By learning to learn with out Interactive Mind Map Tutors, you will be able to learn faster with less effort.

Here are two samples from our Learning Management Program MindMapTutor. The first is an overview of the whole MindMapTutor. The MindMapTutor workbook contains an Overview Mind Map and Ten Detailed Mind Maps. The second Mind Map is a sample of one of the detailed Mind Maps in the MindMapTutor.

Click on the outline icon to get an idea of the text contained in the interactive MindMapTutor, play with the different sizes, or click the popout icon to see a full screen view.

Get this interactive Mind Map Free if you buy our affordable Learning Management Program Ebook before 30 June 2010!

I don’t see myself as an activist. I never was and I never will be. But I do believe that I do my best to make a difference within my own limitations.

Take MindMapTutor.com, or this very article, for example. It is done in the spirit of giving what I know to help as many people as possible. It is my version of ‘giving back’ what I have received in more abundance than many. I believing in giving more than I get back. In this case it is giving back to the environment.

I do charge for some services, though. So no good Samaritan labels!

A Short overview of global warming

We have all heard about the effects of Global warming and those that watched Al Gore’s movie, An Inconvenient Truth, started making this a moral issue. Once again, I leave that path to the activists.

Carbon dioxide and other gases naturally trap solar heat to warm the surface of our planet. This is a natural phenomenon and is required to keep our planet habitable. By burning fossil fuels such as coal, gas and oil and clearing forests at an alarming rate, we have drastically increased the amount of carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere. The amount of carbon dioxide you produce is termed your ‘carbon footprint’.

This has caused ‘global warming’. Temperatures are starting to rise. This is causing glaciers to melt, animals to leave their natural habitats and the number of droughts and floods to increase.

We can solve this problem. Some would say that we have a moral obligation to do so. This article is about how I saw an opportunity to make a difference and took the decision to do so. Even small differences to your daily life can add up to make a big difference.

MindMaptutor’s beginnings

A few years ago, I was looking for a hosting company for my new website, MindMapTutor.com. I obviously wanted something that wasn’t too expensive, but I also wanted to provide excellent service. “Uptime” and speed are very important to visitors of any sight. I simply did not trust any of the free hosting companies. (A good thing, as I heard recently that GeoCities, the free hosting services provided by Yahoo! has ended their service to website owners.)

I also had to fund my own hosting, so it definitely had to be value for money.

When evaluating various hosts, there was one factor that swung it Hostgator’s way. They were an affordable Green hosting company. But that wasn’t all. They also provided unlimited disk space, unlimited bandwidth and 99.9% guaranteed uptime. They met all the criteria I required.

Now, in case you don’t know what a Green company is, it is a company that cares for the environment and its carbon footprint.

The IT Data Centre’s use of energy

It is a fact that IT Data Centres consume 3%-4% of all electricity with its obvious associated emissions. It uses electricity to not only power the servers, but also to cool the servers.

The energy requirements of cooling servers are not very well known. For every watt that is needed to power a server, one to two watts are needed to cool it. You need at least twice as much renewable energy if you want to power and cool your servers with renewable energy.

When I read that Hostgator is 130% green certified, I wondered, ‘What does this mean?”

Renewable Energy Credits (RECs)

RECs allow you to offset your power usage against renewable energy resources by purchasing credits in a renewable source. If the renewable source puts this energy into the grid and you take energy out of the grid, (even if you are not in the same region as the renewable source), your net effect can be one of creating renewable energy versus consuming traditional energy. You could therefore have a positive net effect in reducing global warming.

Hostgator has bought renewable energy credits (RECs), by paying a Texas windfarm to generate energy on its behalf. This power is put into the grid. When Hostgator uses this power from the grid, it offsets it against the credits purchased.

In this way you can benefit by contributing to the use of renewable energy resources, even if your power comes from the general grid.

MindMapTutor’s approach

Now let’s take MindMapTutor as an example. On my own, I don’t have the resources to fund a wind farm, or power my hosting servers directly using renewable energy. But, by hosting with a company that is Green certified, my host servers are giving back more than they are taking out.

In this way MindMapTutor.com can be seen as a ‘Green’ website and contributing to saving the planet.

You can also minimise your impact on the environment. A quick start can be found at CarbonTracker.com, which lists 11 ways in which you can easily make a difference.

While this is a very short article, it was a very difficult one to write. Global warming and environmental issues are not my area of expertise. I just wanted to make sure that you are aware of the problem and show that sometimes a little forethought can make a huge difference.

