Mind Mapping

Described as the ‘Swiss Army Knife of the brain’, Mind Maps have become a global phenomenon due to its applications in a diverse number of ways.

As Mind Mapping engages the full range of your cortical skills, Mind Mapping is a ‘whole brain thinking tool’ that can organise, prioritise, store information, manage your time, facilitate negotiations and risk control, generate ideas, encourage strategic thinking… the list could go on and on.

The regular use of Mind Maps can make a big impact on your personal and professional life, by unlocking your amazing brain power and unleashing your creativity.

What is Mind Mapping?

A Mind Map is a powerful graphic technique which provides a universal key to unlock the potential of the brain. It harnesses the full range of cortical skills – word, image, number, logic, rhythm, colour and spatial awareness – in a single, uniquely powerful manner, thus giving you the freedom to roam the infinite expanses of your brain. The Mind Map can be applied to every aspect of life where improved learning and clearer thinking will enhance human performance.

Mind mapping is a highly effective way of getting information in and out of your brain. Mind mapping is a creative and logical means of note-taking and note-making that literally “maps out” your ideas.

There are few things in common among all Mind Maps. The natural organizational structure of a Mind Map radiates from the center, and uses lines, words, symbols, images and colour. Mind mapping can be used to convert a long list of monotonous information into a memorable, colorful and well organized diagram that works in accordance with the way your brain functions naturally.

A Mind Map can be compared to a map of a city. The center of the city represents the main idea; the main roads leading from the center represent the main ideas in your thought process; the secondary roads or branches represent your secondary ideas, and so on. Special images or shapes can represent landmarks of interest or particularly relevant ideas.

The Mind Map externally mirrors your own natural or radiant thinking, with the help of a powerful graphic process, which provides the universal key to unlock the dynamic potential of the brain.

Mind Mapping in Business

In the recent years, mind mapping has been recognized by companies as an effective communication tool that improves brainstorming and collaboration sessions. By visualizing concepts and connections in a mind map, people can follow conversations better and contribute more during meetings. Mind mapping is even considered as an alternative to traditional linear presentations such as flip charts or PowerPoint slides.

According to a survey by mind mapping expert Chuck Frey, use of mind mapping for business has resulted in increase in productivity by 25% on average. Few most frequent business uses of mind map include:

• Optimum project management
• Increase productivity
• Effective meetings – agenda, minutes, discussion
• Simplify documentation
• Knowledge management
• Better communication and collaboration

Thanks to mind mapping, professionals can operate more effectively, generate more stimulating ideas and become more effective in their jobs.

Mind Mapping in Education

Since years, educators, teachers and students have been using mind maps on paper. Recetly this process has been automated by the use of visual software applications, making it more efficient to brainstorm ideas. Some mind mapping software applications integrate with MS Office, allowing students to convert their ideas into other documents such as Word or PowerPoint. In education, mind mapping is often used for:

• Improving reading and writing skills
• Brainstorming sessions
• Improving critical thinking
• Visualizing concepts
• Decision making
• Advanced research papers or graduate projects
• Outlining written documents
• Project management
• Storyboarding presentations

 

Foundation of Mind Maps – Radiant Thinking – a clearer, more natural and more efficient way of using our brains

What happens in your brain when you taste a ripe pear, smell flowers, listen to music, watch a stream, touch a loved one, or simply reminisce? The answer is both simple and amazingly complex. Each bit of information entering your brain, every sensation, memory or thought, which incorporates every word, number, code, food, fragrance, line, color, image, beat, note and texture can be represented as a central sphere from which radiate tens, hundreds, thousands, even millions of hooks. Each hook represents an association, and each association has its own infinite array of links and connections. From this gigantic information processing ability and learning capacity derives the concept of Radiant Thinking of which the Mind Map is a manifestation. Your brain’s Radiant Thinking pattern may thus be seen as a gigantic Branching Association Machine – a super bio computer with lines of thought radiating from a virtually infinite number of data nodes.

The Mind Map is made even more powerful by the use of all the left and right brain-thinking tools, which enhance the clarity, structure and organization of your thinking. And because the Mind Map constructively uses the tools of Imagination, Association and Location, as well as the tools of the left and right brain, you can consider the Mind Map the ultimate thinking tool that incorporates all the significant and potent ways of thinking into its own structure.

The Power of Images

While the Radiant Thinking ability of the brain can be applied to the ‘left cortical skill’ of words, the same power can be applied to the ‘right cortical skill’ of imagination and images. “A picture is worth a thousand words”. We associate and remember images because they make use of a massive range of your cortical skills, especially imagination. Images can be more evocative than words, more precise and potent in triggering a wide range of associations, thereby enhancing creative thinking and memory. These findings support the argument that the Mind Map is a uniquely appropriate tool. It not only uses images, it is an image.

 

 

Mind Maps of Tony Buzan’s Book “Mind Maps for Business”

Profile of Mehernosh Randeria in Mind Map

Author:

Mr. Mehernosh Randeria.