Home : Methods : Options

Option 1: Microsoft Outlook®

The TPAssist method can be achieved with some success using Categories in the Task capability of Microsoft Outlook®:  Assign every Task a category, use UPPER CASE characters to describe the top line goal and then lower case or Title Case to describe the project.  Using the “Arrange By” feature of Outlook, you can quickly and easily build and manage your daily responsibilities.  A further suggestion is to use the “Master Categories” list to permanent record your goals and projects.  Unfortunately as the complexity and volume of activities increases, the “two-dimension” approach described above becomes less effective. 

Option 2: Mindjet MindManager®

MindManager offers a visual, highly intuitive interface so individuals and teams can easily capture, organize, and share ideas and information—then quickly take action. From facilitating creative ideas to managing roles and tasks, from revealing the Big Picture to accommodating all the details, Mindjet MindManager enhances strategic thinking, accelerates project and process planning and boosts productivity.

The TPAssist method can be achieved using the intuitive MindManager interface to capture your goals, projects and activities.  MindManager even has some built-in integration with Outlook items so you can link your mind map topics to Outlook tasks and visa versa.

One MindManager approach is to use one very large map to manage your activities.  The main topics would be your goals, the next level map topics would be your projects or operational aspects and subsequent sub topics would be used to track your activities.  This method becomes problematic very quickly in that it is not suitable for managing more than a few goals and 5-6 projects.

An alternative approach is to create one mind map per goal and then structure your projects or operational aspects as main topics with-in those mind maps.  This method is very scalable but has the added complexity of managing multiple maps.

In using MindManager alone to drive the TPAssist method, there are a few areas that you will find limiting:

• MindManager supports task capabilities with-in topics (i.e. priority, percent complete, start-date, due-date, resources and duration), however these properties are localised, therefore status with-in a particular project or even goal is not easily tracked without manually updating each topic in the hierarchy.
• Whilst MindManager supports Topic notes these are localised, therefore you can't easily see what you have been doing on each activity at a project or goal level.
• As the maps grow in number and size it is difficult to appraise overall activity status, therefore diminishing your ability the to see where you are going.

Option 3: TPAssist 2007 for Mindjet® MindManager®