of how you can use a summary task, in this case, in a to-do list, where we've grouped together these three tasks by the fact they share a commonality. Now let's expand some of the branches within main topic one. And again, for argument's sake, let's say that there is a relationship between one of the subtopics in main topic two's node and one of the subtopics in main topics one's node. But we don't particularly want to rearrange our map to show the relationship between these two pieces of data. But we do want to emphasize that there is a relationship. In which case, we will add a relationship arrow. And a relationship arrow is how we can highlight relationships between pieces of information in a mind-map that don't necessarily sit in the same branch or the same node. Now say there's a relationship between main topic 1 and main topic 2. And we want to categorize that in our map so we can see that immediately. What we can add is a boundary. Boundary, as the name implies, is just a line that goes around related items in a mind-map. At this point, there's only one more item we need to add. This is a floating topic. Now you can add a floating topic for any reason you wish. Generally floating topics are used to include uncategorized information in a mind map. You might be working away and a piece of information or a question or a task will occur to you that you want to incorporate into your mind-map. But you don't particularly want to do that immediately. You'd like to do that at a later time when you have the time to do so. In which case, you can add a floating topic and then you can add your information there. And that is, it is the very short list of elements that we will be using to compose all the different mindmaps we'll be looking at in this course. We'll be using central topics under our central topics come main topics. Under our main topics come subtopics. We can use summaries. We can use boundaries. We can use relationship arrows. And finally, we can use flooding topics. And don't worry too much about remembering all of these particular items at this time. Trust me, by the time we've gone into this course a little bit, this will be second nature to you, as always. Thank you for your time and I'll see you in the next lesson. 4. How to use Xmind: Well, hello and welcome back. Now, in this lesson, we're going to very quickly learn how you add the various mind map elements into a mindmap using X might. And like most good software, there are several ways you can do this. You can do this through unscreened icons. You can do it through the insert menu, or you can do it with keyboard shortcuts. And in some cases, it's more effective to use keyboard shortcuts for the more commonly used elements. And in other cases, it's easier to use buttons or the insert menu. For an element you're only going to want to insert into a mindmap occasionally. Now if you'd like to follow along with this lesson, then please open the X-Men software now. And you should be presented with a window that looks something like this. If for any reason you see another window, perhaps offering you a tour of the software or asking you to subscribe to x mind, just close that window and this one should appear. If this window does not appear, then go to the top of your screen where the horizontal menu is, and select the File new option to show this window. When you see this window, please just double-click the classic option highlighted here and a new blank mind-map will appear for you to use. That looks something like this. From there, just follow along with the rest of the instructions in this video. And 1 I want to stress right now, is that this lesson is about, uh, how to add elements into your mind-map using X mind. It's not about the best practices. How and when we're going to use these elements, we will cover that later in the course. This lesson is just about teaching you how to navigate and use the software. Now, the example my map I'm using and the one you're using the following along with do not need to look the same. The main thing is that you get familiar with the keyboard controls to use the software. That's the whole point of this lesson. So we're looking at something that looks like a complex mind-map. Am I apologize for that? It's really not as you'll see as we work through it. And this mind map contains all the elements I want to discuss with you in this lesson. So let's begin with main topic one. Now generally when you open a X mind new map, you already have a central topic and several main topics already selected. At some point you're gonna want to add more main topics. So this is how we do that. Let's click down here on the X-Men central topic. And we can add a main topic simply by clicking the tab button. And as you see, we've just added main topic seven up here in the top left. So let's delete that. We can also come up here to the graphical menu, the main menu, and click to add a topic. And that's another way we can add a topic. And then finally, and we can come up to the insert menu. And once it doesn't say insert main topic, we use the insert subtopic command. And that woman said the main topic into a central topic. The easiest way is simply to use the Tab key. There you go. Nice and simple. Now we have two more options, add after an ad, before. These are most useful if you have a main topic highlighted. So let's highlight the main topic. And that's hit the Enter key. And as you can see, we've just added main topic 7 after main topic 1. Let's do that again. We want to add a topic after we select, in this case, item two main topic to hit the Enter key and it adds the next main topic after topic too. And I'm sure you can guess what ad before does. Let's keep main topic 2 highlighted. And in this case hit Shift and Enter. And it puts a main topic between main topic, two main topic. One here, nice and simple. And that works for topics and sub-topics. So for example, if I click here where it says subtopic button, and I click the Enter, I get a new subtopic. Afterwards. If I click Shift and Enter and I get a new subtopic before. You can also add after and I had before coming to the insert menu. Okay, so that's item unfinished. Let's collapse that branch by clicking on the minus sign. Number two, adding subtopics. Once again, this is really simple. We can once again use the Tab key. We select our item, we select the element, and we simply hit tab. If you add a subtopic and then you hit tab a second time. You're going to add a new subtopic. For this subtopic you already entered and you can keep going. We can also come up here and use the Add subtopic button, which will do the same thing as using the tab key. Or we can come up and use insert subtopic. Now if this is a little confusing, it doesn't make sense to you. Open an X mind map of your own. At this point. Just pause this lesson right now and just play around with adding main topics and sub-topics using keyboard shortcuts, using the graphical menu shown here, and using the insert command. And when you're comfortable with that, please continue with this lesson. Okay, number three is the parent command. And we've been adding main topics and sub-topics. You can also add a parent topic, although I'll be honest, this is something you will do very rarely. Okay, so what is apparent topic? Here's our central topic. If I add a new main topic and here is my topic 1. And the parent topic of main topic one is the central topic here. If I click on main topic one and add a subtopic than the parent topic of Subtopic 1 is made Topic 1. Now there may come a time when you want to add a new topic between existing topics in your mind-map. So here is how you do that. Now, there is no parents in the main menu, which shows how rarely this command is ever needed. But you can add a parent by going to insert and insert parent topic. You also have keyboard shortcuts and they are Command and Enter on a Mac, and Control and Enter on Windows. Let's highlight this element. And I'm going to hit Command and Enter. And here is my parent topic. It's been inserted before the subtopic on the same branch. And I can do the same for Windows here. I'll hit that because I'm working on a Mac, I'm actually going to hit Command and Enter. And here's my new parent topic. For clarity, I'm going to write a Mac here and windows here. If I can spell it correctly. And I'm going to delete these by highlighting them and hitting delete. So that's the parent command. And I'll show you one more time. Let me highlight this main topic here. And I'm three parent command. Hit Command and Enter. And parent command gets moved to the left one space. And in this case in new main topic and then Topic 606 added into this branch. And to delete me Topic 6, nothing could be easier. I simply highlight it, right-click it, and I choose the delete single topic option. Now, if I was to choose the delete option, then not