The great value of the Mind Mapping Process
The value of a Mind Map is often only demonstrated by the finished product.The value of involving the whole brain by the use of colours, structure and Key Words in the creation of the Mind Map often gets mentioned.
The fact that a ‘picture is worth a thousand words‘ has become synonymous with Mind Maps.
The two factors that greatly stimulate memory, association and hierarchy, naturally occur in a Mind Map.
Yet, today, I would like you to explore the value of the process of creating a Mind Map and not just the value of the finished product.
There are many approaches to creating a Mind Map, but I will suggest one way in this article by which you can get value in the process and not only in the finished product.
1. Acquire the information
The first step should be acquiring of the information. You have to look at the various sources that you need for the content of your Mind Map.
By scanning the source information you get an idea of what you are up against. Your brain begins to organise the material into logical chunks.
If you have a single source such as a text book, you can have a look at the article on Mind Mapping a text book.
If you are using more than one source, you have to get an idea of how you are going to integrate the information into a single Mind Map.
2. Search out the meaning
It is very difficult to remember what you don’t understand. While understanding is not imperative for remembering, it goes a long way in helping you remember, as the new material can form links with your existing knowledge. The brain will naturally associate anything new with what is already there.
One of the main pedagogical principles is taking learners from the known to the unknown.
While it is important to understand the material, understanding does not always equate to remembering. You could have understood something when you read it, or when the teacher or lecturer explained it, and still forget it.
3. Trigger the memory
When creating your Mind Map, choose Key Words that will trigger the recall of the information. Creative Key Words can often lead your brain down an incorrect path that does not trigger recall accurately.
By seeking out the Key Words that will trigger the correct recall, your brain is building a solid memory map.
By associating Key Ideas to other ideas, you naturally create the associations and hierarchies so important in the recall of information.
3. Complete the Mind Map
If you have applied these principles when creating your Mind Map, you will already have a lot of the information in memory.
By completing your Mind Map using the Mind Map principles, you will have non-linear colourful notes that work with the brain and not against it, but as you can see from the above the value is as much in the process as it is in the final product.
4. Exhibit what you know
Most people spend a lot of time putting information ‘into their heads’, but very little time ‘getting it out’. You have to exhibit to yourself that you remember what you’ve put in.
A Mind Map is great for this, because you can spend five to ten minutes drawing a Mind Map of the material during the revise phase, before you start revising.
This will force the brain to get used to recalling information. You will soon find yourself recalling the information with greater and greater ease.
Don’t ignore the revision part of the process. It could turn out to be the most valuable part of the whole process!
I hope you now understand that the benefits of Mind Mapping lies in the very process of creating a Mind Map. The process involves the whole brain and ensures that you get the best possible results from your wonderful brain.
Using Mind Maps
If you’ve been observant, you may have noticed that I’ve been referring to, and providing links to, articles on UsingMindMaps.com.
Today, I would like to position the reason for setting up UsingMindMaps.com.
MindMapTutor.com is a blog, which is the final resting ground of my weekly articles. My steadily growing subscriber base can go to MindMapTutor.com for archives of older postings.
While this has served me, and my subscriber base, very well, it is not the easiest site to navigate. The current highlights and featured articles are easy to get to, but older articles were not very easy to access.
I get numerous emails and questions about topics that I’ve already written about. I often point people to the article on MindMapTutor.com and also inform them that the site has a very good search function. While this helps you after the fact, the site does not allow you to find articles on the topic you want easily in the first place.
I therefore decided to set up a website that makes it simple, easy and fast to get to the relevant topics. The site UsingMindMaps.com will cover the various uses of Mind Maps in your daily life, each with its own easy to find category. The site has a simple menu structure, with menu items on the left hand side. The articles are listed right there, under the categories, for ease of access.
The articles have also been structured to lead you through the topic at hand and also link you to overlapping topics in a natural, flowing way.
The site’s theme is Using Mind Maps, which structures information into the various uses and applications of Mind Maps in your daily life.
While Mind Maps started out as a memory tool, its natural use of both the structured and creative components of the brain gave rise to its application in many walks of life. UsingMindMaps.com will cover each of these aspects.
UsingMindMaps.com is in its early stages, but from the initial feedback, it’s looking good. People tend to spend more time on the site, as they can easily follow the topics of their choice.
Please have a look at UsingMindMaps.com and use the Contact Form to give feedback. Tell us what you would like to see.
We even have a place for you to tell us your stories of Using Mind Maps in your daily life. If you have a good story to tell let us know and we will publish it. You too could have your say!
