My best friend is always telling me:

"Alan, you should tell people about what you do first thing in the morning!"

Up until now my reply has always been:

"Do you really think they want to know?"

But now I am coming clean.

Every morning I spend 1 hour mindmapping.

You may already know what "mindmapping" is.

Of course you do.

But in the unlikely event that there is someone somewhere who doesn't here's what this sexy activity of the supercool is all about: It's a way to organize ideas and information and create what's called: "mindmaps".

It allows you to think visually. Plan projects. And generally brainstorm ideas.

Like many things in life, many people know about it and what it is, but they don't actually do it.

Well I do.

I mindmap.

I mindmap like crazy.

Here is a picture of a mindmap I have on my screen right now:

This is a mindmap of a book that is a couple hundred pages long, all in one screen ...

The idea is that you have 1 central idea then what is called "nodes" which are effectively like branches.

And if you are interested in being able to manage ideas better and access archived ideas faster then check out these applications

1. Here is a link to a Google Search:

   http://www.google.com/search?q=mindmapping+software

2. Here is a free mindmap application called FreeMind:

   http://freemind.sourceforge.net/

3. I don't really like FreeMind, while it does work it looks a bit crappy so instead I use MindManager, which you can check out at:

   http://www.mindjet.com/

Also by the way here are three free tools to create mindmaps (the first one is the best in my opinion):

• http://www.mindomo.com/
• http://www.mindmeister.com/
• http://bubbl.us/

I hope my friend was right and you might just maybe now, see the logic behind yours truly 1 hour morning ritual ...

Keep it real and keep winning.