only would I delete main topic 6, I would delete everything that comes under main topic 6. So all of the children topics. However, if I choose Delete single topic. And as you can see, X might has removed main topic 6 and has left all the other items in that node in our mind-map. Next we have relationships. These are relationship arrows. So let's click in here and just change this for clarity. No relationship arrows. There is a keyboard shortcut at these, but to be honest, you're going to add them so infrequently that it's kinda pointless remembering that you may as well just use the menu button or the Insert option. Even the biggest most complex mindmaps are only going to have three or four relationship iris. So this is very simple. We highlight the item where the arrow begins, hit the relationship button, and that highlight the item where the arrow points to. And then if we want to edit the shape of our relationship arrow, we drag it using these small white circles. And if necessary, you can add a label simply by typing. And that's a relationship arrow. If you collapse a branch of a node where there is a relationship arrow, the relationship era disappears. It only displays on your map when the node is open. Some reason boundaries. How do we add these? Again, they're shortcuts, summaries, not for boundaries, but it's just easier to use the main menu, the graphical menu, or the Insert option. So if we wanted to add a summary, Let's say we want to add a summary to these two points here. We highlight them, come up here and click the summary button. And there's our summary summaries if necessary, can have subtopics of their own. And you can add a subtopic 2 summary exactly the same way as anywhere else in the mind-map by using the Tab key. So what about boundaries? If we want to put a boundary around items, we can either simply click the node or the main topic that we want to put the boundary round and then click the boundary button. And the boundary will extend around the entire node. Or instead of putting a boundary around the main topic, the main node, you can put a boundary around subtopics and simply highlighting the elements you wish to put a boundary around and clicking the boundary box. I use Control zed then to go back. And that's some reason boundaries. Finally, here at item six, we discussed new sheets. Each file can contain multiple mindmaps. You simply come up here to insert a new sheet. And X mind, we'll add a new map view and you can call that what you want. I'm now going to move back to our X-Men command sheet. And then you go, That's how you use Sheets. You can also create a new sheet from a topic. Let's say for example, we have a large complex node in our mind map. We decide that we want to make that its own individual mind-map. It's quite simple. Click on the node, click, insert a new sheet from topic. And there you go. We've taken that individual node from one my map, and we've turned it into a unique mind-map of its own. The two separate mindmaps, the original sheet and a new sheet are not sink if you make a change in one of those sheets and that change is not automatically reflected in the other. And there are now links that will move you between the two sheets. What I'd like you to do now is come up to the insert menu. I want you to click the Add a new sheet. I want you to double-click in the sheet name. I'll call it To Do list. And then I want you to join me in the very next lesson. Thank you very much indeed. 5. Adam's To-Do List Mind Map: Well, hello and welcome back. Well, now that we know the basic building blocks of a mindmap and we know how to use the software to insert these various elements into our mind-map. It's actually build something. In this lesson, you're going to watch me build a very simple, straightforward to-do list. Now there's no need for you to work along with me, although you can if you wish. Because I'm going to ask you to build your own to-do list in the assignment that follows this lesson. So for now you can just watch how I go about building a to-do list. Before we begin, I just want to address one preconception that some people can arrive at when they begin my mapping. And that misconception is that you have to have all your information perfectly arranged before you begin mind-mapping. And in fact, nothing could be further from the truth, particularly when you're working with software maps, maps that you can easily change and edit as needed. Mind-mapping is an iterative process. You begin by putting down everything you can think of on a particular subject. And then you refine that information as needed to solve the problem that you're trying to solve. And you're gonna see that iterative process very much a play in this course, starting with this lesson. Now this is a new mind-map that we've opened up in mind. And this is the template that x minus given us. And here's my central topic. Now I'm going to take main topic one here and drag it over to the left. There was no reason I moved it over to the left. It's just for aesthetics. I'm going to build a list, a list on the left of this mind map. And then we're going to refine that information as I move it over to the right of the map. So the first thing we need to do with their to-do list is obviously remember what it is we have to do in the first place. Let's call it a brain dump. I've opened a main topic which I've called bring them into which I'm going to add sub-topics for every task and item that I can think of. Now this brain dump main topic is going to be temporary. So right now with the magic of editing, I'm about to add all the tasks that I can think of that I need to do in the next couple of weeks. So here's a list of items on the left. There are 13 new topics that I've added. Now these 13 items of very varied, some of them are administrative, some of them are personal. Sum them to do with my health. There's just some routine things that I have to do there. And there's few tasks that I need to do on a daily basis. So the first thing I'm gonna do now is work out what broad groupings or main topics that all of these different items will fall into. And as you can see here on the right, I've just come up with three quite broad main topics, and I've called them personal, business and admin. So what I'm gonna do now is take each item from the left of this map and put it into the main topics on the right. So I'm going to refine my brain dump down into three broad groups of to-do list items. Let's look. So these two items are administrative. They have to do with my immigration status here in Spain. Now I've got three items here. I need to cancel my gym membership. I also need to make a dentist appointment and a podiatrist appointments. So I'm going to highlight these three topics and drag them over to personal. I have to order groceries. Now, is that personal as the admin is a business? It's none of those things really is it? So until I work out what I'm gonna do that, I'm simply going to put a flooding topic up here. I'm going to double-click in that and call it miscellaneous. And I'm going to drag my ordered groceries up here. I'll process that later when I work out what part of my mind-map that belongs in these next two items are both business-related, so I'm going to highlight those and drag them over to the business main topic. The next two items I need to do on a daily basis. So I think I'm going to drag these up to miscellaneous until I work out exactly where on my mind map I want to include those. The next items here, I have to work on a contract for a new business project. I'm summing up. I have to work on the website and some marketing assets for that new business. As as business related, I'm going to drag those over to the business section. And finally, I have to prepare some estate planning information. Some of my personal affairs of changed lately and I want to put a well together. So I'm going to drag that over to Admin. Now, my brain dump is completed. There's nothing here, so I'm just going to highlight that and delete it. But up here in the top-left, I've still going to feel items that I haven't decided where these are going to fall into my mind-map. I'm going to create a main topic called daily. And I'm going to move two of these items down here. The miscellaneous floating topic. I'm simply going to drag that down to my to-do list until it becomes another main topic. So I've taken those 13 items and I've broken them down into five main topics or five subgroups. Personal administration, business, daily tasks, and then miscellaneous small little things. Now, as I look at this, I'm just reviewing these items to make sure that they are broadly in the groups that I want them to be in. But there's one change I'm going to make. I'm going to click on to-do list. I'm going to add a new main topic. I'm going to call it appointments. And I have an appointment that is said to