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.

During July 2011, 695 people took part in the latest survey from this blog, which was designed to determine:

• The benefits that this type of software provides to business users of it,
• The nature of work and how it is changing,
• How well it meets the needs of knowledge workers today, and
• To what extend people are adopting mind mapping tools on mobile and tablet-sized platforms.

Surprising results

As with past surveys from this blog, this year’s Trends survey yielded some surprising results:

• Nearly half of respondents said that mind mapping software has had a “significant effect” on the way in which they work
• Respondents cited an average productivity increase of 30% from using it.
•  Over 59% of respondents indicated they would not be able to create the same quality of work if they didn’t have this type of software.

That’s just a sampling of what’s contained in this important report, which gives an unprecedented glance into the ways in which mind mapping software is providing value to today’s worker.

Click here to download the survey results (PDF, 542KB)

Are you hungry for more?

If you’re new to the Mind Mapping Software Blog and are intrigued by these survey results, I urge you to sign up for my weekly Mind Mapping Software Update e-newsletter. It will keep you up-to-date with all of the latest developments in this genre of productivity software, as well as alert you to the best tips and strategies for using it in your work.

Related resource: An infographic that summarizes highlights of this report.

How do you collaborate with mind mapping software?

• What types of projects do you collaborate on?
• What types of content are you collaborating on? Tasks? Group brainstorming of ideas? Or something else?
• How do you share your mind maps – via e-mail, posting maps on a shared network directory or in an online map sharing environment? If the latter, how effective has that been for you?
• Or do you just work on mind maps by yourself?

Please share some of the details, so we can all learn from your experiences!

In writing this 3rd edition, I looked at the existing content with a critical eye, updating those tips that needed it, eliminating topics that aren’t as relevant today and – most importantly – populated it with a wealth of new, practical and actionable information that is designed with today’s programs, applications and resources in mind.

To learn more, please visit the Power Tips website.

For those of you who have already invested in the first or second edition, you will receive a link to download version 3 in the next week or so – free of charge. My goal is to provide you with an up-to-date collection of best practices for mind mapping software, not to extract more money from you. I prefer to be generous, because I’m firmly committed to helping expand the awareness and use of mind mapping software as today’s most valuable business tool.

A number of readers also participated in a pre-launch sale of Power Tips & Strategies for Mind Mapping Software 3rd Edition. During the next week, I will send out an e-mail with the download links to this new edition and its bonus reports. In appreciation for investing in this new e-book ahead of time, I’m even giving this group access to an addition special report. If you’re one of those early birds, please watch your e-mail in the next week for more details.

Thanks for your patience! I had hoped to publish this e-book several months ago, but real life intervened (trying to live a balanced life between my full-time work, my avocation – this blog and InnovationTools.com – and my family).

If you haven’t shared your thoughts on this topic, please click here to do so today, because I will be closing this survey next week.

Software vendors, make sure you get the word out to your loyal customers to share their opinions, too!

If you haven’t shared your thoughts on this topic, please click here to do so today!

I’m excited by the pace of development in this space, which has resulted in some truly excellent business productivity tools. I’d like to recognize the developer who has done the best job of “pushing the envelope” of mind mapping software capabilities.

My last blog post about this contest generated numerous comments, which you can read here. Clearly, people are passionate about their mind mapping software!

Accordingly, I have put together a very brief survey, to give you an opportunity to tell me what you need:

• What do you need to know now about mind mapping software that would make the biggest difference to you?
• When it comes to mind mapping software, what do you struggle with? Where do you need help?
• Do you have any additional comments about mind mapping software or the Mind Mapping Software Blog?

Please click here to share your needs and opinions with me. I look forward to hearing from you!

Michael Deutsch of Mindjet loved reading your responses, too, but he pointed out to me that most of your answers were focused on individual uses of mind mapping software. He would like to know:

• What the essential value of mind mapping software – in a team setting?
• How does the ability to collaborate with mind mapping software add value to your business?

Please share your thoughts in the comments area below. I look forward once again to your insightful commentary!

Comprehensive idea management: Mind mapping software enables you to not only generate and organize ideas, thoughts and actions, but also implement them. Many tools excel at one part of a business process, but few have excellent utility from the birth to the of a project like mind mapping software does.

Managing information and knowledge from multiple sources: Several of you talked about how your job requires you to capture, process and track requests and activities from multiple sources, making decisions on what bits of information are important and which ones are not. Mind mapping software excels at this!

Clarity out of confusion: When you’re dealing with a complex challenge, mind mapping software can help you to see connections between bits and pieces of it, and ultimately help you to simplify your understanding of it. In this day and age, that’s powerful!

Distribution of information: Mind mapping software not only allows you to collect, distill and make decisions on information for a wide variety of sources, it also helps you to redistribute tasks and other information to your team members and promote a shared understanding of the overall project as well as the details for which they are responsible.

More effective problem solving: Mind mapping software, because of its visual nature, enables you to build a more accurate of the underlying structure of a complex problem. This, in turn, enables you to respond to the actual problem, not just the symptoms. As the old saying goes, “a problem well-defined is half solved.”

