nowMap: Introduction
Latest Update: added link to the basic A4 nowMap templates.
What Is It?
A simple organisation tool – just a single sheet of paper. Maybe you like the idea of being a bit more together, of knowing what you’re up to at any point, but you don’t feel the need for a whole system to keep you organised.
Or, maybe you actually do GTD, and just feel like you’re lacking a quick at-a-glance overview of what’s on your plate now.
The nowMap is a simple idea – make a mindmap of all the things that you’re working on or are on your mind at the moment, just on one sheet. If you need to do a load of brainstorming about one of them, take it to another sheet, with just a note on the first to point you there.
Pics missing – sorry.
If you’re already familiar with the idea of mindmapping, you could probably stop reading right here, and work it all out ok for yourself. If not, or you just want a bit more detail, keep reading…
The Form
Drawing Your Own
Take a sheet of A4 or Letter paper, landscape format (wide, not tall), and draw a margin on the right, about an inch in. Use a ruler if you like, but it doesn’t matter. This is rough and ready stuff. Draw another margin on the left, this time a bit wider.
See the area in the middle? Should be roughly square, and it should take up most of the sheet. That’s the area for the actual nowMap. We’ll come to that in a moment.
The right hand margin is just for ‘meta’ information – anything about this sheet. Start with a beginning date, and when you’re done with this sheet, either bin it, or stick an end date on it and file it. Other than that, you could use this bit for emergency overflow, or a bit of scratch space (jotting down a phone number you don’t have anywhere else for, or whatever) or you can make a couple of notes on there when you’ve finished with the sheet.
The left hand margin is for any little bits that don’t fit in with anything else. A little task you realise you have to do, but that doesn’t fit in with anything you can mindmap. So you just add it here. If it’s an action you need to do, stick a circle next to it so you can put an ‘X’ in it when it’s complete – or even just cross it out.
Downloading PDFs
I’ll make a few of these available – feel free to post in the comments if there’s any sizes that would be useful that I’ve not covered…
- Plain A4 – the one you’re most likely to want – just a nowMap, on a full sheet of A4, with no trimmings. Available with the main section either plain or squared.
- D*I*Y Planner Forms – yes, I’ll be doing some in formats that will fit in a D*I*Y Planner, to go with all the bits you get from Doug’s excellent D*I*Y Planner site. All this will really mean is leaving space for the holes, and doing A4, A5 and ‘Classic’ sizes.
- Half A4 – this couples an A5 nowMap form with some columns for notes and wins at the top – may be more useful if you’re not too busy.
The nowMap
The main section of the sheet is the actual nowMap. On here, start noting down anything you have on your mind at the moment. Could be a project you’re working on for business, could be Christmas approaching (not for a while yet), or it could be that you need to get some work done on your car. Just note anything you can think of down there, but as briefly as you can – or you’ll run out of space. Keep them spread out as much as you can.
Draw a box around each one. Now you have the beginnings of a mindmap.
Any items that you have tasks you need to do for, just write the tasks around them, and join them to their subject with a little line. If you’ve got stuff elsewhere that you need to relate to the thing, just make a note of that in the same way – maybe a note that you’ve brainstormed about it on another sheet, or that there’s notes about this on page 42 of your notebook.
Once you’ve done this, you should have a nice visual overview of all the things that are on your mind. Keep it up to date.
As you run out of space, you need to copy over all the things that are still current, and create a new nowMap sheet.
Alternatively, you could mark it all up in pencil, and just erase things as they stop being relevant.
The advantage of re-writing it all regularly is that it makes you review everything, and decide if you really are still dealing with that thing. The advantage of using pencil and erasing as you go is that you don’t have to rewrite the whole thing regularly.
Potential Problems
It’s Too Small!
I hear that a lot.
What? Oh, sorry.
Use a bigger sheet of paper, then, you fool. Simple, really. Actually, if you’re a fairly busy person, this might be way under-powered as a system. You might get some value from the idea if you stick to only including really top-level things, but it might just not be enough for you. Go for
Too Much Rewriting
Then use pencil, and erase as things stop being active.
I Want to Do This in my Moleskine
Yep, me to. Works fine in a large 
What About ‘Waiting For’ Items? ‘Agendas’?
They’re not really covered – many things aren’t. This isn’t intended to be a complete system. It’s just a way of keeping a quick overview of what’s on your mind. If you keep this in front of you, you can use it to make sure you don’t forget anything important.
If you’re lucky enough to have a nice quiet life, though, it might be all the organising you need.
That’s utterly excellent. A Hipster iPhone – fantastic idea.
You might get a kick out of this. I’ve adapted the nowMap design for use in a new set of Hipster PDA templates based on the design of the iPhone:
Of course I give credit where credit is due, and put PigPog and your URL on the template!
I had originally set out just to make an iPhone menu page as a joke, with “buttons” for common hPDA templates on the DIYPlanner site. But people said I should make a whole set. For the “Ideas” button the nowMap seemed to fit the bill.
Hope you like!
Cheers, Paul
Hi Gary,
They’re back now. Sorry – problems with the site. The images have gone now, but that will take a bit more work yet.