meet my bank manager tomorrow. So I'm just going to drag that over there. Now. I didn't have to do that. That appointment was perfectly okay, sat in the business node as it was. But I wanted more emphasis on that. So by putting that item into its own appointments subcategory, then I've given appointments far more emphasis in my mind-map. Then they would have if those appointments we're just buried amongst other nodes. In order for me to actually do something and strike it off this list. What I need to do now is scheduled these items. I don't have to, but I prefer to look at the list and see clearly what I'm going to do today. So what I like to do with my to-do lists is add a floating topic and call that today. And every morning I like to go through my to-do list, work out what items I want to work on today. And I copy those over to the today floating topic. So there you go. That is a very basic, straightforward to do list that has a very rudimentary basic form of scheduling in it, where you put everything into a floating topic called today that you want to work on today. And if you used a map like this, when you complete a task, you would simply delete it or you could move it into another node that you called completed items. If, however, in the actual to-do lists will be building a little later on in the course. We will be adding some more sophisticated methods of prioritizing tasks and scheduling tasks. But before we get to the advanced stuff, obviously we have to learn the basic stuff. Now in the next lesson, you are going to build your own to-do lists mind-map. So thank you very much for your time and I look forward to seeing you in the next lesson. Thanks a lot. 6. Make your own To-Do List Mind Map: Hello and welcome back. Now in this assignment, I just want you to get your hands dirty with X mind and build a simple, straightforward to do lists of your own. If you wish, you can make this your own to-do list with the items and tasks that you currently have to work on in the coming days and weeks. Or if you prefer, you could make up your to-do list and use fictional items in your list. How you do this is completely up to you. You can follow a similar structure to the map I belt, where we break the various tasks down into groupings. And then we schedule which tasks we're going to do. Just for today. You could be more elaborate and you can schedule your tasks over the coming week or month. Please feel free to arrange your map anyway, you wish. Just do something that makes perfect sense to you, that is logical to you, that you find easy to read. And if you have to follow to do this, it would make perfect sense to you and you would find it easy to follow. Once you've done that, you can take a screenshot of your map if you wish, and posted for some feedback from myself and other students. As always. Thank you very much for your time. 7. Icons, Filters & More: Well, hello and welcome back. Now in this video we're going to look at some additional items that you can use in your mind maps. So let's start here with icons. Now, icons available from the icon menu here in the top right. And if you click on that, you're going to see that you have two broad groups of icons, markers and stickers. Stickers or simply icons that you can embed into an element to make that element's purpose, to make it subject more easily recognizable. So here in the map I've just added for stickers. Now the purpose of stickers is twofold. They help make one particular node instantly recognizable to the user and make it different from the other nodes visually and they help communicate the purpose of that node. Now X Mine doesn't have a huge collection of stickers for you to use in your mind maps. So you may struggle to find something that really clearly identifies with the topic of your node. If that's the case, then just find the icon that you feel is closest to it and use that. Now the next item is markers. Hi Marcus is small tags that generally added to subtopics. So what's the point of markers? They can represent pretty much anything you want them to represent a low. There are a few predefined options here available. Nx might, for example, we have a list of priorities from one to seven. We have task management options that show the various stages of a task from not started to complete it. And we have at the bottom here, some month and the days of the week markers that can be useful to tell you when you need to focus on a particular topic. And to use a marker, you simply select the topic that you want to add it to and click on the marker of your choice. Now this is a task marker that tells the viewer the status of a particular task in your mind-map. And to adjust that status, I simply click in the market and choose the new status. And here's an example mind-map that I've put together using multiple different markers. Now up here in the View menu, there is a navigation panel option which you can get to through the View menu. And if we select Marker and label, we now on the left-hand side get a list of all the markers that are in use in this mind-map. And we use this list to filter the items in our mind-map. For example, if I wanted to see everything that I have to do on Tuesday, I simply click Tuesday in the list and only the tasks that I've elected to do on Tuesday are displayed in my map. Alternatively, I can simply select one of the markers I'm interested in. For example, Saturday. I can right-click on it, choose highlight relevant topics. And X1 will show me every topic and sub-topic in my mind map that has a sadly Margaret added to it. X mind also, what was the navigation menu on the left so we can change our filter selections if we want to. And once we close the navigation menu, Next mine returns us to the main mind-map with the navigation filters switched off. Mark is a particularly useful for helping you focus on only the things you need to do at any particular point in time. Now unfortunately, when it comes to markers, you can't refine one marker by using another. Let me give you an example. Here are all the tasks I've elected to do on Saturday. Now, if I wanted to filter those down to just the priority 1 tasks, I would have to do that visually. I'd simply have to look at the list to see which of them have the red priority one tag. If I was to click priority one in the left-hand navigation menu. Unfortunately, X mind isn't then going to show me only the priority 1 topics that I've elected to do on Saturday. It's not going to apply both filters at the same time. What it will do is it'll show me every topic and sub-topic that has a Saturday marker, and every topic and sub-topic that has a priority one marker. But saying that Marquez is still extremely useful for online maps and we're going to be using them a lot in this course. Okay, so now let's look at notes. And notes, as the name implies, allows us to add text notes to any element in a map. And this icon shows you when a note is present in an element. To add a note, simply select the element you want to put the nodes in. Go to the top menu and click the icon, and then type out the texts that you want to enter. And if you wanted to, you can go to the navigation panel, select the notes option, and see all of the notes in your mind-map displayed in the panel. So now let's look at the Insert option on the graphical menu bar. And the insert menu allows us to add labels, website links, and attachments into our mind-map. Unfortunately, all the other options it gives you only available for paid users. So to add an attachment, simply select the element where you wish to add the attachment. Click the Insert menu attachment, select your file and click Open. And your attachment is now added in its own subtopic. With the attachment icon. Click the icon to open the file to add a Webpage link instead of an attachment, simply do the same thing. Go to the insert menu, choose link webpage, and then enter the URL of the webpage in the menu that pops up. Alternatively, you can use Control K to open that menu as well. And then just click the link icon to open the website. Now the remainder of the link options are only available to people that subscribe to x mind, but they allow you to link to local files and folders on your computer or to link from one topic to another. And X mind subscribers can also embed images in their mind maps as well as mathematical equations. But we won't be using any of that functionality in this course. Now let's look at some last bits and pieces of x mine functionality. Now, x Bind offers an outliner mode and allows you to move back and forth between the information in your mind-map to that same information being presented in a text outline. And for those of you that are familiar with using text outlines or outline a software, you might find this useful. You can also export and import information into and out of mind. And you can input information