Keep Your Vision in Focus

How many times have you completed a project and wondered how you ended up with the results you did? Maybe you wanted to plan a get-together for old friends and ended up with party crashers instead. What went wrong? Your original vision got muddled up along the way.

Keep your vision in focus. Your vision will keep your planning and implementation focused on what you truly want to accomplish. For most of my mindmaps, I include a branch for the Vision of the topic. For those of you who use the Franklin Covey Vision Maps, this concept has some similarities. But keep on reading, because I've pushed it a little further.

Below is an example of how I incorporate the Vision Branch for a website design project. This is the very first thing that goes on the mindmap from the main topic.

From the Vision Branch I connect three branches: Description (Who, What, Where, When), Success Factors (Prioritized Top 3), and Watch Out Items (What might go wrong, so crisis management can be deployed). Add your ideas to these branches and cluster the branches in bubbles.



















I, then, refer back to this Vision bubble to keep the rest of the branches focused on what I want to accomplish. Notice that I start the other branches as the top three priorities of the Success Factors branch of the Vision bubble. You may want to add the other items on your desired results, keeping in mind that your top three are your priorities. Additionally, a Crisis Management branch may be included to address your Watch Out concerns.


















Practice including a Vision bubble in your mindmaps and you will soon see how this helps keep your plans, efforts, and priorities in focus, achieving more satisfying results.