I love mind-mapping and find it to be an incredibly useful format for everything from planning an event to working out complex software architectures. It’s great because of the lack of constraints that it imposes on the thought process. It is similiar in many ways to the familiar brainstorming setup (and you can indeed use it for this), but it provides a more formalized approach that makes it possible to do much more.

When I first wrote about the business usefulness of mind mapping I came up short when it came to recommending mind mapping applications. Mindjet’s MindManager is great if you are willing to foot a $349 bill ($229 for basic version), but unfortunately that places this invaluable tool out of the hands of the entrepreneurs and small business owners that could benefit greatly from it.

FreeMind 0.80 is the first free replacement I have been able to find that is intuitive and slick enough to provide a worthwhile replacement. Mind mapping is a rapid process requiring an intimite link between the mind and the resulting mind map. The clunky basic interfaces that I previously experienced with other free (and commercial) applications just weren’t suitable for the process. Creating a map in FreeMind is a freely flowing process with minimal interface gripes (I strongly recommend setting the “Selection” setting to “Click” to avoid your selected node changing when you hover the mouse over a different one). It supports the nifty and arguably essential concepts of clouds and icons as well, and with some playing around with formatting the maps don’t need to be the dull grey color.

I have successfully used FreeMind the past week in all my software design work. I’ve decided the application is stable and useful enough to actually entrust my work files to it. If you haven’t had the chance to experience mind mapping due to the relatively high entry barrier for software, I highly recommend this.

I’m not talking about your high school past here. We all make notes and jot down important information. A great habit to get into is writing down the date beside anything that isn’t going into the trash within a week. Meetings, school notes, scribbles on scraps of paper, the best way to remember is to get into the habit of dating it all. Otherwise the more time passes, the less useful the information you wrote down becomes.

Case in point: I’m putting together my yearly accounts for Tilted Pixel, inputting all those transactions that haven’t quite made it in yet. In doing so I had to dig up a customer’s information and found an interesting note I must have made years ago in the customer’s file - “Last payment - $74 CAD” - no date of course. I honestly don’t remember why I ever thought to store that information, but at the time it was written it presented reliable data. As time moved forward the note rapidly lost any usefulness it may have once held. Was $74 really the customer’s last payment? Doubtful considering this was never my accounting system, and that I currently use QuickBooks. So when was this payment actually made? What if I was backtracking to fix an accounting error? The information is useless.

Luckily I’m much more organized now and recognize the importance of dates. This is the only reason I can now take a two month stack of papers and input them just as easily as if I had done so each day.

Bonus tip: when writing down a phone number write down the name too. Seems obvious, but I just threw out a whole stack of scrap papers with unidentified numbers that I had written down hastily when on the phone.

Keeping busy and getting things done aren’t the same. Within any given time period we have a choice of what tasks to complete, with the inevitable result that not everything gets done (those about to argue should first make sure they exercised today, have their personal financial plan in order, and have scrubbed behind the toilet). It is entirely possible to put forth a good honest work day, feel busy as hell, and at the end of the day have done absolutely nothing to bring you closer to any of your goals. In situations like this, which I’ve experienced many times, all you’ve managed to do is successfully stay in the same place as this morning.

Steve Pavlina already explains the difference between urgent but immaterial tasks and highly important ones that can be put off indefinitely. There’s no sense repeating what Steve has already done so I will leave it to you to read his article for perspective and tips on avoiding falling into the trap that I describe above. I’d like to focus on the class A and B types of tasks that Steve describes, in other words the tasks that will provide a meaningful future result. Steve describes them as tasks that yield benefits over 5+ and 2 year timespans respectively. I find myself thinking of the class A tasks as Great Pursuits, and the class B tasks as mostly ones that feed back into accomplishing the Great Pursuits (why would your shorter term accomplishments not be harmonious with your longer term ones?).

I recently learned some valuable lessons and made some tough decisions to re-allocate my time so as to be able to pull myself further ahead. I have a natural tendency of taking on too many tasks, something that I need to consciously watch about myself to avoid overload. In August I chose to challenge myself by simultaneously running Tilted Pixel, teaching two labs for first year business at Laurier, taking on a full time course load (I am pursuing business and computer science degrees), and continuing to write this blog. For the most part this actually worked, but starting mid November things got too hectic to reasonably handle. Everything had to suffer some level of stress fracture with this kind of load, but with the lack of firm deadlines it was inevitably the blog that simply had to be put on hold. Side note: In six particularly horrendous days in December I wrote a final exam, spent the next two days up all night fixing a web server emergency, slept for for a day, then studied for and wrote 3 exams in three days.

This experience got me thinking on the importance of not only allocating enough Class A task time to get somewhere, but of the importance of carefully choosing the Great Pursuits to be taken on. Achieving anything great inevitably requires a substantial regular effort, and certain life-long goals like being physically fit don’t provide much opportunity for rescheduling into the future (yet due to their far off nature are easy to dismiss). Being an entrepreneur and loving variety and ambition I constantly have more opportunities than I can possibly take on. I have found very quickly that not all great sounding opportunities are great for me. Much more painfully I have at times had to re-allocate time away from unfinished Great Pursuits, sacrificing one ambition for the good of the success of the whole.

Clearly there’s a limit to how many goals can be effectively chased at a time. With too many great opportunities at once it becomes impossible to accomplish any. How do you choose these Great Pursuits? I don’t have the full answer, but the approach I am taking now places heavy emphasis on favoring those that are:

1. Strongly in-line with my beliefs and eventual goals.
2. Within my existing or desired circle of competence.
3. Holds a high likelihood of success given the appropriate attention.

In coming up with these I adopted the spirit of Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies, a rather amazing research project and must-read.

These sound obvious, but it’s surprisingly easy to get distracted chasing opportunities based on immediately attractive criteria like fast cash, easy results, or a particularly glamorous end-result. These criteria happily ignore the feasibility or real results of the chosen pursuit. One such mistake I made was in spending several months on a terrific business idea that I was perfectly suited to develop from a technical standpoint, but had not the resources nor knowledge to have any hope of growing the business idea beyond a business petri-dish. My mind happily skipped over this core competence gap, instead choosing to focus on what I could accomplish immediately and the money making potential of the venture. The business is now closed, the lessons have been learned, and I am unlikely to attempt it again.

More recently I decided to experiment with affiliate marketing and Google Adwords due to my interest in the success stories and popularity of this particular money generating fad. This time around I was much more realistic with my expectations, setting aside money I was prepared to lose and ensuring that the knowledge and experience I gleaned would be proportional to the time and cash I was putting into this (in this case my ulterior motive was learning more about using Adwords to advertise effectively). My approach allowed this failed experiment to still yield worthwhile benefits, but looking back I don’t feel that I would have attempted this if I had been using the criteria that I outline above (there are simply closer matching ways I could have used the time and capital).

In contrast to the misadventures above, a venture like Tilted Pixel meets the criteria that I’ve outlined. It’s not easy or low risk by any stretch of the imagination, but it falls within my core competence (strong website development background, entrepreneurial capability), lines up with my long-term goals, and gives me strong reason to believe that determination will equal success. It’s a Great Pursuit that I can carry out, and be confident that my efforts are working towards a purposeful goal.

What are your Great Pursuits? What kind of tasks should you venture forth with the fullest ambition and make your priority? What seemingly good projects aren’t going to realistically mix with your competencies and goals, even if they are good opportunities?