from other mind-mapping software or Word documents. And you can export to image files are the mind-mapping software and different types of documents, although some of that functionality is once again limited to paid users. Okay, so we'll wrap up this lesson here. There are a few more pieces of x mine functionality that we haven't covered yet, but we will be covering those later in the course. And at this point, please don't worry about trying to remember all of the items we've just covered in this lesson. We're going to be using them practically in all the lessons as we go through the remainder of the course. So you will become very familiar with them very quickly. As always. Thank you for your time. 8. Labels & Map Overview: Well, hello and welcome back. Now in this lesson, I just want to talk to you quickly about labels, what they are, how we use them, and why we use them. And I want to show you another piece of functionality called the Map Overview. Okay, so what are labels? Well, labels are customizable tags that you can add two topics or subtopics in your mind-map. And you add them very simply. You just click on a topic or subtopic. And click Insert label. And then you can either type out your label or you can reuse a label that's already been used in this particular map. In this case, I'm just going to click on process and click. And so the process tag has now been added to this subtopic. So it's a point of labels. Labels allow us to categorize information in a mindmap, and then we can search for that information using the navigation panel, using the marker and label option. So if you remember, we can filter our mind-map by markers. We can also filter on my map by labels. So the mind might be looking at it as a map I've put together as I'm planning out the brain dumps section of this course. And I've tagged some topics and sub-topics with the label process. So I find wanted to see those tags, I simply click process and x mine will display any topic or subtopic that has the process tag added to it. However, there is one problem. Let me just unselect process. The map needs to be completely open for you to see every topic and sub-topic that might have a label or a marker added to it that you're searching for. So there's a quick way for us to open an entire map. We click in the central topic, come up here to Edit. And you're going to see an option called fold or sub branches. We actually use that to completely close them up. And then once the map is completely closed, we have the option to complete reopen it by going to unfold also branches y x mine chooses to force you to close the map completely before you can fully open it. Unfortunately, I don't know, but that's where we have to do things. So here's our brain, that mind-map, but as you can see, it's too big for our screen. So down here, we have the Map Overview icon. I simply press that. And an image of my entire map comes up in the lower right of my screen. And immovable square, which represents our screen, gives me a draggable icon that allows me to scroll around the map. And there you go. And if I combine that with perhaps a lower Zoom, let's try 80%. Then I can work quite comfortably with large maps, even on a laptop screen. So now let's go back up to View. Navigation panel markers enables choose Process. And now I'm able to go through my entire map and look at all of the topics and sub-topics that I've added the process tag to. Now don't worry too much about exactly how to use labels at this point. We will be using them later on in the course. She'll get some hands-on practical experience of working with them. But that's all I wanted to talk to you about in this lesson. As always, thank you very much for your time. 9. Refining Adam's Mind Maps with Icons, Labels and more: Well, hello and welcome back. Now in this lesson, I'm going to revisit my to-do list, the one that I made a couple of lessons ago. And I'm going to refine this list by using some of the elements we just studied in the last lesson. And the first thing I'm gonna do is I'm going to use stickers so that I can individualize if indeed that's a word, each of these six nodes to make them more distinctive. And here we are. I've added six stickers to each of the six nodes. And I've added a to do list icon or to do a sticker rather to the central topic. Now it's going to be a matter of personal preference, whether you're going to want to use stickers in your mind maps or not. If you find them useful, if you find them effective, if they help, then hanged by all means, use them. Alternatively, if you don't think they really serve much of a purpose, then of course, don't use them in your own maps. But I would advise in the early maps that you built that you do use stickers. Now the first thing I want to do is I want to prioritize these tasks, and I want to choose which of these tasks I absolutely must get done next week. I'm currently recording this video on a Saturday, so I'm planning out my next week's activities. So let's open the icon menu. Go to markers, and I'm going to choose now which are my priority ones. I'm just going to shrink my map from a 120% down to a 100 to make it a little easier to work with honest screen, okay, so which of these do I have to get done next week without fail? And there you go. I've chosen six items that have to do with my immigration status here in Spain. I have a meeting with my bank manager. There's two items there that little my own health I need to walk every day and record my food intake every day because I'm trying to lose some weight. And I have a business item that I've declared as a priority 1 now just because I've designated these as priority ones and I haven't designated any of the other items as priorities, doesn't mean they're not important to me. And if this was a much larger mind-map, then I personally would now go through it and I would pick priority 2s and possibly priority threes. But as this is a small, very manageable mind-map, I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to clutter the map with too many markers. I'm simply going to concentrate on priority ones. And now I'm going to go back through the items again and I'm going to delegate which day of next week I wish to tackle each item. And there you go. I've gone through each item and I designated which day next week I'm going to work on all of these. I haven't done that for the daily tasks because it's kind of obvious which days I'm going to work on those heights. Want to show you one quick trick. I didn't show you in the last video. And all of these items and the personal I plan to do next Tuesday. So I'm just going to click in these and delete each one. So I can show you how I added them. Instead of adding the market for Tuesday to each of these three items individually, all I did was I drag my mouse through the three items to highlight them. I come down here to the bottom right, Tuesday. And it applies choose a to these items. And of course next week as I'm working on these items, if I wanted to change which they do a specific item, I can just click in the marker and then choose to do it. For example, I might do this on Wednesday instead of Thursday. So what other items can I add to this map now to make my tasks next week easier to fulfill? Well, let's look up here to the personal note. And I need to make a dentist appointment. I also need to make it podiatrists appointment. Now, I do not yet have a chosen dentist or a podiatrist here in Barcelona. I haven't been living here long enough, so I need to do some research online to find myself a dentist than a podiatrist. So I turned to the web and I looked up some lists of possible dentists and podiatrists that I can contact next week. And all I'm gonna do is copy the URL, go back to my mind-map, click in, make a dentist appointment. Now I can go to Insert Link webpage. Or I can use as I'm using a map command and K. And it opened up the webpage link menu. And I'm simply going to paste in the link for that webpage. So next Tuesday when I need to make a decision about which dentists I'm going to make an appointment at. I can just click this link to reopen that webpage. And then I can go through the list, contact these dentists and make a choice. And let's do the same with podiatrists. And here's a Yelp list are the best template I interests in Barcelona. So I've copied the URL. I go back to my mind-map. I hit Command K. Command and V to paste in my link. And there you go. I have my link saved. I don't need to do any more research next week, next Tuesday, I simply open these webpages by clicking this link. And then I can address that task at that time. Now I'm looking at the admin node and I've got three items to do next week. One has to do with beginning to assemble the information for me to prepare a well. And the other two have to do with me getting some people with process for my immigration