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Earlier this month I wrote an article for LinuxWorld about Freemind — a free mind mapping application. I love mind mapping. It’s an excellent way to brainstorm and organize your thoughts, especially early on when thinking in a linear fashion may not yet be the most productive. For those of you who haven’t tried mind mapping, a mind map is a diagram that represents ideas arranged around a central concept. It’s a non-linear way to organize and visualize ideas.

Most of the articles here on DevYou start life as mind maps. Sometimes I like to mind map the old fashioned way: with pencil on paper. Other times I prefer to use an application such as the aforementioned Freemind. Today I discovered another mind mapping application that shows promise. It’s called Mind42.

Mind42 is a free, online mind mapping application. (As opposed to Freemind that runs on your local computer.)

In Mind42, 42 is not only the answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything! 42 means FOR TWO and indicates the collaborative character of mind42, because that is exactly what mind42 is: A collaborative browser-based online mind mapping tool. It allows you to manage all your ideas, whether alone, twosome or working together with the whole world. As mind42 runs inside the browser, installing mind mapping tools is no longer needed - for a hassle-free mindmapping experience. Just open the browser and launch the application when needed - it behaves like a classical desktop application!

The Mind42 folks define mind mapping as follows: “Mind mapping is about collecting ideas arranged in a tree like diagram.” And because Mind42 is web-based, rather than isolated to your computer, the way is opened for collaborative mind mapping with friends and colleagues whether they’re in the next room or the next continent.

The Mind42 website explains mind mapping and the Mind42 application in detail, and they’ve provided a handy screencast movie that shows you how to create a mind map.

If you’ve used Mind42, please share your impressions of it in the comments. Likewise, if you use a different mindmapping application that you’re crazy about, please feel free to share your thoughts as well.

[Link: Mind42]

The other day, in his post, When Everyday Life Gets in the Way of Your Dreams - And A Plan To Get Past It on the Simple Dollar blog, Trent included among his tips for getting a dream off the ground, this advice:

Turn off the television. This is the single best move I’ve made in terms of giving me the freedom to work towards my dreams. Instead of draining my brain in front of the television for a few hours each night, I instead do other things that are more fulfilling and much more in line with my big dreams.

This is great advice. I’d like to expand on it a bit by looking at the actual numbers:

• There are 24 hours in the day.
• If you sleep 8 hours a night, then that leaves 16 waking hours.
• Let’s say you work an 8 hour day, and it takes you a half hour to get to work, and another half hour to get home. That’s 9 hours. Subtracting 9 hours from your 16 waking hours leaves 7 waking hours.
• In the morning, let’s say you spend an hour having breakfast and getting ready. That leaves 6 waking hours.
• In the evening, let’s say you spend an hour eating dinner and unwinding from your day at work. That leaves 5 waking hours.
• You probably have other things to attend to in the evenings, such as paying the bills, playing with your kids, or taking the dog for a walk. Let’s say you spend an hour on such things. That leaves 4 waking hours.

Four waking hours to do with as you please.

Now, according to the A.C. Nielsen Company, the average American adult watches nearly five hours of television per day. If you are average, then that means you’re spending all your precious remaining waking hours each workday watching television. How many hours are left over for working on making your dreams a reality? Zero. Zilch. Nada.

Do I think television is evil? No. Do I have a “Kill Your Television” bumpersticker on my car? No. I think there’s a ton of great programming on television. I also think it’s nice, sometimes, to relax and watch a show. On the other hand, would I sacrifice working on things that are meaningful and rewarding to me and align with my life goals just to zone out in front of the tv? Not a chance.

If you have unfulfilled dreams — such as: writing a novel, starting a home business, traveling the world, or learning to play a musical instrument — consider how much time you could create to work toward that goal if you cut down, or cut out, television. If you gain 5 hours a day every week day, that’s 25 hours a week or 100 hours every month.

If your dream energizes you, as dreams tend to do, then — take it from me — you can get an amazing amount of stuff done in 100 hours. Give it some thought!

We’ve talked a bit about Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, and we’ve talked about the Triple Column Technique — a written exercise that helps you identify and deconstruct cognitive distortions. Today, I’d like to talk about how often to do the Triple Column Technique.

I’d imagine that some readers may believe that doing the Triple Column Technique once or twice is good enough. Though doing it once or twice may indeed help you begin to identify and deconstruct some of your cognitive distortions, it may not be enough. Cognitive distortions, like all habits of mind, are often deeply embedded in our habitual, automatic thoughts. For years they go undetected and arise again and again, causing suffering and sadness. Could such a long habit of mind be broken easily with a quick fix? No. Unfortunately, no.

So, practicing the Triple Column Technique regularly is important. Sound like alot of work? No, it’s actually not. It only takes a few minutes to do it each time, and the improvement in the quality of your life will far outweigh the effort you expend on the practice.

