Organizing Your Tasks with Mindmaps

Struggling to see the big picture in your task list? Flow’s Mindmap feature gives you a powerful visual way to organize and restructure your tasks.

What is a Mindmap?

A mindmap is a visual tool that organizes information in a tree-like structure, radiating from a central idea. For your tasks, this means:

• Seeing projects and tasks in a hierarchy
• Moving tasks between projects with simple drag-and-drop
• Creating new tasks in context
• Getting a bird’s-eye view of your workload

Why Use Mindmaps for Task Management?

Mindmaps offer unique benefits that complement Flow’s list-based task management:

1. Visual Organization: See relationships between tasks and how they fit into your overall workload
2. Intuitive Restructuring: Drag and drop to move tasks between projects or change dependencies
3. Creativity Boost: The spatial layout can trigger new ideas and connections
4. Quick Reorganization: Easily restructure large numbers of tasks all at once
5. Project Planning: Build out project structures and task hierarchies before committing to details

How to Use Flow’s Mindmap Feature

Exporting Your Tasks to a Mindmap

1. Go to your Tasks page
2. Look for “As Mindmap” in the sidebar and click “Export”
3. Click “Download Tasks as Mindmap” to save your tasks as a .mm file

Editing Your Mindmap

To edit your mindmap, you’ll need Freemind or Freeplane - both are free, open-source mindmap editors. Freeplane is more modern and offers more features:

1. Download Freeplane or Freemind and install it
2. Open the .mm file you exported from Flow
3. Reorganize your tasks:
   • Move tasks: Drag and drop nodes to reposition
   • Create tasks: Right-click and select “New Child Node” or press Insert
   • Edit task names: Double-click on any node
   • Show/hide branches: Click on the small circles at nodes to expand/collapse
   • Respect the structure:
     • Top-level nodes are your projects
     • Nested nodes are subtasks
     • Hierarchy maps directly to parent-child relationships

Importing Your Updated Mindmap

1. Save your changes in Freemind or Freeplane
2. Go to Flow’s Tasks page and click “Import” in the As Mindmap section
3. Click “Choose File” and select your edited .mm file
4. Click “Update Tasks” to apply your changes

Important: When you update tasks using a mindmap, any tasks that are not present in the mindmap will be marked as deleted in Flow. Make sure your mindmap includes all tasks you want to keep.

Quick Tips for Effective Task Mindmapping

• Understand the Hierarchy:
  • First level (below root): Projects — your top-level containers
  • Second level: Subtasks within those projects
  • Deeper levels: Further subtask nesting as needed
• Preserve Structure: Keep this parent-child hierarchy intact for successful re-importing
• Nest Related Tasks: Create parent-child relationships for dependent tasks
• Move in Bulk: Select multiple nodes to move related tasks together
• Rename Freely: Double-click to edit any node text
• Focus on Organization: Mindmaps excel at visualizing and reorganizing task relationships

Export Your Tasks as a Mindmap Now

Ready to see your tasks from a new perspective? Click the link above to download your current tasks as a mindmap and get started!

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Need Help? If you have any questions about using mindmaps with Flow, contact us at support@maketimeflow.com