status. You're in Spain. So my two priority one items both relate to my immigration status. It's just occurred to me that I could use the same person to help me complete both tasks. So I'm just going to drag this item up in the order. I'm going to highlight them. I'm going to come here and add a summary. And in my summary task, I'm going to simply say discuss with axle. But if you notice, I haven't chosen which day next week I'm going to do these on. Let's open our icon menu. Come back to markers. I'm going to highlight them both. And even though I know axle is very busy on Mondays, I'm still going to kiss him on Monday. Hopefully set an appointment with him for later in the week. Now I've just added a subtopic to our summary, which is a deliverable that I need to get out of my discussion with him. And I'm going to click in the summary naughtier, open the no tamp. And I'm just going to write down a list of quick questions that I want to ask axle next week and day ago. Those are three questions is just occurred to me that I need to ask axle when I get an appointment with him and I'm going to contact him on Monday hopefully to get that appointment. And I'm going to minimize this task just to save a little screen space. Now I'm looking at the business node. To be honest, there's nothing I really need to add there. That's all very self-explanatory to me. There's no more information I need. Before I tackle those points next week, I'm looking now at the daily node. And there's just one thing I could add there. And that's the URL to the tool I use to record my daily food intake. I've just copied it from the webpage. I'll click on it, hit Command K, Command V, and there's the link to a tool called My Fitness Pal. So when I'm working in this map next week, all I need to do is click this link to open the website. I need to order groceries, and I've delegated this task to today, Saturday. But the reality is I've already taken care of this. So I'm gonna come up here to icon, and I'm going to add a task completed arrow. And finally, I have to meet my bank manager next Tuesday. Now I know I have to do it on Tuesday and I know it's a priority one. But what I've also done is I just went to Google Maps to look up the address of the branch where I'm meeting him and I've added it to this topic as a link. So if I open this link, it now shows me exactly where I need to be next Tuesday morning. As you can see, this process was pretty simple and straightforward. I prioritize my tasks. I worked at which days of the week I was going to address them on. And then I added pieces of information, links or a list of questions that when I come to do these tests next week, should come in useful and handy for me. Now obviously, if we are given this particular list of tasks to somebody else and asked them to design a mind map, then my map might look quite different, but it's not to say one map is better than the others, or one map is right, or one map is wrong. Mind mapping is a very personal discipline. As long as the map that you design makes perfect sense to you, has the information you need and conveys it clearly to you, then the map is doing its purpose. And in the next lesson, yogurt to return to the to-do list at you designed. And you're going to work through it and prioritise and schedule those tasks for yourself. But we're going to end this lesson right here. And as always, thank you for your time. 10. An exercise for you to Refine your Mind Map: Well, hello and welcome back. And in this assignment, what I'd like you to do is go back and open up the mind-map that you built in assignment 1. And I'd like you to refine that map following the steps that we just learned about in the last video. So open your map, add stickers to nodes to make them more descriptive. Then go through the map and prioritize your tasks using the priority markets. Then schedule your tasks using the month or day markers. Again, you don't have to schedule every task. Simply schedule the ones that you feel you should. And when you're done, if you want to submit a screenshot of your map for feedback, please do. And there's a very easy way to take a screenshot of your mind map in Acts mind, we simply come up to the Tools menu in the horizontal menu at the top of your screen and choose the map shot option. X mind will then give you a selection area which you can fit around your map. And here's an example map that I used as I was planning out this course. Once you're happy, you come down here to the map Shot menu and click the camera icon, x minus 1. I'll give you some options. You can add a shadow to your image. You can add a frame around it. You can add the x mind logo if you so wish. I'm not gonna do any of those. I'm simply going to hit copy and save. And to open the folder that this mind map screenshot is saved, to, simply click the Folder option. And there you go. My mock shop was saved on my desktop. And there's the PNG file screenshot of my mind-map. It's really that simple. So remember, go to Tools, maps, shot, and you'll be able to take a screenshot of your map very easily as usual. Thank you very much for your time. 11. What are Brain Dumps and how can they help you?: Well, hello and welcome back. Now in this section, we're gonna talk about brain dumps. What they are, the advantages that brain dumps off for you, and how you can use mindmaps to effectively perform your own brain dumps. You see the human mind evolved to make decisions and process information, not to permanently store information. And the Modern Workplace and lifestyle can simply fill up your conscious mind with too many loose ends, which can prevent you from finding any peace of mind. Now, brain dumps, obviously designed to help address this, but they are much more than just fancy to-do lists. The purpose of a brain dump is to go beyond just recording a list of tasks and allow you to reduce and remove stresses or even feelings of being overwhelmed by work or personal issues. So brain dumping is more than just a simple to-do list. It's a process where you work through a list of questions and record your thoughts, organized those thoughts, discard the unimportant ones, organized the rest, and then act on them. In a nutshell, if you bring them effectively, then you can close your mind map on a Friday afternoon, safe in the knowledge that every loosened is documented, prioritized, and scheduled, ready for you to begin work on Monday. And the time in-between need not be full of nagging worries and concerns, but all those loose ends that you feel the need to do. Brain dumping is designed to help you regain clarity and peace of mind and achieve a clear work-life balance so that when you're away from work with your friends and your family, you can really be present and enjoy that time without being played by nagging concerns and work-related stress. And I'm speaking from personal experience there as I've successfully used the techniques that we're going to learn in this section myself, the outcome that we're working towards is to help you develop process to ensure that all of those nagging thoughts, ideas, aspirations, and chores are recorded safely in such a way that you don't need to spend time thinking about them or worrying about them when you're not actually working on them. And in this section that we're going to learn how you can use mind maps to perform your own brain dumps. And Dino, it's really not that difficult. So when you're ready, I'll meet you in the next lesson. And we can begin. 12. How to perform a Brain Dump: Well, hello and welcome back. In this lesson, we're going to look at the brain dump template. I'm going to show you how the template is laid out. I'm going to show you how to use it. And together we'll answer a couple of sample questions just to get a feel for the template before you move on to actually doing your own brain dump. Okay, So if you don't already have the mind-map file from the last lesson, open. Please open it now. Please ensure you are on the map That's called a brain dump template, and it should look something like this. This template is broken down into two main sections, professional and personal. And those are the main groupings for the questions that you're going to be asking yourself during your brain dump. Each of those areas is M broken down into sub groupings. As you can see here, the professional items subtopics are formatted in green and the personal subtopics are formatted in orange. And then we have subtopics. So let's go back into Zoom board and look at these. In each of these subtopics, there is a note under the people section, for example, in the pet subtopic, you have vet appointments and medication, insurance, animal training, and patriot and supplies. And the family, we have activities with families and disagreements to address and help and support to provide. So how we use this template is very simple. You pick