3 cool mind mapping tools to make meetings less horrific

Meetings can be brutal; especially when your boss is some eccentric middle-aged guy who can't remember what he said in the last meeting and wants to know the progress of his 'next big project'. It gets even worse if he isn't fan of paperwork and has the memory of a goldfish. So basically you end up managing projects, planning events, and satiating your boss's each and every demand. Yes, that can bog you down. To help you out, we recommend using mind mapping tools.

 Even if you don't work for anyone, you could be your own boss and still organise your thoughts and works with the help of mind mapping. It can also make collaboration on a large scale project simpler. There are plenty of tools that have made mind mapping easy. Even five years back, mind mapping used to be something very complicated and required you to go through a rigorous short course to use it. Today, you can just check out one of the millions of tutorials available online. To make life even easier, there are tons of apps for tabs and smartphones. These tools are intuitive, easy to use and small-screen friendly.  Here we listed top 3 apps for mind mapping that you definitely should give a try:

SimpleMind

Platform: iOS, Android

Pricing: Freemium

SimpleMind is an app for first time mind mappers. It's really simple to use: create nodes (basically your thoughts), add the connecting ideas, and then scale up your project according to the options and workloads.

Ideament

Platform: iOS

Pricing: Free

Ideament comes with a simple interface that can generate idea hubs, flowcharts and illustrated concepts. You can also upload them onto the cloud or send them to others via email. Sadly it's only available on iOS.

Mindomo

Platform: iOS, Android

Pricing: Free (Desktop access requires paid version)

This app is probably the most powerful yet visually impressive tool for basic mind mapping. By mapping out projects, timelines or ideas you can easily multiply your productivity with this app. It also allows a user to attach pictures to mind maps.

If you aren't using mind mapping, then give it a try. Your life is going to be a hell lot easier.

Engineer-turned-writer, Shahriar Rahman is Sub-Editor of the tech publication of The Daily Star. He is also Head of Operations at HiFi Public