How does one make the Triple Column Technique a regular part of life? One easy way is to make it part of your morning routine.

What to do:

• At some point in your morning routine — say, for instance, just after eating breakfast or perhaps just before jumping into the shower — do the Triple Column Technique.
• Make it a habit. You wouldn’t leave the house without brushing your teeth, right? Make the Triple Column Technique a similar habit.
• Keep your Triple Column Technique worksheets. New insights can be gained by leafing through your old worksheets. You may find, for instance, that you’re particularly susceptible to specific cognitive distortions, and you can raise your own, inner awareness about them, which can be very useful in preventing them.

It may be easier to pick a different, regular time of day to practice. If that’s true for you, feel free to pick what is best. However, morning’s an especially great time to practice since doing so helps you get your day started on a more rational, calmer footing.

Many of us have dreams of things we’d like to accomplish in life, but haven’t yet. Perhaps it’s writing and publishing a novel. Perhaps it’s visiting the Taj Majal. Perhaps it’s finding an excellent relationship, acquiring material wealth, or climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro. Whatever it is, if you have a dream you’ve long nurtured but haven’t acted on, today’s article entitled “When Everyday Life Gets in the Way of Your Dreams - And A Plan To Get Past It” on The Simple Dollar blog may inspire you. In it, Trent describes how to transform a nebulous dream into an actionable reality.

He advises writing down the seed of the idea (eg. “I’d like to have a book published”), and then building on that idea until you have tangible steps to perform.

When the dream starts to get quite detailed, enough so that it begins to actually step out of the clouds of nebulousness and become something tangible that you can actually understand, think of the first step you can take to make that dream happen. … This step gives you a very specific action that you can follow to get started. It moves this dream from something tangible.

Have a dream you’d like to make a reality? Read the full article on the Simple Dollar! And, if you’d like, share your dream endeavors in the comments of this post.

From teachers to nurses, nerds to lawyers — people in demanding careers are susceptible to burnout. Whether you’re struggling to stay passionate about your teaching job or braving the stressful corridors of corporate America, you may one day find yourself worn down, drained of energy and spirit, feeling that you’re expending copious energy yet seeing little in return.

If you’ve experienced burnout, or perhaps know someone who is wrestling with this troubling affliction, you will find Jennifer Senior’s recent feature in New York Magazine tremendously interesting: Can’t Get No Satisfaction Senior’s article is a fascinating, in-depth look at burnout, it’s causes and potential cures.

“Like in Silicon Valley,” [Maslach] says. “It used to be the case that people would say, ‘You’re burned out? You don’t like the job? So quit. I don’t run a country club,’ ” says Maslach. “But what was happening was the best and the brightest wanted to opt out. They started saying, ‘I can’t do this; this is not a life.’ They’d go to the Midwest and start a pet-food store.” Maslach adds that when she did interviews at nasa, she noticed similar problems there. “So suddenly, these places were saying, ‘Whoa, what do we need to do to get these people?’ Getting the most out of people didn’t actually mean getting the best. That’s when there was a new wave of interest in burnout.”

Link: Can’t Get No Satisfaction (New York Magazine)

Books mentioned in the article:

* A Burn-Out Case
* Burnout: The High Cost of High Achievement
* Burnout: The Cost of Caring
* Changing Rhythms of American Family Life

Now that you are familiar with all 10 cognitive distortions and maybe even using the Triple Column technique I discussed earlier, wouldn’t it be convenient to be able to remember all 10, right off the top of your head? As it turns out, it’s quite easy!

When learning to read music, people use this simple sentence to remember the notes in the treble clef (which are E, G, B, D, and F): Every Good Boy Does Fine. We can use a similar mnemonic for the 10 distortions:

All Optimists Meander Down Jagged Mountains Expecting Splendid Little Prizes

Each word of that sentence begins with the same letter as one of the 10 distortions:

• A - All or Nothing Thinking
• O - Over-generalizing
• M - Mental Filter
• D - Disqualifying the Positive
• J - Jumping to Conclusions (Fortune Teller, Mind Reader)
• M - Magnification (Catastrophizing)
• E - Emotional Reasoning
• S - Should Statements
• L - Labeling
• P - Personalization

So, when you’re trying to remember the 10 distortions, simply say to yourself, “All Optimists Meander Down Jagged Mountains Expecting Splendid Little Prizes.” If you’d like to make it more memorable, you could invent your own sentence, or just change mine around ‘til it suits you. For example, if you’re a foodie, you could change the last three words, like so: “All Optimists Meander Down Jagged Mountains Expecting Savory Little Pizzas.”

Mmm… Pizza…

DevYou is a relatively new blog, and I’ve been enjoying watching it grow. Every day, more people come to visit. Every day, more people subscribe to the feed. It’s really quite wonderful.