a topic and then you look at the items within that topic. And you use those items to jog your memory. Is there anything you need to do that regard your pet's health, for example? Is there anything you need to do regarding pet's health insurance and these bullet points exist to trigger your memory to see if there is a task or a problem or an issue that regards any of these particular topics you in a perfect world would like to take care of. Okay, so that's how this system works. Now let's ask ourselves a few sample questions and record some answers. Now when it comes time for you to do this work, you can start anywhere you want in this template. But just to be complete, I'm going to start in the top right here. And the family, you have activities with family issues and disagreements to address and help and support to provide. Okay. Well, I'm going to add a subtopic. I'm going to add max is Birthday, Mom South. And I'm going to come up to my keyboard shortcut. And I'm going to look for the keyboard shortcut to add a note which on a Mac Command Shift and N for max is birthday. I'm simply going out bullet points. Look, flight ticket, hotel reservation, 34 people. We should list of child-friendly things to do and the mum's health, again, I'll add a note. So on my Mac is Command Shift and N, I'll add some bullet points and my mother has to go in for a routine health check. And my node simply says, call home and ask when the assessment is. So that's I use a brain dumb template. It's pretty straightforward really. So please meet me in the next lesson where you and I will do our initial brain dumps. As always. Thank you very much for your time. 13. How to use the Brain Dump Template: Well, hello and welcome back. And what I'd like you to do now is watch this video to the end. And then if you wish, you can work through the brain dumb template and begin the brain that process for yourself by answering all the questions there that are relevant to you. Now, you can choose to do that immediately after this video, or you can just watch this video and the remainder of the videos in this section. And then you can begin your brain them at a later time that's convenient for you. That choice is completely yours. In the last lesson, the example answers that I showed you, those were entered into the question template itself. And by all means, if that makes sense to you, you can do that if you wish or if you prefer. You can set up a separate answers only mind-map just for your responses to the brain dumb questions. And that's what we're going to do in this video. Now, if you do choose to have an answers only mind-map, then that map is likely to be smaller and easier to navigate. Then the combination of the questions template with all of your answers in it. But please work anyway, that makes the most sense to you. Now, in order to be able to use an answers only template efficiently, I'm going to use the split screen functionality that comes with both Windows 10 and Mac OS. So that I can see both the answers template and the questions template in my screen at the same time, if you have multiple monitors or you're already familiar with how to set up split screen, then you can skip ahead in this lesson to four minutes and 30 seconds. But for those of you that would like to learn how to setups, but it's green. Please continue watching. Okay, so let's look at how to set up split screen in Windows first. And here I am with my brain dumb template open in full-screen. So the first thing I need to do is minimize that. I believe that's the correct term in Windows. Hello, I may be incorrect. By clicking this icon. And I want to create a new blank mind map for my answers. So I will simply come to File, click New. And then I have a choice of mind-map themes, just different aesthetics or different chart designs to use. Now I'm not going to use a different chart design. I'm going to use a standard mind-map at this point. I remember in the next section we're going to look at different chart templates and how to use themes. So let's not worry too much about that right now. And I'm going to choose the classic theme and click Create. And here is my answers mind-map. Now I'm simply going to save this first before I do anything else, brain dump answers and I'll put a little note that Khatami, This is the Windows File. And I'm going to save that. Now I need a position, these two separate windows side-by-side on the monitor. Now I could do that manually by putting them up into the corner and adjusting the size. But Windows has built-in functionality to allow me to do this easily. I simply click on the window I want to position. I drag my mouse off the screen. And as you've just seen, windows then automatically places the file in 50 percent of the screen space. Windows then gives me a choice of which file I want to take up the remaining screen space. And you just have to click on the file you want. And there you go. It's that easy. I now have both of my mind-map side-by-side so I can read the questions from the mind map on the left and answer them in the mind map on the right. And when the time comes to exit full screen, you can simply do that by minimizing one window, minimize it once, minimize it twice, and then do the same to the next window. There are other ways you can do that as well, but that's the way I know and I don't use windows routinely. You might find a better way to do that. Okay, So here we are in a Mac and here are my two maps. Knowing a Mac, all I need to do is hover over the green button in the top left-hand corner of each screen. And I'll get a menu that will allow me to take this window and enter fullscreen tightly to the left or Tyler to the right of my screen. And I'm going to choose to tile this window to the right. And once again, just like Windows, I get a choice of all the open windows currently running on my system. For me to choose to take the left-hand pin. And there you go. Both my files and open side-by-side. And I can move from one to the other as needed. And at this point we should be rejoined by all the people that already knew how to set up split screen. For those of you that did. Right now, can you open a brand new X-Men template and simply tile it to the right of the brain dump template and put the new template and the brain dump template in a split screen on your monitor. And once you've done that, continue with the rest of the lesson from this point onwards. And let's just give them a couple of seconds to pause and unpause the video. Okay, here is my answers, my map. I'll simply call that brain dumb answers. And I'm gonna start with the people section of questions. So I'm just going to call these people insert label, personal. I'll leave these two topics undefined for now. And as you saw in the last lesson item to the family set of questions, I had Max's birthday, mom's health. So I've added those two answers here in my brain, dumb answers my map, I've added the relevant notes. And I'm now going to work through each of these subtopics and their various memory prompts to rack my brain for any goals, tasks, things to do, or issues that in a perfect world I'd like to address. And remember, I'm going to write down every little thing that occurs to me at this stage. And I'm not going to worry that I might be overwhelming myself with things to do. Because in the next lesson, we're gonna go through all of these items. We're going to strip out the unnecessary things. We're going to make a conscious decision not to do those things, or perhaps to delay them for six months, a year, however we feel, but we are going to mentally address them and process them during this process. And it's the act of doing that. It gives the brain them process the power it has to really bring us some peace of mind. But for now that's it for this video. I'm now going to work on my brain dump and join you in the next lesson. And you can watch me refining my own brain dump. You can work on your own brain dump at this point, or you can simply move to the next lesson now and you can come back and do your brain them at any point in the future is convenient to you. Once again, thank you very much for your time. 14. Organising our Completed Brain Dump Information: Well, hello and welcome back. Now in this lesson, we're going to work with the brain dump that I've just finished. And we're going to refine that brain dump through three quick and simple stages before we move on to actually doing the things that we've written down in that brain dump. Now, please don't worry about the fact that there's still a three-step process for us to go through. We've broken the overall process down into three stages so that we can clearly explain what you need to do with the items that you've recorded in your brain them. In reality, as you get more experienced performing brain dumps, you'll be able to refine your map. Pretty much one stage, as