Mind Maps can be used to improve your writing at school, college, university and even at work.

I will cover creative writing in this article. I will cover business writing in another article.

Often the hardest part of writing is knowing what you want to write about. Finding your theme and how to begin can be the biggest stumbling block in the whole process.

Often an essay has to be written under severe time pressure. The worst kind of pressure is writing an essay under exam conditions.

Well, despair not! By using Mind Maps you can plan your whole essay in about Five Minutes. ‘Impossible!’ I hear you scream. ‘Trickery!’ and some ‘*!@%#$’ superlatives also come to mind.

If you have never created a Mind Map before, I suggest you read some of the other articles on this website, or do our Free, no obligation Mind Map course. Enrol Now and awaken your creative genius.

Pick a Topic

I suggest you pick a topic – any topic. Choose one now. If you cannot think of one, look around you. Choose any object that you can see.

I’ve chosen an onion.

Now draw a picture of your object in the centre of the page. Draw a few branches radiating out from this picture and write down Key Words of whatever you can think of about this object. Don’t worry about whether it makes sense at all. Just jot them down as fast as you can. Don’t spend more than two minutes on this.

When you Mind Map and allow your ideas and thoughts to flow freely, you’ll come to an ‘Aha’ moment where you suddenly know what you want to write.

Take out another page, or create a new Mind Map if you are using Mind Map Software.

Categorise your thoughts into clusters. This will differ for each subject. In the ‘onion’ example, you could have listed colour, shape, smell, uses, structure, biology…etc.

Under each of these categories, put down all the thoughts of your previous Mind Map into these categories. Add new thoughts as you go along.

Within Five Minutes you can have the whole structure of your essay mapped out.

I suggest you start with some tangible objects. I use my car as an example in our Free interactive Mind Map course, which can be found on classes.mindmaptutor.com. See the example below.

This process can also be much easier if you use Mind Map software. I suggest using XMind or FreeMind. Both are good Free Mind Map tools.

Using a Word Processor

If you are using a word processor like Microsoft Word, you could use this Mind Map to your advantage. If you put Microsoft Word into outline mode, you can type the structure of your essay from your Mind Map quite effortlessly. The branches and sub branches naturally define your different levels in Microsoft Word’s outline structure.

Now all is left is to type in the details describing and explaining the topics.

I hope this helps you to write effortlessly starts to put some fun into the writing process.

Example

Here is an example of a Mind Map of my car to give you an idea of how your Mind Map could look. This template is freely available in an interactive format, which can be used and adapted as you see fit using Free Mind Map Software, if you enroll for our Free Course.

Enrol now for our FREE Mind Map class.

Go to classes.mindmaptutor.com to enrol.

In this course you will:

• Learn what a Mind Map is
• Learn what a Mind Map is not
• Learn the Principles of Mind Mapping
• Learn The Seven Steps in creating a Mind Map
• Create your first Mind Map
• Evaluate your knowledge along the way
• And much more…

What is more, you will get all this FREE.

How to get access to your free account:

1. Go to classes.mindmaptutor.com
2. Create an account by following the instructions
3. Enrol for the course.

It’s as simple as that!

Regards,

Faizel Mohidin

MindMapTutor

We Awaken the genius in YOU

Whole brain To Do lists will revolutionize the way you manage your tasks.

While this article is based on many sources, as well as personal experience, I would like to make a special mention of a book called ‘Mindmapping’ by Joyce Wycoff, which first introduced me to the concept.

The standard ‘To Do’ List

A ‘To Do’ list is one of the basic principles of Time Management and normally follows the following process:

• Make a list of tasks
• Prioritize the tasks
• Work the list

While this is fine for simple tasks, it often does not work for multiple tasks across the various roles one has to play in any given day. Some days you may only make the first three of your top ten for the day.

If you are working on a daily system, you have to transfer everything to the next day. If you are on an open ended system, you scratch off the tasks you have done and renumber. Granted, this is much easier today with the advent of computers, but it could still look quite messy and has no structure.

Why Standard ‘To Do’ lists don’t work

People buy organisers and time management systems and still find themselves approaching tasks haphazardly.

Why do so many people stop doing these lists after the first surge has passed? Only to find themselves attempting the same methods again, when they realise that they really have to ‘get organised.’

The answer is because ‘To Do’ lists don’t work the way we work.

