Achieve Your Hardest Goals with a Time Management Mind Map

Ever felt like you have 50 browser tabs open in your head?

With all the flying thoughts about work, personal stuff, and random things — mental clutter can easily take its toll.

That’s where mind mapping and time management come in. Separately, they’re helpful. Together? They’re a productivity dream team.

This article will explain how introducing the organizational power of time management to your mind map and general brainstorming can help you stay on top of things without losing your sanity.

So, let’s see how a time management mind map can improve efficiency without stress.

What is a time management mind map?

A time management mind map is a combination of your to-do list (time management) and your own thoughts and ideas (mind mapping). 

To better explain the time management mind map, let’s break down its main parts — mind mapping and time management.

First part: Mind mapping

Simply put, mind mapping is a visual representation of your tasks, thoughts, and/or projects in a way that makes the most sense to you. 

Educational consultant and author Tony Buzan was the first to introduce the term ‘mind map’ in 1974 in a BBC TV series, but the roots of this concept can be traced back to the 3rd century AD.

To create a mind map, you have to focus on one central theme (or a task/project in terms of work) and then dump all the information, ideas, thoughts, steps, and comments about it from your head onto a piece of paper, a document, or a sheet. Everything you brainstorm should become visible so you don’t have to remember it all. 

But how does time management fit into all of this?

Second part: Time management

Time management gives structure to your mind map. 

Let’s say you’re using mind mapping to see everything you have to do for work. Time management helps you organize everything in an efficient and manageable way. And if you’re looking for a suitable time management method, you can’t go wrong with the Pomodoro technique.

Let’s take a look at the 2 images below. 

First, we have a to-do list for your entire workweek. Then, you can break each task even more into smaller subtasks, adding commentary where you see fit.

For example, the image below shows a weekly work time map using the Pomodoro 25-minute sessions.

Then, you can break each of these tasks down even further while adding your own thoughts and comments so you don’t forget something important or overclutter your mind.

Don’t hesitate to use our free time management mind map templates to manage your time more easily:

⬇️ Download the Weekly Time Map Template (Google Sheets)

⬇️ Download the Weekly Time Map Template (PDF)

Why time management alone isn’t (always) enough?

Time management can make all the difference for your daily structure and organization. Still, without more explanation, visual reminders, and commentary to accompany your lists and schedules, it can all become overwhelming. 

For example, you might have your task to check emails on your to-do list, but without a visual note to remind you to consult a colleague about the best response to a client’s email from yesterday, you might completely forget about it.

According to research on the use of mind maps for better learning among medical students, mind maps are a great strategy tool for creating hierarchical structuring for huge amounts of information.

And when you combine time management and mind mapping, you make room for your own thoughts, ideas, and reminders when creating your schedules and to-do lists. 

You can also use the highlighting option to mark the tasks/activities that you absolutely have to complete that day. For instance, the image below shows a time management mind mapping method where the activities you must/want to do for the day are highlighted in red — the rest can be subject to change:

That way, you’re improving efficiency where it matters the most (to you) while maintaining the much-needed flexibility to avoid stress.

The benefits of mind mapping are many — for simplicity’s sake, mind mapping can:

• Increase productivity,
• Boost creativity,
• Help you collaborate better,
• Improve problem-solving, and more.

SEO and digital marketing expert Nikola Baldikov finds that mind mapping is great for project planning and connecting ideas for the whole team:

“Mind maps are great for brainstorming. Let’s say you have a project to tackle and you involve your team in a discussion session. What we do is start by placing the central topic or project name in the middle of the page. From there, everyone can contribute their ideas, which branch out into different categories, like goals, resources, tasks, or challenges.”

How mind mapping and time tracking work hand-in-hand 

When you create a mind map for a project, workday, or workweek, you get a big picture of what needs to be done. But the hard part is following through and organizing it into achievable tasks.

Enter time tracking — your new accountability aid.

With a tool like Clockify, you can break down your to-do mind map into manageable time blocks and track how much time you spend on each task.

Productivity life coach Emily Guerra explains that proper time management mind mapping improves her workflow and increases her productivity as it minimizes uncertainty about what to work on and when:

“Combining mind mapping with time management techniques is how to effectively mind map things you want to take action on. That’s why I map out my projects, break them down into smaller tasks, then use time-blocking to prioritize and execute each step, one at a time.”

In a way, time management is there to keep you organized, and mind mapping to keep you flexible. And voila — you have your ultimate productivity duo.

Mind mapping is all about visual representation. This pairs perfectly with Clockify as it turns raw time data into understandable charts and graphs. With a clear visual of your personal or your team’s time, you can plan, execute, and track your productivity and performance like a pro.

Here’s what it looks like in Clockify:

Clockify also comes with a free plan with extensive features. For example, you can count on:

• Flexible time tracking options,
• Pomodoro timer,
• Reports, and more.

Even better — the tool is customizable across many business sectors and is fully labor law and data-compliant.