UsingMindMaps.com has been more work than I initially thought it would be, but I believe it will add even more value to your life than MindMapTutor.com has.
Look out for some freebies coming your way as part of the launch. We are putting together a monthly newsletter, a free email course, ebook downloads and online training.
You will get an email sometime this week about the newsletter and the free stuff.
I look forward to your responses and your stories…
Mind Map with Key Words
The last time I searched for Key Words in Google, Google Adwords came up as the number one result.
What does Google have to do with Key Words?
It is interesting to see how a company like Google latched onto the idea and now use it in their marketing, tools and business model.
In case you wondered how Google makes money when they give away the best search engine for free, they do this by selling advertising space.
If you want to place an advert on Google’s Adwords, you first need to decide what market you want to target. Google uses Key Words to help you decide what words to use in your adverts. By understanding the Key Words that people search on, you will be able to place a better advert and reduce your advertising budget. Your advert will target the correct people, as they are searching for the Key Words that you are paying Google for. This is what niche advertising is all about.
It is amazing how thousands of searches on Google for a particular topic all contain the same Key Words. This shows how the brain actually works when categorising information. It reduces whole thought patterns into a number of simple Key Words. The top Key Words therefore cost the most money.
As a user of Google, the better you understand Key Words, the better results your searches will yield. If advertisers, Web designers and Bloggers are all targeting Key Words, wouldn’t it therefore be wise for you to also search by Key Words? Having the correct Key Words can save you hours of search time to get to the right information.
Key Words and Mind Maps
While Google uses Key Words to help people build a marketing campaign, Tony Buzan, the inventor of the Mind Map, tells us to use Key Words when creating our Mind Maps.
Most sentences contain many words not required for understanding or recall. The words are there for proper sentence construction and to make the written word ‘flow’ so that it can be read more easily. But once you have read the information and you want to record the information for later recall, normal sentence construction is actually a hindrance rather than a benefit.
Paragraph Structure
When constructing notes or Mind Maps for later recall, understanding paragraph structure is a good idea.
Most paragraphs can be broken down into a main, and often, a secondary idea. Once you have the main and secondary idea for the paragraph, you can reduce it into Main Key Words and Secondary Key Words. In the beginning, this will often be a Main Key Word Phrase and Secondary Key Word Phrase.
I’ve found this to be more difficult than it looks. We have been using full sentences in our notes for so long, that it is quite difficult for us to change. In my article on Mind Map Principles, I state that Tony Buzan’s ‘one word per line’, is the rule I break most often when Mind Mapping.
How to choose Key Words
In ‘Use your Head’, Tony Buzan advises you to choose good Recall Key Words. He differentiates between Key Creative Words and Key Recall Words.
Key Creative Words are what he calls ‘evocative‘. The Merriam-Webster online dictionary describes evocative as ‘evoking or tending to evoke an especially emotional response’. While the Key Creative Words trigger imaginative responses, it does not help with recall.
If you were to pick up a Mind Map with only Key Creative Words a few months later, you will find that you can build a completely different story to the original one. In fact, you won’t be able to recall the original from the Mind Map even if you wanted to.
To solve this problem, you need to use Key Recall Words. Key Recall Words are words that trigger recall of the original concept or idea. It funnels back the original images and thoughts once triggered. These words tend to be a Strong Noun or Strong Verb. They are sometimes supported by additional Key Adjectives or Adverbs.
According to Tony Buzan in ‘Use your Head’, Standard Notes have the following problems when compared to a Mind Map with Key Words:
- Time is wasted recording words that have no bearing on memory. (estimated time wasted – 90%)
- Time is wasted re-reading the same unnecessary words. (estimated time wasted – 90%)
- Time is wasted searching for Key Recall Words.
- The connection between Key Recall Words are interrupted by words that separate them.
- Key Recall Words are separated by time. It often takes a few seconds to get from one to the next.
- Key Recall Words are separated by space by their distance from each other on the page.
My experience with Key Words
I’ll end this week’s article with my experience of Key Words, as I feel it has some bearing on your ability to apply the above.
My experience is based on teaching people how to take proper Mind Map notes and also by producing Mind Maps for others to use without my help.
I found that my normal, Key Word, one-word-per-branch Mind Maps were often unreadable by another person without my help. If I took the person through the Mind Map and explained each branch to them, they would understand it at the time, but a few months later, they could not understand the Mind Map.
The problem obviously lies with me. Even though I’ve been using Mind Maps for about twenty years, I still do not always choose good strong Key Recall Words when Mind Mapping.
