During my work with mind maps I have understood one important thing and I want to share with you.

One of the most powerful advantages of mind mapping is universal viewing. Possibility of seeing all sides of the problem, all nuances and points of view. All you need – is to use brainstorming for describing your problem in the mind map. Other structures, such as lists and trees, restrict your thoughts, because they assign a direction of your mind somehow or other. Your ideas are organizing in compliance with a structure they should be wrote. So, if structure has limitations and directions, your ideas will be the same. And you may lose something.
Security professionals have an assertion that security of the whole system depends on security of the weakest link. In project managing it means that carelessness with only one side of your problem or project may cause a total failure.
I think mind mapping should be the same habit or rule of good form as a representative appearance or collective discussions.
It is not just a tool for increasing your effectiveness. It is a tool for protecting your work from unfortunate mistakes.

This blog is running by authors of Mind Pad (www.mind-pad.com)

I found useful idea in John's Ideas and Creativity blog. He suggest a technique for naming and listing people who can help you with your project.

As he said: "It can help to generate a list of disparate people to help with creativity; considering the fantasy input of others - both real people and fictional people - can provide interesting perspectives on creative effort or problem solving. The lists can also be used to help kick-start creativity at the blank page stage." Then he talks about concrete directives for doing this.

You can see details here. As I see - it is an interesting creativity technique. Other useful note: when somebody tries to think as another person, it helps him to access other ideas in his mind. Without such position changing he could never find many alternative ideas.

Remember, when you try to think - you think as Mister Smith, for example. You have an image - what exactly you should think as Mister Smith. It is not effective, isn't it? But you can also change your mind if you want. And you will think as somebody else.

This blog is running by authors of Mind Pad  (www.mind-pad.com)