How to Bubble Map - drawing your To Do the stress-free way -
October 10, 2005 9:05 PM written by Gen Taguchi

[Other entries are all in Japanese, but I wanted to share this one with the world]

"I have checked off many To Dos... but I just do not feel like i've accomplished a lot...".

This often happens to me (and you?), so I looked into the problem in depth. Then I realized that a To Do "list" does not represent the importance of each item. Yes, you can "A, B, C" the list, but your brain just does not catch how important each item is. In my opinion, it's justcounter-intuitive.

So a few weeks ago, I began "drawing" my To Do list. Each bubble represents a To Do and the bigger the bubble the more troublesome it is to your mind. I named this map the "bubble map". My bubble map yesterday was something like the below (click to enlarge).

The beauty of this method is that it truely (=intuitively) represents your mind's share of each To Do item.

When you check off the big one, you are freeing a big portion of your mind. On the other hand, if you leave the big one when you leave the office, you know you have a big problem to take home with you.

This way, you and your brain know which to tackle first to decrease your stress, and thus increase your creativity.

When I started using this method, I was drawing every single To Do as a bubble even if it's a really small one. But over time, I moved these little ones down to the bottom of the paper just because a map with a lot of little bubbles causes a little bit of stress.

I spend 5 minute each morning drawing this map, and I review it when I leave the office. Since the size of the bubbles changes slightly over time, I'd recommend you draw this every morning over a cup of your favorite coffee :)

I do not think anyone suggested this method yet (did anyone?), so I am posting this to share this little bit of knowledge with you.

UPDATE: follow up on this method here

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