An iterative approach: One reader talked about how mind mapping software allows him to develop an accurate “picture” of a complex situation or problem in an iterative process. That is, rather than build an entire map in one sitting, you can partially complete it one day, then return to it the following day with additional information and insights. At this point, you may be able to see gaps in your information, which you must request from others. That information, in turn, can be added to the map in successive days. Thus, a complex problem or challenge can be broken down, analyzed and understood over a period of time.

The forest and the trees: Several people commented on how mind mapping software enables them to get a high-level overview of all of their projects and tasks, yet in a few mouse clicks they can dive down into very specific detail. That’s hard to do with most other types of business tools!

Thanks to everyone who contributed. Even though I have immersed myself in the tools and best practices of visual mapping, your comments illuminated several areas that I haven’t really given much thought to lately – but will definitely do so in the days and weeks ahead!

1.  Mind mapping software enables you to arrange information in expandable and collapsible topic trees. This makes it possible to store much more information in a software-produced visual map, without overwhelming you. Because of this, you can use it to create sophisticated knowledge models that wouldn’t be possible on paper.

2.  Mind mapping software enables you to embed documents, links, notes and other data within the structure of your map, transforming it into the equivalent of a powerful visual database. What this means is that you can create a project map that contains shortcuts to a wealth of supporting information. Whether that’s stored in Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, web pages or even individual e-mails, it’s all just a click away. That’s a big time saver! In addition, to avoid visual clutter, many programs enable you to sub-divide large maps into linked sub-maps. That enables you to capture all of the details of large projects in a manageable format.

3.  Mind mapping software enables you to re-arrange the topics in your map at will, until it perfectly represents your ideas. In contrast, unless you have a really big eraser, it’s hard to move topics in a hand-drawn mind map. Your topics are more or less “anchored” to the paper. Every time you move a topic within a software-produced mind map, you “re-factor” it. In other words, the parent idea to which you attach a topic changes its meaning and context. That enables your brain to generate new ideas, and to see connections between existing ideas.

4.  A software-produced visual map isn’t just something you create once and forget about. Because you can update its contents as needed, it can become a powerful tool for managing your projects and tracking their progress on an ongoing basis. At the completion of a project, you can also create a branch or sub-map that captures the lessons your team learned – which will help you to streamline future projects. Seen in this context, mind mapping software can be an immensely powerful management tool!

5.  Mind mapping software enables you to export your ideas to other types of software, such as word processors, presentation and project management software. This enables you to use your visual map as a creative “front end” to almost any type of project – a place to give form and structure to your ideas. For example, if you’re a writer, you can create a detailed visual outline of your article or book, and keep track of everything from character profiles and plot points to potential publishers and a marketing plan for your prose.

6.  Mind mapping software also opens up new opportunities for collaboration that don’t exist with hand-drawn maps. You can e-mail a map you’ve created to others on your team or upload it to a shared workspace, where they can annotate or add to it. Several mind mapping applications also enable multiple people to work on a map at the same time.

7.  Another powerful advantage of mind mapping software is that you can utilize it to present your ideas, which makes it a powerful alternative to PowerPoint. What’s more, you can even update your presentation with comments from your audience, which helps to increase their buy-in to your ideas. That’s something you couldn’t even dream of doing with PowerPoint!

8.  Another unique capability of mind mapping software is that it can be used with an LCD projector and screen to record and display ideas during a group brainstorming session. There’s something very powerful about seeing your ideas recorded in real time, and placed in context with all of the other ideas the group has brainstormed, that just isn’t possible with flip charts and colored markers.

9.  Another unique capability of mind mapping software is that you can utilize it to create your own “information dashboard” – a map that consolidates a wealth of data that you need to manage into a single, visually-oriented screen.

10.  Finally, what makes mind mapping software unique is its flexibility. The number of different things you can do with it – from a business, education or personal standpoint – is amazing. You can use it to plan a meeting, develop a business plan, manage a project, write a book, track your personal goals, create a database of ideas, create lists of tasks and track your progress on them, and much more. You can do many of the same things with hand-drawn maps, of course, but not to the level of detail (and the collection of related, linked resources and files) that’s possible utilizing mind mapping software.

In closing, please don’t take this list to mean that I am criticizing hand-drawn mind maps. There are still many occasions when nothing else will do – such as when you want to create a unique, colorful and very personal visualization of your ideas. With mind mapping software, users have a tendency to use the default settings for topics, lines and fonts, resulting in a black-and-white map that isn’t very memorable or visually stimulating.

It’s also more difficult to add pictures to your map that convey your unique ideas. In most cases, you’re limited to photographs, clip art or the artwork that came pre-installed with your software. For many users, that’s just too difficult, so they don’t bother with it – and the uniqueness of the resulting mind map suffers as a result.

Also, it’s not always possible to have a computer or laptop handy to produce a mind map. A piece of paper and pen or pencil (preferably a set of colored ones) are the only highly portable tools you need to capture your ideas in visual form.

Finally, mind mapping software, like most other types of computer programs, places constraints on what you’re able to do. For example, many programs limit you to only one central idea. Also, you may have some ideas in mind that just can’t be adequately conveyed using mind mapping software. In contrast, what you manually draw in a mind map is limited only by your imagination!