With Freemind, organize your business and your life…

I’m organizationally challenged.

It doesn’t appear that way to friends and colleagues until people get to know me when I reveal “my process” – or lack thereof. Then, they are totally shocked.

The problem is that I don’t think like most people. My mind jumps from thing to thing. I think if they’d known what Attention Deficit Disorder was when I was growing up, I would have been diagnosed. Years ago, I realized that if I didn’t have some method for collecting my thoughts in a non-linear way, I’d lose the ideas. It’s all about the good and bad ideas, right?

As a freelance writer and photographer years ago, I captured ideas on 3×5 cards and kept them in a drawer until I had time to work on them. Often, I couldn’t find the cards, so the ideas were lost.

Then someone told me about mindmapping software. “Mindmapping! What a ridiculous concept,” I thought. “How can someone map their mind – and in my case, who would want to.”

Little did I know that mindmapping software would become one of my prime success secrets. But choosing the right mindmapping software can be very tricky and expensive if you’re not careful.

With many mindpmapping software tools available, you can spend anywhere from $47 to $497 on tools such as:

• iMindMap
• Creately
• Inspiration
• MAPMYself
• MindGenius
• MindJet
• MindManager
• XMind Pro

The key is to get the tool that you need. And if you don’t need something fancy, Freemind – an open source, free mindmapping tool may be exactly what you need.

Mindmapping is not the best descriptor of this tool. Capturing brainstorm is more accurate. Without a tool to structure and focus my tasks, I’m flailing at different things all day because I’m constantly brainstorming.

The central benefit of a mindmap is speed and spontaneity. A mindmap reflects what you think about a single topic, which can focus brainstorming into actionable ideas.

With Freemind, I jot down thoughts, projects, ideas, tasks and rearrange them into coherent step-by-step processes as they gel. Now, I use it for all kinds of activities like:

• Personal coaching with my clients: I use it real time to work with clients via a webinar so that we organize and build out the goals and actions live so the client understands exactly what needs to happen before the next session.
• Product creation: I outline features of a software or information product before I create it in a Freemind mindmap. Then I have a basic prototype that I can share with my own coach to get additional input.
• Process improvement: Everything is a process. Going to the grocery is a process. Some processes need diagrammed and immproved. For example, creating a workshop like the Niche Affiliate Marketing System consists of multiple processes. I mapped each of those in Freemind.

Since I began using Freemind, I have made thousands of dollars both in the corporate world and in my internet business because mindmapping has become my first step. For example, every product I’ve created starts as a mindmap diagram. Each NAMS workshop is a mindmap first.

Every corporate project can exist first as a mindmap. And every person on my corporate team now uses Freemind to “think” outloud.

So, why haven’t I created a product to teach you how to use Freemind (a free mindmapping tool, remember) effectively. The answer is simple: Bob The Teacher Jenkins has already done that.

If you don’t know Bob, he’s a great teacher. In fact, he was a classroom teacher for years until he realized he could teach more people using the Internet to deliver his lesson plans. Lucky for you and me, he’s teaching more than junior high history now.

That’s why I invited him to be an instructor at the Niche Affiliate Marketing Workshop in Atlanta.

I went through his training even though I’d been using Freemind for years (and thought I was pretty good at it). Man! I’m glad I did! He showed me tips and tricks that really extended my use of Freemind.

Now, I’m even faster and more efficient in capturing my ideas, but more importantly, I can find those ideas and work on them at will.

So, discover how to use Freemind mindmapping software to make sense of what goes on in your head and improve your productivity at the same time. You’ll be glad you did.