Investing time in improving your skill with mind mapping software can have a strong payoff in improved productivity, according to a deeper analysis of my survey research.

Last year, I conducted a survey that showed that mind mapping software is the ideal productivity tool for today’s busy executives. After writing about Biggerplate.com’s new training program on the blog this morning, I got to wondering about the connection between mind mapping skill level and the benefits enjoyed from it. Intuitively, it seems there should be a direct correlation between the two. After all, the more skilled you are with a software program, you can work faster and more efficiently, and apply it to a greater number of tasks. Wouldn’t it be great if I had some real-world data to back up that assertion, I wondered? Then I suddenly realized that I may have this data, embedded in last year’s survey results.

So I opened up the survey data, and sure enough, the first question asked respondents what their skill level with mind mapping software was. Perfect! So I filtered the results of the survey by skill level, and the data below emerged. The percentages above each bar in the charts indicates the percentage of respondents in each skill level who answered in this way – in each case, this represents the most popular response.

Time savings with mind mapping software

As you can see from the chart, there is a direct correlation between your skill level and the number of hours you can save per week. The time savings doesn’t increase when you advance your skills to become an intermediate user, stuck between 1-2 hours per week. After that, however, it becomes a hockey stick-shaped curve, with time savings more than doubling when you become an advanced or experienced user, and then nearly doubling again between there and the expert level.

Productivity increase with mind mapping software

At the beginner and intermediate skill levels, productivity remains steady at a 10% increase. As you transition to become an advanced or experienced user of mind mapping software, however, users at this level said their productivity increase was 3 times that – a remarkable 30% increase in productivity. Imagine what you could do with that kind of efficiency! Surprisingly, there was no further increase in productivity between advanced and expert users.

What does this mean to you?

The sweet spot appears to be at the advanced level. Growing your skills to this level of proficiency appears to have the biggest payoff.

What this means is that if you need more hours in the day to get your work done, or if you’re looking for a way to become more productive, you ought to consider investing in my Mind Mapping Insider membership program. The tutorials, reports and resources it contains are designed to help you become a highly skilled visual mapper.