I tried looking all around the posting and the PigPog website, but I can’t locate the nowMap A4 PDF download. Was it removed? I printed out the posted image, but it doesn’t produce the sharp/clear lines you see from a PDF document. Is there any chance it can be reposted? Thanks!
I can’t locate the nowMap A4 PDF download.
Could you restore the link?
Thanks
Steve
Hi Steve,
The links should be working again now.
I diid a mindmap of the big things that I was working on for the month of may and unlike a list my boss could really get a sense of all the things I was working on. I started one for this month and it already is mostly full.
I’m using my little moleskin in everyday work, and it’s fricking irreplaceable. God idea for tweeking but, I have a problem in downloading your pdf files. Can you check it out, I get the 404 page.
[...] nowMap – my latest simple system – a quick overview of what you’re doing now, on a single sheet. [...]
Excellent idea. Actually, this is something that I do all the time, and I find it especially useful when I have intensive projects, with lots of related tasks to accomplish in a few days.
It lets you review instantly what needs to be done and what’s better, monitor it showing the relationship with other items in the cluster of tags.
Mind maps are not only ideal to learn and to release your creativity, they are very good tools for organisation.
Thanks, Joan. Yes, I can see how it would probably be especially useful when you’ve got a whole lot of related stuff to do. That might be why the idea came to me recently – with doing nothing but PigPog at the moment, most of the things I’m doing are fairly closely related to each other.
Thanks for the stimulating post! I do something similar, but once I’ve identified actionable items, waiting-fors, etc. I transfer them over to my GTD system, then throw away the map – it’s done its job. Some people do keep their old mind scans around – as a way to a) check progress (same crud should stop showing up after a while), and b) to note progress (good show – took care of that one, etc)
The idea was more to use this as the actions list – so the mind-map becomes your system. To be honest, though, I’ve not stuck with it myself – it was a nice idea that never really worked out for me. Still, some of these ideas end up working out well for someone else, so it’s always good to share them.
At the moment, I’m using Outlook’s tasks for most actionable stuff and writing, but scaled down to one ‘@Action’ list, prefixing with context. It’s enough for me right now. I’m also tending to use bits of paper for more ad-hoc planning and such – scribbled mind maps, or even just a quick-list for today’s jobs.
I’m having a hard time finding the right level of detail for my own planning system, it’s a bit defunct now. Hoping to pick it up soon, but will have to simplify. This is inspiration for that, thanks.
Now, what I used to do was have a wad of really cheap A6 cards on a single binder-ring (expensive stuff like Moleskine notebooks are intimidating to me). Then I’d take the smallest post-it pads I could find and cut them into even smaller strips – 3 or 4, giving me approx. 5 cm by 1.5 cm stickies.
Then I’d write my tasks on those, and use one page in the book as a “current” page. This has the advantage that you can’t fit too many items in your current list at a time, and you can rearrange as needed. It was a great feeling discarding those stickies after a job was done.
The way I bound my notebook kept things pressed together, something like the Moleskine, and that was enough to keep the tiny stickies in place.
That’s an interesting idea. I’ve heard of using Post-it notes stuck inside a Moleskine, but this is the first time I’ve heard of mixing Post-it notes and a HipsterPDA.
I’m beginning to think there’s a lot to getting your system to be as simple as it can possibly be – a little too much system can be enough to stop you doing.
You are so right about the simplicity. A geeky fascination for these systems is a dangerous thing. My next attempt will be more about using the system in practice rather than try to make it perfect, IOW I’ll try to be wary of falling in love with it.
Now that I think about it, I think I’ll go with stickies again, since I really like the idea. I’ll just have to solve the problem of sometimes losing my overview due to many stickies on separate pages. Maybe a review on the wall or a larger page every week, to eliminate and combine tasks? A separate context page for practical stuff that’s too minor to warrant a sticky so it doesn’t get too overwhelming?
I see now that I’m at it again (the fascination with the system).. Sorry, I’m working on it!
Fantastic. This is great stuff.
It pays to have a duplex-laser & toner save mode, I think I will print several off for those random brainstorming sessions.
Neat and clean, thanks.
Great idea … I use a tablet pc and mindmanager, but I can see how this would be a down and dirty type of manager … I have taken you pdf and created templates to try on onenote and will be trying some others … might be a great way to do this as the ink can be erased using the back of my “pen” like on paper … also might be an interesting way to share info …
This is the best system I’ve had yet for keeping track of the short-term stuff. I’ve added a set of alphabetical folders where I keep the papers that I refer to on the Now map, so I can find them when I need them. When I’ve crossed off more than half the items on the map, I start a new one, and throw away the old. Feels real good.. Thanks!
Hi,
This is Yuya Saito from Japan, again. I translated your idea again and posted at my site.
Hope you’re OK with this.
URL below is permalink to the post
http://gtd.studiomohawk.com/archives/137
Thanks again. I’m using Linux now for my main machine. so I started using emacs as my editor. Trying to get used it, and someday soon I’ll translate your GTD on Emacs.
Thanks, Yuya – I’ve made the link in your comment live.
I’ve given up on Emacs again – I just don’t spend that long editing text. Vim does the job pretty nicely for the moment for me, and paper and pen for the GTD stuff. Emacs is just amazingly powerful, though.
Any chance you can put up letter-sized forms? I’m trying to print them marginless, and am having a hard time.