Most everyone I know that practices GTD likes to use Mindmaps to help put their thoughts about initial structure of a project down in a manageable form. Whether on a whiteboard or using software a good mindmap has a way of helping to clarify thinking, gives you a good visual understanding of how things relate to one another and also, because of their rather less structured nature, they are good at supporting brainstorming and free association, two behaviors that are critical for creativity to be captured and retained to be put into some subsequent action.

Mind mapping software has the ability to be incredibly valuable to GTDers in particular because of the way in which we lay out projects and actions. This is of course why David himself uses mind mapping software to help keep his project list consolidated. One of the main reasons why GTD practitioners don’t have mind mapping tools at their disposal is their reluctance to pay for yet another piece of software. I hear you and feel your pain. While I am in no way grudging developers who make their living writing code - I can’t possibly afford to pay for all the software I would test out if I had unlimited resources. That’s way free and shareware are so great and that’s why you’ll love the price of MindNode Mind Mapping Software .

While you poor windows users are out of luck on this one (if not in general ) those of you with a Mac are going to be very happy to hear about this. MindNode is a full featured mind mapping application:

Here are just a few of the features:

FEATURES

• Export To HTML (New)
• Help Added - Tutorials And Keyboard Shortcuts (New)
• Multiple MindMaps In One Map
• Supports QuickLook, Spotlight And iChat Theater
• Print, Export Or Share As A TIFF Or PDF File
• Full Leopard Support
• Automatic Expanding Canvas
• Much More

This very cool software as well as a slew of others that I won’t just mention but will also be reviewing in the weeks and months ahead can be found at CoolOSXapps.net . You might want to head on over and get your own copy, especially if you don’t have good mind mapping software without it and if you’ve never used this kind of tool you might just be surprised at how intuitive they are and how much more effective your creative time spent would be if you actually were able to capture every idea and keep each of them in the context of the thoughts that triggered those ideas to begin with.

Tags: Contributors, Downloads, Oliver Starr, Software //