opposed to working through them up into three distinct stages that we're about to do now. So in stage one, we're going to move through our initial mind-map and simply note down the very next step that we need to take for each item that we've recorded. No matter how small or large, how important or unimportant our item in the brain dump, which is going to write down the next single thing that we need to do to make that task happened. Then in stage 2, we're going to look at all of these next steps. And we're going to categorize them. Are they tasks? Are the e-mails, are they online research, phone calls, exercise, errands, whatever they might be in stage C, then we schedule the tasks, and that's where we make decisions about when we do a task. If we even choose to do a task. Or that's where we'll decide if we have to wait until something else happens that's outside of our control. And during the scheduling, it's perfectly okay if we put something off to the future or even if we decide not to do it at all. As long as we make that decision at this point. Once that task has been considered an evaluated, then it's that process that really does help bring the peace of mind. That brain dumping can bring you. And finally, once those three steps are done, we'll actually move on to doing the tasks in the map. But we'll save that for the next and last video in this section. Okay, well, let's take a look at my finished brain that my map. And let's get ready to perform stage one. If you've done your own mind map at this point, please open that map so you can work through the stages with me. Okay, so here we are in my brain that my map, after I've added all the next steps to all of the items I originally recorded. Now if we look at the people section, the people node, you'll notice we have Max's birthday and mom's health. And in fact, in prior lessons, I'd already written down the next steps that I wanted to do for these tasks. But here I've just refine them a little to make them easier to follow. And the book flights, I've added the name of the airline and a link to their website and the book hotel. I've simply mentioned that I actually need to wait before I act on that because I need to get some feedback from maximum on the right deaths. And finally, where it says look for things to do. I've actually specified where I'm gonna get that information. And I'm going to look on Google. And the mom's health where it says call home for update. Nothing really changes there. I need to call home for an update. Now if you move down to the dew node under the personal section, I've got three items. One, I need to call a pharmacy for a refill for a prescription. So here I've indicated exactly when I'm going to call them Monday, March the 8th. I also need to research how to machine wash wool. Someone give me some beautiful willing jumpers for Christmas and I'm not certain of the best way to wash them. So I'm just going to turn to Google for that information. And a friend of mine that owns an art studio spoke to me about needing a website, but it was a very vague conversation. So I'm going to speak to HG, the owner of the studio, when I'm in molten next week about her exact requirements. Whilst that could turn into quite a long project for me, the next thing I need to do is to speak to her about a requirements. So that's all I'm going to write in my mind map. Okay. So if we look at the personal note, you see here at the top, I'm planning a trip to Malta. So whilst there I need to rent a car. I need to arrange a dinner date with some friends. And I need to take a COVID test so that this before I arrived, so that they'll actually let me into modern in the first place. And as you can see, I've written down the next steps for each of those. I'm going to send an email to the rental car company and I've included a link to their website for the dinner date. I'm simply going to send a text message to my group of friends. And we can have a group chat about, about where we'd like to meet up. And for the COVID test, I'm going to go to the testing center on Friday, March the 5th. Now for the daily tasks, I chosen not to add a next step simply because they are so basic. I mean, your walk and then you record your food intake. There's no real next steps I can add to that, that are going to add value, make it easier for me to do those tasks. Which case? I'm simply not going to add a next step. So to arrange a dentist appointment, I still need to do some research. I'm going to do that on Google, which is exactly the same for a podiatrist. And I've also decided to buy an exercise bike. So I'm going to research that on Amazon or Google. I've added a link to a course on YouTube that I've already started to help me learn how to use my Canon 5D camera. But it's a course I want to continue taking. So it's in my brain dump to remind me to take those lessons routinely. And also, I've made a note to do some research on when I can expect to get a COVID vaccine living here in Spain. Under repair headphones. I'm going to turn to a logo Barcelona group on Reddit and ask for some recommendations of repair shops. And exactly the same, I need to hire cleaner for my apartment. I'm going to do exactly the same thing there. And I need a bias small kitchen fire extinguisher. So I'm going to ask on Reddit or do some Google research. So as you can see, the process is very simple. Now, if you wish, you can stop the video here and you can add the next steps to each of the items in your brain dump. Or you can continue watching to the end of this video and then go back and add those next steps later on when convenient for you. So now let's discuss step two. I now want to move through all the next steps in this mind-map and categorize them so that when it comes to actually doing these tasks, we can, if we want to work on many of the similar items at the same time. So you can send all of your emails on the same morning or make all of the necessary phone calls in the same afternoon. Grouping tasks in this way helps us get things done efficiently and courtly. So let's open up the icon menu here in the top-right and enable the legend. The legend will tell us what each of the markers that we're about to use actually means. And if there's not a marker to help us specifically categorize one of our next steps. Then we're going to use a label instead. So let me start once again, appear with my birthday. In order to book the flight, I need to be online. Unfortunately, there isn't an online or a website marker available for me. So I'm simply going to click Insert, label and type online for my next, for the next item, I need to wait. Now, I want to book a hotel, which will be an online task. But I need to wait until I get the necessary details from Max's. Mm, I'm gonna come down here to markers and I'm going to use, and the academic, I'm going to use the pause marker. And when it comes time to actually doing these tasks that will tell me that I have something to wait on. I'm unable to execute this task until something else has happened. And finally, under maxes birthday, I need to google some activities for kids over that period of time. So once again, I'm going to come up to label and simply go to the bottom of the label box and click online and hit Enter. And there you go. I've now categorized the three tasks that I need to do under maxes birthday, for mom's health, for core home for update. I'm going to come here to Marcus, scroll down to symbols and choose the telephone option. I'm going to do exactly the same for coal pharmacy and for google.com here where I'm researching how to machine wash will. Once again, I'm going to choose the online label. I need to make a phone call to the owner of HG art studio to arrange of meter and multi next week. So I'm going to use the telephone marker. I have to send an email. Once again. I'm going to choose label, but I'm not going to see online. I'm going to enter an email. They will. Sms to group is a telephone and go to testing center is appointment. Now unfortunately, there isn't an appointment, Mancha. So I have couple of options here. I'm going to go to label and say appointment. I'm also as this is going to take place next Friday, I'm going to come down to the bottom of the market section where it says week and I'm going to click Friday. I'm not going to categorize the daily tasks for dentist podiatrist by exercise, bike, photography and COVID jab. Well, these are all online. I'm simply going to drag my mouse through each of them so they're highlighted, come up here to Insert label, unclick online. Repair headphones, hire cleaners by small fire extinguisher. Again, all of them are research I need to do online, insert label online. I have another e-mail here that I need to send and the administration insert a label, click EMA to get my new tie, which is a card for immigration here in Spain. I'm waiting on another piece