Mindmap Your Way To A Better Blog
When writing a blog it is possible to get to a point where you find it difficult to think of what to write about. This can happen even if you know the subject very well. By planning things out you can define ahead of time what you are going to write about and also think about what connects to your subject. The easiest way I have found of doing this is with a mindmap.
A mindmap starts off with single node in the middle of the page, this branches out into things that are related to the center node. The mindmap should branch so that everything down a branch is to do with a related subject.
As an example I thought I would quickly put together a simple mindmap about skepticism. This is by no means complete, but it is the sort of thing I would use to write about skepticism if I was planning on writing a blog on that subject.
I started in the middle with the main subject, and then branched out to science, pseudoscience, logical fallacies, origins and skepticism in the media. Each of these branched out into more branches. Although I created this map in about 10 minutes I now have at least 20 blog titles that I can expand upon.
In case anyone is interested, I’m not planning on writing a blog on skepticism. Partly because I can’t spare the time to devote to another blog, but mainly because there are many good skeptical blogs available on the subject.
Software
You could just use a pen and paper to create a mindmap, but there are some software versions available. Here are a couple of free products that I had a go at:
To create the example above I used a program called Freemind. Freemind is written in Java and is therefore available on multiple platforms. The only complain that I have about Freemind is that it is quite difficult to use and there are a thousand features that I don’t think I will ever need. However, once you get the hang of creating simple maps it isn’t too difficult.
Another free mindmapping software that I had a quick look at is XMind. This software not only covers mindmaps, but also has the capability of creating time lines, gnatt charts and even sharing it with other users. It is written in Java and is therefore available on many different platforms. XMind was named "Best Commercial Eclipse Rich Client Platform (RCP) Application" at EclipseCon 2008 so it is worth a look.
Benoit Gilloz
Programmer, Research and Development
