Time-Based (Calendar) Maps

  MindManager Map User Tips

For this map
As well as ‘full featured viewing and interactive querying & filtering, MindManager software users are free to edit, add to, adapt and/or re-purpose this map in whole or in part, and/or use it as a source of content that can be added to your own existing maps. For example…

• Create your own ‘living calendar / diary to plan, and run, your life – Plan your year and days ahead and record whatever events and appointments you want to on a chronological basis, be it for work, family, hobbies, personal journal or blog, whatever. For example don’t stop at just adding a sub-branch for a meeting or conference to the relevant date branch – copy and paste the agenda as a note / sub-branches and run the meeting using the map, adding notes and actions as you go for ‘instant minutes’.
  Note – Use the Additional Time Interval sub-branches (and associated tags) to build your calendar / diary….
  – longer interval branches (weeks and quarters) can be added to the map to further structure the months and days of the year;
  – shorter interval branches (hours, minutes and seconds) can be added to plan individual days – and events or projects thereon – to greater detail as required;
  – even more time interval branches are available to build even more timelines from our ‘Time Templates Map‘. 
• Digital Archive – As the days and months pass, your calendar map file gradually becomes your permanent digital record of what you – and maybe the rest of your team (including that guy that left 6 months ago!) – did when, along with all the supporting details that were recorded at the time, preserved to be re-discovered ‘in context’ if required at some unknown time in the future (maybe long after event websites may have disappeared to the Great Server In The Sky….). Also a great time-saver when re-using map branches for regularly scheduled events. Imagine, a single file source of everything that happened over the course of a year, for any year (as well as calendar maps for the next 10 years, we also aim to always have maps for the last 10 years available in our mapstore so you can look back and revisit, as well as look forward and anticipate).
• A source of time-related content for use in other maps – Use the components of the map in whole or in part – be it the whole branches or the unique bespoke images, embedded spreadsheet calendar grids, or index marker tags embedded within or attached to them – to add a 2024-specific temporal dimension to other MindManger maps (indeed why not go the full hog and add them to your Map Parts archive?). For example add a mini calendar of specific days to a project map to help plan out what’s happening. Copy and paste a ‘TIME -’ tag group to an existing map, assign to branches as appropriate, and interactively filter using your new found ‘temporal-intelligence’ 😉
• Personalise by ‘mixing and matching’ – Your ‘business year’ doesn’t start on January 1st? Mix and match branches from the annual calendar maps from sequential years and build your own annual calendar map as required.

.
General User Tips
Some tips apply when working with any of our knowledge maps….

• Work on a copy – We would always recommend users work on a duplicate copy of this map for each project and keep the original download file in a safe place for future working.
• Strip out what you don’t need – With the original safe, you can now strip out the map content you don’t need for your project – the floating ‘meta’ and Map Legend branches, the central topic text – so the project map is as small and efficient as possible from the outset (though make sure there isn’t a more stripped back version of the map already available on the map store).
• Experiment – Don’t be afraid to play about with all the settings that control the visual appearance…
  – Choose which of the embedded / attached elements are displayed on all of the map branches by selecting them at ‘View > Detail > Show/Hide’. Note that in our maps Tags are turned off by default.
  – Switch between the Modern and Legacy Topic Info display styles at ‘View > Detail > Topic Info > Topic Info Display Settings’, where individual elements that are shown on the card can also be toggled on or off. Note Topic info cards can always be turned on / off for individual branches, even in the Legacy style, using ‘Ctrl + Alt + I’.
  – Hide / Show Embedded Topic Properties embedded on individual branches  by clicking on the green arrow on the right of each each branch. (Note if you select a number of branches and do the action on one of them, it does it for all of them).
• Change colours, sizes and shapes – The size, shape, and colour of each map branch and branch text is controlled initially by a ‘Topic Style’ and then perhaps conditionally modified by a ‘Smart Rule’ based on one or more attached tags. Don’t be afraid to play about with them, perhaps even creating your own ‘house style’. 
• Go big – MindManager has many unique functions available to capture knowledge – such as topic properties (single data cells), formulas and smart rules – why not incorporate some of them as you build on your new map?