How to Mind Map

in memory of the late, great, Tony Buzan - and in celebration of the current, great Vanda North who taught me so much through her generosity and graciousness.

Thinking is very expensive in terms of the way the brain spends energy. Anything that can help us get rapid results without using up too much energy should be embraced! That’s why I love Mind Mapping. It is the single-most elegant and flexible technique I’ve ever encountered for clarifying my thinking, planning the future, and saving my time. One could boldly assert, it’s brain-friendly.

Let’s explore today, “How to Mind Map.” 

This is a "Right Hand Drive" Mind Map in that it starts at 1 o'clock and moves around clockwise. If you are left-handed, it makes a lot of sense to work anti-clockwise. 

It all begins with a Central Focus. In this case, “How to Mind Map,” a picture of a Mind Map and the required coloured pens, of course.

Mind Mapping begins with mirroring your natural visual field with the orientation of the paper: landscape. Our vision is b-r-o-a-d-e-r than it is tall and deep. Mind Mapping also empowers you to capture your imagination by giving you the BIG Picture on one page - a dashboard or desktop for the mind. The natural focus for any blank page is the centre, so begin there - working with your mind and physiology.

The KISS principe is a key to successful mapping when against the clock. "Keep It Short (and) Simple." This means using only key words such as nouns and active verbs. 

Mind Mapping 'works' because it mirrors so many natural principles - even the very Natural Architecture of the brain and nervous system. It looks also like a tree - so copy the genius of trees by having thicker branches near the central trunk, (as seen from above), tapering to twigs at the periphery. However, the secret to the flow of information is in the clearly connected lines (rather than fragmented bullet points). The lines guide your eyes.

"A Picture Paints a Thousand Words" - so use pictures that are meaningful for you. Word pictures are called Calligrams.

Colour works for some people. If you have any degree of colour-blindness, use distinctive patterns instead. Using patterns or colour on purpose to mean something to you will improve memory recall by up to 50%. (I learned that from Tony Buzan himself.)

One benefit of Mind Mapping that is rarely mentioned is the power of the clock-face. You can remember your mind map by linking ideas to what was at each hour of the clock. This is a highly valuable example of what Professor Howard Gardner of Harvard University calls Visual-Spatial Intelligence.

However, the most significant difference between Mind Mapping and all other keynote techniques is the explicit connections - shown by colour codes or shape codes or arrows, and, of course, the lines themselves.

Finally, you still need to review! Use a reminder ("tickler") system to look again at your map after a day, a week, a month and a season (3 months) if you wish to keep your ideas "in sight, in mind" rather than the very wasteful, "out-of-sight, out-of-mind.”

There you go then, a very very rapid introduction to Mind Mapping!

If you'd relish the opportunity for in-depth training rather than a rapid overview, I'm thinking seriously about a Udemy programme! The power of Mind Mapping, once you've understood the ground rules, is in the applications... or as Vanda North calls it, the Mapplications!