Planning Tools for Visual People

Posted on May 4, 2007 by Bruce Keener

There are probably innumerable tools for the visual person to do planning. (By “visual person” I mean someone, like me, who likes to see the big picture of a plan, or to see things at-a-glance, so to speak.)

The tool that seems to work best for me is a mindmapping tool. I personally use MindManager on my iMac and MindManager Pro on my Windows system, but there is a lot of mindmapping software one can work from. This page shows several of the available mindmapping tools — no doubt you can find additional listings by just doing an internet search. The cost of mindmapping software ranges from free to a few hundred dollars.

Of course I should also emphasize that you really don’t need software to do mindmapping: you can do it using plain old pen and paper, and I’ve done a lot of mindmapping and other types of visual planning that way. Software does have some advantages:

  • it’s easy to correct mistakes and to expand the “sheet” to any size desired (going beyond the limits of letter-sized paper)
  • some mindmapping software integrates nicely with other software, such as Microsoft Word and Excel and the like
  • the software is a “pro” at drawing, which is an advantage for those who are unhappy with their own drawings

Of course, paper has its advantages, too.

If you are interested in seeing some screenshots of MindManager templates that can be used for planning your week or managing your task list, portions of two such templates are shown below. Note that I do not use either of these templates for managing tasks or for planning my week, but I know people who do. What I personally like mindmapping for is the bigger picture planning, such as goal-setting or major project planning (which I discuss more on this web page). Update: Gaelen of Mindjet notes in the comments to this post that they are working on version of 7 of MindManager. Hard to imagine it being any better than it already is, but no doubt they have some more good stuff they are building into it. Neat!

mmweek

mmtask

I recently came across another set of visual planning tools: The Printable CEO Series from David Seah. The forms that I have tried do not fit my visual style, but they may be just the thing for you and his write-ups are well done. (The forms are available as PDFs.) In fact, I have added a link to his site in my links section in the right column of this blog.

  • Update: You may also want to read my more recent article on mind mapping, which includes sample maps (these can also be viewed in picture format).

For the visual planners among us, how do you do your planning? Have you found a tool that works better for you than mindmapping? For example, I have heard some pretty good things about Visio software but have never tried it myself.

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  • http://www.mindjet.com Gaelen

    Hi Bruce,

    It’s Gaelen over at Mindjet. I came across your post on MindManager today (I like your “Week at a Glance” template) and wanted to see if you’d heard our announcement that MindManager 7 will be out on May 30th.

    Let me know if you’d like to be set up to beta test it now.

    Best,
    Gaelen

  • http://www.keenerliving.com/ Bruce Keener

    Gaelen,

    How great of you to stop by and let us know about the coming update.

    I would LOVE to beta test version 7, ideally both Mac and Windows platform, but can go with either.

    Thanks again for letting us know what’s in the works.

    Best regards,
    Bruce

  • http://www.keenerliving.com/ Bruce Keener

    Good morning, capo. Thank you for the feedback on the post. Glad it was helpful. BTW, I took Mindjet up on their offer to play a bit with MindManager 7 and am very impressed with its new interface. Haven’t played much with it, but really like it so far.

    As to the 4-Hour Work Week, just started reading it two days ago and haven’t gotten very far into but I very much like what I am reading. It truly has some good philosophical elements and some helpful advice for lifestyle design, which seems to be what it is all about. In fact, I have been so helped by one part of it that I had planned to post on it today: the part about having exciting goals.

    Will probably be Monday before I post on this book’s ideas regarding goals, as I am still not feeling very good today. But, it does have some good points.

  • capo

    This was a really helpful post for me. I’ve looked at mind mapping software before but never figured out why it would be useful for me; never quite got the picture, as it were. I’ve found the documentation generally to be wordy and confusing which is perplexing given the intended function of the software. Your examples here cleared up some of my confusion. How odd that “visual aid” organizational software should be so hard to visualize in use, eh?
    On a different subject – I’ve recently run into the “4 hour work week” thing. I’ve just begun listening to the audiobook during my daily commute but haven’t gotten into it enough to have much of a basis for an opinion. My only thought so far is that it’s an unfortunate choice for a book title. Had I not been intrigued by the universally high marks given the book in reviews I probably wouldn’t have bothered with it. The title smacks of those scummy “get rich quick with little or no effort” infomercials. From what I’ve heard so far, it seems like the author goes in a slightly different direction. Maybe not. We’ll see. In the meantime, being a well read person, I wonder if you’ve read the book and have any thoughts to share on it?

  • http://lifelearningtoday.com AgentSully

    cool stuff!

  • http://www.keenerliving.com/ Bruce Keener

    Thanks, AgentSully. Great post you wrote at ZenHabits!

    By the way, I also like your Life Learning Today site and have added to the links on my sidebar. Good stuff.

    Bruce

  • David

    I find GoalEnforcer much easier to use, as it is specially cut for planning and project management.
    I didn’t have to read any boring documentation, just followed the interactive tutorial and I felt like I knew the tool for years, it felt so natural.
    You should give it a try http://www.goalenforcer.com/
    No software is “pro” at drawing like my hand, I’m a painter :-) , but I really think that the greatest benefit is that “it makes it easy to correct mistakes.”

  • http://www.keenerliving.com/ Bruce Keener

    Thanks, David. Always great to know that there is a variety of software that can do the job for us. Thanks for pointing GoalEnforcer out.

  • Neil

    Ive looked about for ages and used both goalenforcer and mindmapping tools, im still looking for the right one for me although i like aspects of both of these. Another one I cam across and loved but it didnt suit my need at the time was “thebrain”. Loved the interface but found i “lost” links a bit to easily. May work for someone else tho! I’d love to see the web take that jump from text to visual being a vissy person myself. And if you a vissy person ud know what i mean.

  • http://www.keenerliving.com/ Bruce

    Thanks, Neil. I remember “the brain” and thinking that it had a lot of potential. Kinda petered out though I guess.

    I, too, would like something a bit different, and more “vissy” on the web. Seems like so many are the standard two and three column, minimal interaction, layouts. Would really be neat to see someone design a layout that could be shifted and manipulated by the readers.