Interactive concept map guide

Let's plan a wedding - as an example for any project

This page offers an explanation of what SortYourThoughts can do for you. There's a link to the actual concept map at the bottom of this page.

All projects are made up of thoughts, steps and questions which are connected in various ways.

And many require collaboration.

That's where SortYourThoughts really shines.

Everybody involved in the planning could be in a video chat. Each of you can edit the map. It becomes your record of the discussion and everyone can see what others have understood and agreed to.

So you will have fewer misunderstandings.

Alternatively, each of you could work on the map one after the other, fine-tuning the planning and posing questions in the map.

This can also replace a lot of emails or messages containing discussions which quickly become incomprehensible.

Firstly: brainstorm. Collect your ideas as items in a map:

Arrows show which ideas are closely related to or are dependent on which others.

What is an "Aspect"?

Aspects are really important to SortYourThoughts.
They allow you to group your information, like "Who" is responsible for an item in your plan.
With an aspect "Who", you can give each item the name of one of your team.
Then you can create a "Viewer" with a column for each of you.
Or you can colour the items according to whose job it is.
And you can Filter according to "Who", so you only see one or a few people's jobs.
Other examples of Aspects are "State", "Priority" and "Family" (e.g. in the Romeo and Juliet map).

At some point, you will want to divide the ideas up, e.g. to delegate each task to one person or a group.

So you define an aspect describing "Who" is responsible for an action:

You can define a new "viewer" which has a column for each person:

You can also return to the original viewer and colour the items according to their value "Who":

Keep adding items as you think of them, or as more possibilities present themselves:

We can define another aspect "URL" so each item can contain a hyperlink to a website, file or anything else:

As your plans progress, you will need to visualise their "State". And here another Viewer is a good idea:

Plans often become too full, and it is useful to filter out things which don't interest you in that moment.

SortYourThoughts contains a filter:

You get the idea.

You can define up to 15 "aspects" in SortYourThoughts like "Who", "State" and "URL". Maybe you need a "Priority" aspect, so you can set the filter to show you just your own tasks which aren't Finished and have Priority 1.

Filtering, colouring and creating Column Viewers combine to give you an extremely powerful tool for sorting your thoughts and planning effectively and transparently.

Before you use the actual map, here are the tools used in the steps listed above:

Open the Filter sidebar on the right to see how your viewer is being filtered. Try out various combinations:
Choose the Viewer you want to see by clicking one of the grey tabs:
Choose the Aspect that should determine the colours of the items:

Now, view the actual concept map and choose how to colour it.

After that, create your own map by registering for free on the home-page.

All content is presented as is and may not be 100% accurate or complete. If you find any inaccuracies, please email us.