Juiced On Writing

Today I spent a fruitful day planning out all my writing and other resolutions into some 2009 goals and objectives, and setting them into a series of mindmaps. Together they make up a Life Dashboard MindMap.

For 2009 I have several personal goals, some large family tasks (such as adopting another child into the family), some work and study goals and many writing goals. Organising all of these takes a lot of planning of dates and impacts. My months and weeks of tasks are planned through the central 2009 Life Dashboard Map.

In this post, I discuss quickly how I planned out my goals for this new year today, and show you some of my own goals and strategies opened up for you within the two mindmaps.

Sources for the original mindmap templates which I used to create this suite of maps are linked to, for your own reference. You will be able to use these if you are a user (as I am) of  Mindjet MindManager Pro Version 7 or above. Happy planning for your own writing goals this year also.

1. 2009 Goals and Objectives

This was the starter base, and I’ve used January 1st as a day to put this together. I had already many of my writing goals for the year in mind, and some obvious personal goals. I have shown you the details (task info includes milestone dates) on one of my writing goals also.

This Mind Map is a combination of two mindmap templates which are available free from BiggerPlate.com.

• The first is the Setting Smarter Goals and Objectives mind map template by Micheal Deutch, which includes SMARTER icons and a guide to setting Smarter objectives, and a simple template where you can fill in business and personal goals. I have extended this into further goals to match the Life Map you will see shortly.
• The second is from the Goals Mind Map by ericblue76, which provides all the colourful icons and sub-topics I have placed under personal goals (physical, family/home, rest/play/hobbies, mental/emotional, spiritual, finances, career, contribution). Again, I’ve changed this original template and extended several categories to fit my own needs. Additionally, I’ve taken out the Long-Term goals set under each personal category into a separate Main Topic. These goals are broken up into 3year, 5year, 10year and Lifetime plans.

2. My 2009 Life Dashboard

The goals have then been copied over into appropriate projects on my central mindmap – my dashboard. This template is again available from BiggerPlate.com or off the Mindjet MindManager website also. The Personal Organiser mind map template is copywrite of Mindjet, and it is this which I used to setup my own life dashboard.

From this central mindmap, I have html links to all required files (and folders) and sub-mindmaps (which includes the 2009 Goals and Objectives mindmap as above, and several other working project mindmaps.

The original Personal Organiser template comes with a Weekly topic, with each day for planning. I have added a Monthly one, and you will see January opened up on this view, showing all the project tasks I have set for January. These dates were set originally in my Goals and Objectives mindmap, but seeing all the tasks I’ve assigned onto January gives me the ability to work out exactly if I’ve over-comitted my time and some of those dates are unachievable.

You can see some of the file links to additional mindmaps created for this year’s use in several areas on this mindmap. Clicking on these little icons opens the mindmaps I need directly.

Now that I have my goals and objectives, and milestone dates (with smart-er objectives), particularly for my larger writing goals, I can finish off my planning and strategy to achieve these, along with all the other goals on personal levels.

Note: Both the mindmap images above are thumbnails. Open these as images on a new page, and you can then view them full size by clicking on them with a magnifying glass icon (instructions apply to those using Firefox browser).

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