Thoughts on Mind-maps, concept-maps vs. task management applications for GTD

Ship69

Registered
Hello

Although I find GTD is indeed a pretty good way of Getting Things Done... looking back over the last year, the problem I have been having is that it keeps being the wrong stuff!

POOR PRIORITY HANDLING
i.e. In my experience GTD is a pretty effective way of blasting through tasks at speed, but even if you keep doing those all-important weekly reviews, it's extremely easy to wind up not doing enough of the stuff that is genuinely important to you over the longer term.

TASK MANAGEMENT APPs
Last year I mostly used MLO and also experimented with Nirvana and GTDNext task management. (see below **)

But none of the above make it easy to:
A) See subject areas of projects/tasks ==> (to help you see the big picture of what you are doing in what subject areas)
nor
B) Connect Goals to projects/tasks ==> (to help you connect higher level goals to re-inforce why you are doing the stuff in question).

Yes, you CAN create subject area hierarchies in MLO and GTDNext (i.e. in outline form) but if there are too many levels of hierarchy, the hierarchy itself becomes overwhilming, and it then starts to become hard to see all your projects on one view. And so it becomes easy for tasks to get lost on them.

Worse, controlling relative Priority can become a problem:
Let me explain: If you enter the absolute priority of everything explicitly you tend to get into trouble trying to maintain it, because priorities shift like crazy and in the end it's too much trouble to tweak all the priorities relative to each other.

So instead of using complex trees to indicate the subject areas, I have been trying to keep all my task management system as flat as possible this frees me up to use sort order - which is very easily changed using hotkeys - to indicate realitive priorities. This works quite well but thenof course it is then hard to see a decent overview of what is really going on by suject area!
Also, because I read only with difficulty and because I think so visually - by shapes and colour - it is hard to instantly recognise all my stuff if everything is completely "flat".

MIND MAPS ==> Good for SUBJECT AREAS

So in parallel to using my task management software to create lists, I have recently been entering my stuff into mindmaps.
Mindmaps are great for creating subject area hierarchies. However genuine "mindmapping" tools more or less forces you to put everything into a hierarchy - a single tree from a single point - which is not necessarily how the human mind thinks, and it only does cross-linking between branches as an after-thought.

GANTT CHARTS==> Good for TIME LINES
But mind-maps are terrible from managing time. So for larger projects, where the management of time passing is critical, one needs some from of time-line. The traditional thing would be a Gantt chart although unless used with discretion they can severely over-complicating things. Also although Gantt charts are good at handling all the critical stuff and their dependencies, it is not good at handling the priorities of what actually is more or less important.

Free-style CONCEPT MAPS

A more interesting way of working are "free-style mindmaps" AKA "concept maps". Of particular interest things like Scapple (and lately Mindomo) because they let you bang data into boxes very fast using just the keyboard, and then move them around freely afterwards to establish what thoughts are connected with what, without the rigidity of either a single hierarchy or a rigid time-line being involved.

Once you have created a subject i.e. topic hierarchy of some sort (e.g. a mindmap/concept map or outline) it becomes achingly tempting to start adding tasks and priorities to it that map!

However I think the problem with all Mind Maps is what happens when you have say 100+ (e.g. I have 400-500!) tasks on one map? With than large a number of tasks on one map, dragging things tasks around in order to (say) change actioning status or add to a specific Context becomes problematic. ...And soon one is left thinking a database structure where one could just change the value in a field without moving anything would be much simpler & quicker!

Obviously another solution is ofcourse to use a Kanban-base system like Trello, but if you go that way, you've lost the hierarchy structure which was afterall the whole point of the Mindmap!


MAPPING APPLICATIONS

So recently I have been dabbling with "mind mapping" software (e.g. MindManager2017, Mindomo) and "concept mapping" software (e.g. Scapple, CMAPTools).


- Mindmanager (from Mindjet) is one of the best mindmapping tools with excellent hotkeys. Recently it has started moving into Concept Maps (and Flow Diagrams) but it's not very good at generating hierarchies with them using just the keyboard in those modes. Although it feels rather bloated it is pretty powerful and it should be because It's also disgracefully expensive (although I managed to wangle a good discount).
==> AS A TASK MANAGER: Mindmanger has quite advanced flagging and tagging Task management and the ability to create and save filters. However from what I could see there you can't build up more useful complex filters such as "Show me all Tasks that have a Yes flag AND are Priority 1 AND are NOT Done"

- SimpleMind Pro has the joy of allowing different areas of a map to follow different automatic layout rules in directions you can define. (i.e. You can apply a different layout to any branch of the map at any point.) Another really nice feature is in the lefthand column you can switch on a an outline which allows you to drag topics around and see the results immediately in the main window. It allows tick boxes but task management features are v limited. Also a task can only have one Icon ==> useless.

- Mindomo is a fairly powerful mindmap/concept map web app. Interestingly, it has recently added a "Task Mind Map" type of map. This allows you to create a tree very quickly using just the keyboard and it has basic Task management with Tasks disappearing when ticked. A task can have more than one icon. It also allows you to filter your map by icon which is extremely. And a subtle point is that you can stop an entire branch from opening if you have the same icon anywhere on a sub-branch. This lets you show just then task (or two) that you choose

- Oh and for completeness TheBrain: I had a quick play with it but I hated the way everything leaps around reorganising its shape as soon as you add/remove anything! Not nice for us visual thinkers.

CONCLUSION
So from what I can see although the mapping software is gradually moving into task management, when you have big numbers of task (e.g. 100-500) the filtering just isn't up to the job.

Have any of you folks had any luck using any mapping software for GTD?

J


PS For completeness, in terms of pure-play Task Management (windows) applications this is what I have found:

(**)
A) Nirvana
Nirvana is great in many ways but ultimately I can't stand things being so flat. (No task hierarchies possible). Also as far as I can see all new developments for Nirvana has 99% stopped.

B) GTDNext
GTDNext is my Great White Hope as I love the logic of its interface but it too is moving forward but also pretty slowly as it has spent months working on a more modern UI.

C) MLO
MLO is what I am currently still using. It is moving forward fast but only on its mobile apps. The Windows version of MLO has jaw-dropping powers of configuration but the interface is extremely complicated with everything I want to do repeatedly requiring too many clicks. Worse doing GTD with it requires various stupid workarounds.
 

mcogilvie

Registered
Wowee Kazowee and Happy New Year! That's a lot of horsepower on that tractor, friend. Been there, done that, didn't work for me, but YMMV.

I've been working on simplifying GTD as much as I can. I'm down to four next action contexts (Anywhere, Home, Work and Errand). I've been flirting for some time with doing away with an association of projects and next actions, using instead an association of next actions with areas of focus. This all works very well for me. I look at all four lists every day. I use a flag to indicate what I want to do today. My life is complicated, so my system has to be simple and maintainable. I have excellent outlining and mind mapping tools available, but my best project support tool is currently the Apple Notes app.
 
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