How to Use Your Brain's Potential?

Mind maps, the most powerful thinking tools in the universe that helps to focus and process information. They can assist you in formulating a plan of action and getting started on new projects.

Mind map is a revolutionary thinking tool that can transform your life. It not only helps in processing information but also helps in coming up with new ideas, strengthen your memory, get the most of your leisure time and improve your working style.

Mind mapping will broaden the horizons of your thinking and will help you boost your mental accuracy, insight, creativity, and freedom of thought. You might be surprised to know that millions of people around the world adopt mind maps to maximize the efficient use of their brain power.

You can make a Mind Map in any place, in any physical position, especially ifyou are a yoga practitioner, a gymnast, a dancer, or a little kid. You can create a Mind Map in your meditation position, for instance, as Mind Maps will help settle and balance your thoughts by synchronizing the workings of your brain’s two hemispheres. Many people, especially children, make them while lying flat on their stomach on the floor, propping up their head with their hands.

If you are preparing for an exam, you could create a draft Mind Map in black and white, and then colour it in or redraw it completely at a later stage. It is always useful, no matter how brilliant your Mind Map is, to review it soon after completing it. So, colouring in a black-and-white draft is good practice.

However, colour is a key element in promoting creativity, which means that if you initially create your Mind Map in black and white, you will be radically limiting your ability to generate new ideas.?

“What do you want your Mind Map to reveal to you? Keep this goal in your thoughts at every step.”

?As you begin your Mind Map, consider your objectives carefully:

? What information or knowledge do you need?

? Which are the most important seven categories in the topic under consideration?

? If this were a book, what would its chapter headings be? What lessons or themes are there?

? What questions do you need to ask? (Prompts such as “What?”, “Where?”, “Who?”, “How?”, “Which?”, “When?” can make very useful main branches in a Mind Map.)

? Into which sub-categories can you divide your topic?

?Your BOIs can also address the following considerations:

? Structure – the form of things

? Function – the purpose of things and what they do

? Properties – the characteristics of things

? Processes – how things work

? Evaluation – how beneficial things are

? Definitions – what things mean

? Classification – how things relate to each other

? History – the chronological sequence of events

? Personalities – people’s roles and characters

To get started, you could jot down the first ten words or images that spring to mind, then group these under generic headings to form your main radiating branches.

Make the branches closest to the central image thicker, to emphasize their importance to your brain, and write your Basic Ordering Ideas (BOIs) above them. Any subbranches that sprout from a main branch will hold information that supports that BOI. The most general (inclusive) concepts tend to sit closer to the central image, while the less general (more exclusive or specific) concepts appear on the subbranches, further away from the Mind Map’s centre.

If your Mind Map is still at an exploratory stage, you could well discover that some of the peripheral ideas turn out to be more important than those you initially placed toward the centre. When this happens, simply thicken up the outer branches where necessary, thereby adding another layer of interest to your Mind Map.?

Have you ever tried mind maps? How do you design your mind maps??