Today is another happy milestone day: We now have over 100 feed subscribers! Hooray! Not an enormous number, but a little milestone worth celebrating nonetheless.

I’d like to take this opportunity to thank you all very much. Your support is invaluable and makes writing this blog a joyous part of my life. Thank you for visiting. Thank you for commenting. Thank you for all the ways you support what we’re creating here together — whether that’s by linking to the blog or simply telling a friend about it.

Looking forward to writing many more posts!

Yesterday I talked a bit about not looking where you don’t want to go, and today I want to add a little cautionary note about that.

While it’s true that you shouldn’t look where you don’t want to go (so you don’t inadvertently go that way), that doesn’t mean you should blind yourself entirely to potential pitfalls. It’s good to know where you don’t want to go — you just shouldn’t focus excessively on it.

So, while “don’t look where you don’t want to go” means focusing your energy and attention on the direction you do want to go, it doesn’t mean you be oblivious to what you’re trying to avoid.

For example, let’s say you’re starting a new business. As we’ve all heard many times, many new businesses fail. There are all sorts of reasons your new business might flounder. Not assessing what those potential pitfalls are is foolhardy. But, in keeping with the principle of not looking where you don’t want to go, it’s better to focus your attention and energy on your potential success, not failures, even though you know they’re possible.

It’s just like riding that mountain bike down a twisty mountain trail with a deep rut down the middle. Only a fool would ignore the rut entirely, but focusing all of one’s attention on the rut is dangerous.

An exercise:

Can you think of a situation you’ve experienced recently that involved pitfalls you feared? Would you say you focused more on the potential good outcomes, or the potential bad outcomes? How did it all work out in the end?

Positive thinking is a force people have harnessed for ages to improve their lives, but there’s a conceptual flipside that’s just as useful. Namely — and this is a little subtle, so bear with me — NOT thinking negatively.

What do I mean by this? Perhaps an analogy will help. When mountain bicycling on steep, narrow trails, deep ruts carved by rain are dangerous. These ruts often run parallel to the trail, and if your front wheel drops into one of them as you’re zipping along, you’ll lose control and crash. POW! Not fun.

The strange thing is, if you look at the rut you’re more likely to fall into it. If you don’t look at the rut you’re more likely to stay clear. It’s a simple technique that helps you remain safely on your bike instead of sprawled out in the dirt: DON’T LOOK WHERE YOU DON’T WANT TO GO.

“Not thinking negatively” is like that. As important as looking where you want to go is NOT looking where you don’t want to go. If you’re taking on a new challenge, then don’t obsesses about failing. If you’re meeting an interesting stranger, then don’t worry that she won’t like you. If there are several possible outcomes in a given situation, don’t focus on the one you would least like.

Another analogy is driving a car down a dark, two-lane highway in the middle of the night. Skilled drivers know not to fixate on the headlights of oncoming cars, and instead concentrate on the right edge of their own lane. Fixating on the oncoming headlights may cause you to drift into the wrong lane. POW! Really not fun.

Things to try:

• As you go about your day, see if you tend to focus on where you want to go or where you dread to go — metaphorically speaking, of course.
• Consider someone you admire, someone who has accomplished notable things in life. Can you sense whether they focus on where they want to go? If it’s someone you know, ask them.
• If you find yourself metaphorically staring at the rut in the trail, see if you can reframe those thoughts, perhaps with the “How Reframe” I wrote about in this earlier post.

In our hectic lives, where practical day-to-day concerns tend to dominate our waking thoughts, it’s refreshing and inspiring to spend a little time immersing ourselves in the words and thoughts of great thinkers and teachers. Fortunately, the Internet can be a great ally in this pursuit.

Take for example the Alan Watts podcasts. Alan Watts was, in the words of Wikipedia, “a philosopher, writer, speaker, and expert in comparative religion. He was best known as an interpreter and popularizer of Asian philosophies for a Western audience.” His eldest son, Mark launched a podcast of his father’s talks a few weeks ago, and they’re well worth a listen.

With the weekend upon us, perhaps you’ll have time to check them out. Visit http://www.alanwattspodcast.com/ and have a listen. You might also want to subscribe to the podcast feed so each new edition will be automatically delivered to your computer. If you don’t already use some other podcast-capable feed reader, you can use iTunes.

From the site:

Alan Watts is one of the most widely read philosophers of the 20th century. In addition to his 28 books, Alan Watts delivered hundreds of public lectures and seminars the recordings of which have been preserved in the archives of the Electronic University, a non-profit organization dedicated to higher education. For the past two years Alan’s eldest son, Mark Watts has reviewed and cataloged these talks to prepare them for public broadcast. The Electronic University is now pleased to present the highlights of the spoken works of Alan Watts.

For a little preview of Alan Watts, have a look at these clever animations by Trey Parker and Matt Stone.

Have a great weekend, and have fun listening to Watts!