Putting down text now, connecting it later

Posted by Alexander Deliyannis
Mar 17, 2013 at 03:54 PM

Stephen Zeoli wrote:
>First, this sounds like the perfect application for Brainstorm, which is
>designed for exactly this purpose.
>http://brainstormsw.com

I would also suggest Brainstorm by far; it is extremely quick and doesn’t get in the way. Write as chaotically as you want and then organise with the help of simple

- drag-n-drop an entry to another while pressing shift to make the former a subsidiary of the latter
- ALT+up/down arrow will move an entry up or down in a list (in the same level)

or more complex tools

- ‘mark’ your basic section structure from 1 to 5 and then ‘throw’ any item to its section by pressing CTRL+1-5

You can do the above in one level at a time; or, you can open several windows with different levels and sections, and move items around. At any time, CTRL+B (‘balloon view’) will give you an overview of the full structure.

Once you’ve organised you content, you can output it as a tab indented text file which mindmappers will happily read.

An alternative to Brainstorm, very powerful but with a steeper learning curve IMHO, is Maxthink. Both programs haven’t been developed in quite some time, but they are very mature. That said, saving your work often is always advised. In this context Brainstorm has autosave, and Maxthink will count the time since the last save.