They:

• Are not flexible
• They don’t encourage interaction
• They are not a part of your thinking process
• They are rigid
• They are cold
• They are intimidating,
• They are boring, black and white and not much fun!

A ‘To Do Map’ is the solution

By Mind Mapping your ‘To Do’ list, you put yourself back into the process. Many people say that their ‘To Do’ lists feel like it’s for somebody else. In fact, many people do them after the task has already been done!

‘To Do’ Mind Maps provide you with an organised structure and gives you an instantaneous view of where you are and where you are going. It’s easy to add new tasks without destroying the organisation of your Mind Map, unlike a ‘To Do’ list.

The method I am going to show you has the following benefits:

• Time Efficient
• Quick
• Flexible
• Colourful
• Preserves history

The Mind Map method

The method I am going to show you works well with pen and paper. If you are using Mind Mapping software, it works even better. If you don’t have Mind Map software, I suggest you try free Mind Mapping software such as Xmind, or Freemind.

If you are not sure how to Mind Map, read some of our other articles, or even better, do our free, no obligation training on the basics of Mind Mapping. You can get this at classes.mindmaptutor.com

Take out a piece of blank paper, preferabley larger than A4, but A4 will do. Get a yellow highlighter and a pink highlighter. You’ll see the reason for this soon.

Draw a circle or rectangle in the middle of the page and write ‘To Do’ and the dates of the week in the box or circle. e.g. ‘To Do – 4-10 May 2009′. A good time to do this is on a Sunday night, or first thing Monday morning. Update Daily.

• Draw a branch coming out from the centre and label it ‘GOALS’.
• Think of the major groupings of your tasks.
• Draw a branch coming out of the centre for each of them, preferably in a different colour. I like to refer to this as ‘Roles and Goals’.
• List the tasks you would like to achieve in each of these areas as sub branches coming off the main branches. Refer to the example below.
• You now have a pictorial view of all your tasks for the week on one page.

All you have to do now is prioritise and manage your tasks.

Managing your tasks

Highlight all the tasks you would like to do for the day in YELLOW. You could also number them in order of priority if you feel you have to.

You are now ready to start working through your Mind Map.

Once you have completed a task, highlight it in PINK. This will create an orange branch, which ‘fades’ into the background.

Doing this, you will be able to track what you still need to do and what has been done, while naturally preserving history with absolute clarity.

This could be applied in many areas. A project manager could have branches for each of her projects. A salesman could have branches for presentations, follow ups, proposals and personal. A plant manager could have groupings of equipment, productivity, safetey and administration. Etc., Etc.

It’s as easy as that.

Structure of a ‘To Do’ Mind Map

Do you:

• Read the latest copy of Financial Mail lying on the table in front of you?
• Try to remember everything that you know of about the company you want to target?
• Chat to the secretary while you are waiting?
• Call a friend or colleague on your cell phone to ask them what they know about the company?
• Mind Map an account strategy?

If you chose to Mind Map a strategy, wealth, promotion, fame and fortune await you!

You could use the five minutes to Mind Map the situation. You could note problems that the company may have. You could note the company’s needs. You could note important factors in the market. As you Mind Map this background, ideas will automatically start to form on how to approach the account.

Is Five Minutes enough?

We tend to throw five segment of time away, dismissing them as too trivial to be effective, yet five minutes is the average time that a ‘Mind Map burst’ takes place.

In Five Minutes, you can have your thinking about a project started and down on paper. This is obviously not enough to have a completed project plan, with resources, costs and scope allocated, but it is enough to break down ‘project resistance’. Throughout your project’s lifecycle, you should take time out to do these Five Minute Mind Map Bursts to break project resistance and get going again.

Mind Mapping simplifies, organizes and drains away the resistance.

WWWWWH$

This stands for Who, What, When, Where, Why, How and Money. I suggest you write ‘WWWWWH$’ on the top left hand side of your page, draw your project idea in the centre of the page and start Mind Mapping!

Mind Map Framework for breaking Project Resistance

Here is a framework to get you started. I suggest that you download Xmind or FreeMind if you don’t have Mind Map Software and put together your own framework. You could also print or draw your own blank templates so that they are available when you need them.

5 Min. to Better Projects

Free Interactive Tutorial

Don’t forget to enrol for our free tutorial. There is no obligation for you to purchase anything; Just good, solid tuition using sound pedagogics and putting you at the centre of the learning process.

Go to classes.mindmaptutor.com now!