Visualizing

As an analyst, I keep on the lookout for better ways to visualize and organize information. I'll cop to being sort of an unstructured sort of guy; most of the things I try don't amount to much. For example, I latched onto taking notes using Freemind (a mind-mapping program) for a time. But I ended up back in a text editor. In a similar vein, I've tried to incorporate some "best practices" from Getting Things Done (such as doing things immediately if they can be done in five minutes). But I've never been much for structured systems as such.

That said, via Guy Kawasaki, here's a great "periodic table" of visualization methods that's well worth checking out. Guy also notes:

Ralph Lengler and Martin J. Eppler created it. You might also enjoy reading their paper, entitled “Towards a Periodic Table of Visualization Methods for Management”