In order for me to get back on track I knew I would need an effective way to sort out and organize my ideas. Since I’ve been out of touch with affiliate marketing in a while, thinking up new campaign ideas and brainstorming for the first time in months was like opening the flood gates – tons of questions, thoughts and ideas came to mind! Before now, I would usually kinda file an idea away in my mind thinking “I’ll get to that later” only to end up forgetting about it for weeks, if not forever.
Mind Mapping to the Rescue
I first heard about mind mapping about a year ago. I had tried using a couple of different Windows programs but found them to be overly complicated when it came to just throwing ideas down. I ended up just giving up on mind mapping software resorting to white boards or black pieces of paper. White boards are great for laying out thoughts and ideas, but the problem is you have to eventually erase it. Pieces of paper are cheap and easy but are limited in size and can easily be discarded accidentally.
iThoughtsHD FTW!
iThoughtsHD Rocks!
iThoughtsHD for the iPad is by far the most effective mind mapping software I have tried. It’s very intuitive, very simple, but very powerful. It has great options for sharing mind maps created within iThoughtsHD including exporting a mind map to a PDF or like 10 other file formats.
The emailing option is great. It converts your mind map to a nice, color coded outline, attaches a copy of the iThoughtsHD file, and attaches a PDF of the mind map. Being color coded really makes it easy to correspond items between the outline and the mind map.
The fact that it automatically creates a PDF of your mind map and attaches it when emailing your mind map is very convenient and handy since not everyone has an iPad or this app installed.
I took a bunch of screenshots from my iPad and pasted them together to show what it looks like when you are emailing a mind map from iThougthsHD…
iThougthsHD Email (click for full size)
As you can see, it’s very clear to see how each section of the outline relates to the mind map.
iThoughtsHD is $7.99 and is available at the App Store.
iThoughtsHD has several more features that I didn’t really get into. I just briefly highlighted my favorites so far. If you want to read the full details on the app, check out their Features page.
If you own an iPhone or an iPad and are curious about mind mapping, this app is definitely worth trying out.