of paper called a predrawn. So I'm simply going to click this and click on the weight marker. I've got to that stage in life where I think it's a good idea to have a, well, I need to write out the details. Now there isn't a writing markers, such a marker that says that you need to generate something, a letter or some documents. But there is pen and that'll do for my purposes. Finally, I have to research a state planning trusts. I'm going to insert label online. There you go. I've categorized half of my map in less than two minutes. Now if you're unsure what these markers mean, then once again, make sure that you've enabled the legend by clicking Show Legend. Click on any of the items in your mind-map and simply choose to click an item and see what the legend tells you it means. If you want to move through the multiple different choices and each group, then just click on the marker that's inside your mind map element, and change it. And watch the legend change at the same time. And if you want to delete it, just click in the market and click delete. By doing that, you very quickly get a good understanding what each of these markers means. Some of them are very useful, some not so much. Now I'm going to go into the rest of my mind-map the professional section. And I'm going to do the same thing. I'm going to categorize each of these tasks that I need to do. Okay, I'm going to end this video here, and we will move on to stage three, where we scheduled tasks in the following video. For those of you that are following along, you can now categorize your mind-map and join me in the next lesson. Or you can simply join me in the next lesson and then return to your mind map to categorize it any point in the future that's convenient for you. This lesson was a little longer than usual. I do apologize for that. But as always, thank you very much for your time. 15. Making things happen.: Well, hello and welcome back. And in this video, I'm going to do two things. First, I will schedule the next step tasks in my brain dump in such a way that I will perform those tasks using the concept of batching. And then we will finish up this video and this section of the course by looking at how you keep your brain them mind-map, updated and current. But before we schedule the tasks, let's discuss batching. Now, batching is very simply a way of working where you group some or all of your similar tasks together and you work on those similar tasks in the same block of time. For example, if you have e-mails to write or online research to do, then you do some or all of those tasks during the same session. Even if those tasks are related to completely different projects or items in your mind-map. The idea is that by working on similar tasks together, you get into a mindset. This allows you to gain some momentum and to power through those tasks more quickly and more efficiently than if you were simply jumping from one type of task to another, a relatively short period of time. So let's look at our brain them mind-map and open the left-hand navigation menu. Now, I've got 13 different types of tasks here, as indicated by the different markers and labels shown in the menu. So these tasks are already batched together by the fact that we've added the markers and the labels to the various items in the mind map. So now I'm going to schedule them in my calendar so I can do all these tasks over the next two weeks. And here is the way I've scheduled these items in the upcoming two weeks. I've simply chosen to work on different blocks of tasks on different days. Now you'll notice I'm not being overly ambitious and I'm not trying to work on two or more blocks in any one day. As I know, if I do that, I'll be setting myself up to fail. And if I don't execute some tasks on the days I've scheduled them, I'm going to feel quite upset myself that I haven't lived up to my own schedule. So deliberately start off by setting an easy to achieve schedule. You can always outperform your own schedule if you want. Okay, well, now it's time to actually do some of these tasks. And all I can recommend is what we discussed in the first video. Find somewhere quiet to work where you will not be disturbed. Switch off any distracting messaging or email software, and begin work. Now if it seems a little daunting to sit down and approach a group of tasks in this way and you feel yourself procrastinating about, then just promise yourself that you're only going to work for five minutes. Once you actually start working, you're going to get into a role and power through many of the tasks you've set for yourself. Procrastination is after all, just the fear of starting. Okay, So we've scheduled that task, we patch them together. We've worked on a few, and we've accomplished a few things. So what happens now? Well, obviously you need to keep your bringing up up-to-date. If you don't, then a cluttered and a distracted mindset is gonna return soon enough, unfortunately. See you need to revisit your brain them routinely to update it, to add new next steps to some of the items and add entirely new items into your mind map. Now, you can set a specific time each week to sit down and update your mind-map. Or you can update your map in real-time as you work through your tasks. So how exactly do we perform an update? Well, you've got a few options and you can choose whichever one makes more sense to you. For an item where we haven't completed the task, but the status of the work has changed. The status of the task has changed in some way, then we simply make a status change. If we're using the task market, indicate the status of the task. Then we change that to roughly indicate how much of the task we've completed. And then we could add some current information, enter that task. And we can do that either by adding a new subtopic or by adding a note into the task itself. Now if you've completely finished one of the items in your brain dump and there are no more next tasks associated with that item, then you've got a couple of choices. You can simply delete the item from your brain them. And if it's something that you never need to bother with, again, that's obviously the best way to go. Or if it's an item you might need to return to at some point in the future, perhaps to update somebody else on the status of this task. Then you can add a done or completed node to your mind-map and simply move the completed task where it is in your brain, dump into that done Node. And don't forget the market has completed. And finally, for items in your brain dump that are going to have a number of tasks before they're complete. When you finish the next step, you're obviously than then need to add a new next step. Then you can do one of two things depending on which makes the most logical sense to year. You can simply add the new next step TO my map and mark the old step is done. And not the new one has undone. If you keep both the old step and the new step, and you just show the difference in status on both. Or you can simply delete next step and add the next one to your map. And once again, if you don't want to delete something and simply move it to your done node. When it comes to adding new items and updates to your brain dump. Please don't just rely on your memory to do this. As we mentioned earlier, I strongly recommend looking at simple to use apps for your phone that would allow you to capture new tasks, ideas, and commitments as they pop up. You can then simply pull out your phone right down that item and you can add it to your brain dump when the time comes. So what I'd like you to do is open your calendar and schedule blocks of time when you're going to work on the various items in your mind, map the batches of tasks, and then add a day and time when you're going to return to your mind-map and updated. And obviously you're going to want to update your mind-map after you've accomplished a certain number of the tasks in your brain dump. For those of you that have not been working on your own brain dump as we worked through these videos. And I strongly encourage you to at least try brain dumping for two or three weeks and see how it works for you. I promise you that the process will really help free your mind from the stress of trying to keep all those loose ends in your memory. And it will allow you much greater peace of mind. And keep in mind the lessons in this section are a guide to the process. If it makes more sense to you to alter some of the ideas, instructions, or ways of working that we've discussed in, please go ahead and do so. Well. That's it for the course. I really hope you found something of value in these lessons. And I really hope that mind-mapping and brain dumping can bring you as many advantages as it has done for me personally. I'd like to thank you very much for your time. And I do hope to see you in another course very soon. Thanks again. Bye bye.