There appears to be a mad rush at the start of yearly to seek out methods to be extra productive. New Year’s resolutions, the itch to start out the yr off proper, and naturally, an “out with the old, in with the new” perspective all contribute to this. And the standard spherical of suggestions is closely biased in the direction of closed supply and proprietary software program. It does not need to be that method.
Here’s the 13th of my picks for 19 new (or new-to-you) open supply instruments that will help you be extra productive in 2019.
Freeplane
Mind maps are one of many extra beneficial instruments I’ve used for shortly brainstorming concepts and capturing information. Mind mapping is a flexible course of that helps present how issues are associated and can be utilized to shortly arrange interrelated info. From a planning perspective, thoughts mapping means that you can shortly carry out a mind dump round a single idea, thought, or expertise.
Freeplane is a desktop software that makes it straightforward to create, view, edit, and share thoughts maps. It is a redesign of FreeMind, which was the go-to mind-mapping software for fairly a while.
Installing Freeplane is fairly straightforward. It is a Java software and distributed as a ZIP file with scripts to start out the appliance on Linux, Windows, and MacOS. At its first startup, its most important window contains an instance thoughts map with hyperlinks to documentation about all of the various things you are able to do with Freeplane.
You have a selection of templates while you create a brand new thoughts map. The commonplace template (probably on the backside of the listing) works for many instances. Just begin typing the concept or phrase you need to begin with, and your textual content will exchange the middle textual content. Pressing the Insert key will add a department (or node) off the middle with a clean discipline the place you possibly can fill in one thing related to the concept. Pressing Insert once more will add one other node related to the primary one. Pressing Enter on a node will add a node parallel to that one.
As you add nodes, you might give you one other thought or thought associated to the primary matter. Using both the mouse or the Arrow keys, return to the middle of the map and press Insert. A brand new node might be created off the primary matter.
If you need to transcend Freeplane’s base performance, right-click on any of the nodes to carry up a Properties menu for that node. The Tool pane (activated beneath the View–>Controls menu) incorporates customization choices galore, together with line form and thickness, border shapes, colours, and far, way more. The Calendar tab means that you can insert dates into the nodes and set reminders for when nodes are due. (Note that reminders work solely when Freeplane is operating.) Mind maps might be exported to a number of codecs, together with frequent photos, XML, Microsoft Project, Markdown, and OPML.
Freeplane offers you all of the instruments you will must create vibrant and helpful thoughts maps, getting your concepts out of your head and into a spot the place you possibly can take motion on them.
