Optimize Your Thinking with Mind Maps

By: William Cato
Submitted: 2007-01-17 16:41:48
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So, you’ve decided to take that long needed vacation. You’re heading out on the open road to somewhere you’ve never been. What’s the first thing you do? Well, besides telling you’re mother where you’re going, you look at a map, right? Most people do, unless they're really spontaneous or traveling into space.

We can use maps not only to find our way around, but to optimize our travel. By using mapping websites and programs, we find the quickest route, avoid traffic, and save gas. In this article, we’ll be going on a trip. Not to some far off destination, but somewhere much closer. Your mind.

The same way we use maps to optimize our travel, we can use maps to optimize our thinking. Mind maps, often called webs, utilize new research in learning theory that suggest the brain can store information and retrieve it from memory much better using keywords than by trying to remember large chunks of information. Your mind uses these keywords to unlock other information and create links between the keywords.

With mind maps, you focus on the flow of ideas, not on writing or typing. This makes the task of organizing, storing and retrieving information quicker and easier. So go ahead, make your brain happy, use mind maps to optimize you thinking.

Try it Now:

• First you'll need a pen and paper. To illustrate the concept, let's start with something familiar. Write your first name in the middle of the page and circle it. This is your first keyword. This should start bringing things to mind.
• Using only single words, start writing new words, clockwise around your name. Some examples could be family, friends, career, health...whatever comes to mind.
• Circle these words and draw lines from your name out to them as you go. (Some people draw the lines first, then the new words. Do whatever comes naturally for you.) These new keywords are called branches and should start to unlock even more information.
• Now start adding branches to the new ones, such as the names of your family and friends, anything that comes to mind. Pretty soon, you will have a map that represents your life. You will start to notice connections between the keywords. Is there a connection between your health and your career, your relationships and your emotions?
• You can keep going by adding branches to any keyword until you fill up the page. You could also use different colors to identify an entire branch or connections between keywords.
• Use drawings or symbols to represent a keyword. The idea is to focus on the flow of information coming to your mind, so experiment to see what works best for you.

Uses:
Mind maps can be used by anyone for note taking, brainstorming, planning and problem solving. They can be used to draft novels and screenplays, as well as drafting business or investment proposals. Take any two keywords on your mind map and you have a whole new category. This technique can be used for idea generation.

Software Options:
There is some excellent mind mapping software available with options like a built-in notepad, colors, symbol libraries, as well as export to PowerPoint, Word, and Outlook. Just Google "mind map software".

Article source: Expert Articles