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Welcome to Coffee Powered Systems, equipping women with actionable steps to overcome, overwhelm and streamline business and life. So grab your favorite drink and come hang out with me. I'm your host, Miranda Merten. Welcome back to Coffee Powered Systems, today is Tip Tuesday where I give you the skinny on an app or a tool that could be useful for your personal productivity.

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Today is all about mind mapping. What do you know about mind mapping? And do you use it? Does it help you get clear on your ideas and your brainstorming? If you haven't used mind mapping before, it might be a very good tool for you. If you are a visual person and you love to get all your ideas out, if you do any sort of brain dump at the beginning or the end of the month or any time, mind mapping might be a really good option for you.

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Mind mapping might be a really good thing for you, especially if your head feels like there are ideas and thoughts flying through it all the time and you just need to get it out. Some people find it really useful when they start mind mapping.

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You might think you don't have a lot going on, but as soon as you start putting your ideas on paper or into an app, as we're going to talk about today, the branches just start to flow. And that is where mind mapping really thrives for some people. The app I'm talking about today is called SimpleMind, and there are a couple of ways that I use SimpleMind and I have used it in the past. And one of them is to mind map out my blog posts and podcast ideas.

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So basically what you do is you have one central topic in the middle and then you can branch out to smaller topics from there. For example, if I wanted to talk about outsourcing, I might have outsourcing in the center and then from there I might branch it out into different parts of outsourcing like tasks.

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And then I would break it out into smaller ideas that you could outsource to someone like social media or scheduling your calendar. Another branch on the outsourcing bubble might be where to find remote help, and that branch would branch off into other ideas as well.

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And each of those small, tiny branches could develop into a blog post or a podcast episode all on their own.

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Another way I am using mind mapping is to write my book. I am in the process of writing a fiction novel and I have been in the process of writing a fiction novel for months now.

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It's hard to find time to sit down and write, and even when I do sit down and write, I got stuff going through my head. It's hard to concentrate, but I do have a giant mind map of ideas of where I can take this novel.

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If you wanted to do something like that, if you wanted to write a book and mind map it, you might put the working name of the book or the subject if you don't have a name yet. And then from there the branches would branch out.

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I have a branch for characters and setting and then another three branches for Act one, act two and three. So obviously the character branch then branches out to each character and from those character branches, it branches out into the details about each character for the setting. It branches out into the details of the setting where the year at the time, all of that great stuff. And then my act one act to enact three, I'll break out into different chapters and within those chapter branches, then I add the extra details and they kind of once you start writing, they kind of just branch off into more and more ideas.

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When I'm ready to go back in and write the chapter, I go back to my mind map and I check out what I was thinking and maybe see if I can work some of that into the chapter or into the process. So for SimpleMind, you can download it for your Mac or Windows or you can use it on the mobile apps. It does have a free version, which is SimpleMind light. That is the version that I have been using and currently use and it has served me just fine.

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You can change all the colors. You can do different types of mind maps. They have over 15 different versions of my maps because some people like bubbles, some people like Straight-line, some people like black and white, some people like color. So you can actually choose from all of the different layouts that I have.

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And they have so many to choose from. Just don't get stuck on picking a layout. Just pick one and go with it.

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With the free version, you get the basic free form, mind mapping and like I said, the ability to do all the different styles. And that's just enough for me because I don't need it for in depth note taking or research or anything like that. But if you are going to use mind mapping as. Your basic research hub, you want to add links and videos, you can actually add with SimpleMind the full version, you can add voice memos if you're using their app version.

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So that would actually be really cool. Maybe you're a designer or an author or something and you always like to leave yourself voice memos. That would be a great option to have. You can add hyperlinks to the premium version. You can link it to your Dropbox, Google Drive or iCloud drive. So if you wanted to just have your mind maps automatically drop in there for you without you having to think about it and transfer it. Those are some of the pro features.

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Again, I use the SimpleMind light version on my MacBook and it works just fine for exactly what I need. All I need it to do is just map out my process.

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You can buy the desktop version.

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It's a one time payment in euros, which works out to about 30 U.S. dollars. It's twenty four ninety nine euros and right now that's about 30 U.S. dollars. Or you can purchase the app version in the App Store, which would be for your tablet or your phone. And that is about ten U.S. dollars. Also, if you're not quite sure and you just want to give it a test run again, you can try the SimpleMind light that is just the free version.

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Or if you're curious to know about the pro version, they do have a trial version that you can download. It gives you the full access to everything for 30 days. So that is my tip today.

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I will drop the link to SimpleMind down in the show notes and you can find it at Mirandamerten.com/38.

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That is my tip for today. See you next time. Thanks for listening to Coffee Powered Systems. You can find links to everything mentioned in the episode. Down in the show. Notes are on the website at mirandamerten.com. If you enjoyed this episode and would love to continue mastering your work flows and processes, subscribe on your favorite podcast player and join me here next time.