I do a lot of writing, as you can see, and also create a lot of Mind Maps. Often, not enough thought is given to the Key Words to ensure that they will trigger the correct recall. To overcome this, I tend to use more supporting words in addition to the strong nouns and verbs that serve as my main Key Recall Words.
I’ve found these Mind Maps to be more ‘reader friendly’, as they have more of a supporting structure for reading. I often tell students, like I am telling you now, to redo the Mind Map in their own words and summarise my Mind Map into Key Recall Words of their own choosing.
Doing this will ensure that you will be able to recall the material much better and also allow you to personalise it with your own thoughts and ideas. That is when real learning takes place.
So, to sum up, learning how to summarise using Key Recall Words will not only save you time, it will also enable you to create Mind Map Memory Maps that trigger recall perfectly.
Using Mind Maps to get Mentally Fit
“If you want something done, ask a busy person to do it”, is accredited to the actor, Lucille Ball. This quote came to mind while chatting to a colleague of mine, Alain Jaques.
He used the concept of getting fit, in the work context. We work in a tough, fast paced environment with tight budgets and limited resources. He said: “… to work here, you have to become work fit…“, or something to that effect. (Really sorry if I’ve misquoted you, Alain.)
The idle person is the one that is more likely to complain when given more work, simply because the person is not ‘work fit’.
Since that quote, we’ve been using the concept of getting fit in many different situations. I would like to explore some of these situations today and then I would like to promote using Mind Maps as the tool to get you mentally fit.
I’ve been using and promoting Mind Maps for about twenty years now. During this period, I’ve always promoted the benefits that Mind Maps have for Memory, Recall, Reading, Writing, Presentations, Projects, Meetings, Personal Growth, etc., etc.
I could talk for hours on the benefits of Mind Mapping and how it can give you the competitive edge.
Yet, I know so many people that have used it – and failed!
Despite trying Mind Maps, their memories are as poor as ever. They are not more creative. They are still disorganised.
And what is more troublesome for me, is that they are so caught up in the details. They simply do not see the big picture.
Mind Maps offer a solution to all of these problems and many others not mentioned here.
But, to get the benefits of Mind Maps and Mind Mapping, you have to use Mind Maps. You have to be Mind Map Fit.
And once you are Mind Map fit, you can become Mentally Fit.
Once again, let’s use running as an analogy. Let’s assume that I am thinking of getting back into running after many years.
I have a major problem in that I am not running fit. I’ve been doing Judo for over four years and over the period I was often ‘Judo Fit’, but in the last four years, I’ve never been running fit.
And to get running fit, what do I need to do? The answer is not rocket science. I have to run!
Sounds too simple? Many truths are so simple that we often deem it too simple and don’t apply it.
To get running fit, you have to run. The gym, weight training, cycling, swimming, or any other exercise won’t get you running fit. You will get fit and have the benefits of being fit. Your heart rate will come down, you will have more energy, you will feel better – But you won’t be running fit.
The same can be said for Mental Fitness. To get mentally fit, you have to exercise your Mind. The best tool to exercise your whole brain is the Mind Map.
To get good at Mind Mapping, start Mind Mapping. Don’t worry about theory, jargon, tools, or any other distractors. Start Mind Mapping today.
As you get fit, you will be able to explore rougher terrain. You can start doing hill work. You can do some Fartlek. You can train for speed. You can do marathon sessions.
This brings me to the next running analogy. Assume that I am now running fit, after a lay off of many years. I am running fit because I’ve been back into running for a few months. I ‘hit the road’ regularly and I’m beginning to enjoy running again. (After days and weeks of agonising pain.)
I am now thinking of doing a race.
Am I race fit? Probably not. If I have not been training for races, I will probably not be race fit. Even if I wanted to train to become race fit, what race do I train for? A 10km race is very different from a half-, full-, or ultra-marathon. Each race requires different race fitness levels.
To become mentally fit, you have to start Mind Mapping. Start using it for some basic functions. If you are not sure where to start, have a look at the website we’ve recently started about using Mind Maps. Perhaps you could get some ideas on where to use Mind Maps.
Once you have decided where you want to use Mind Maps, simply start using them. Create lots and lots of Mind Maps. Over time you will become Mind Map fit and mentally fit.
Let’s sum up:
- To become race fit, you first have to first become running fit. You become running fit by by running.
- To become mentally fit, you first have need to become Mind Map fit. You become Mind Map fit by Mind Mapping.
So, my advice this week, is simply short and sweet:
Keep it simple. Become Mentally Fit by exercising your Mind. And the best tool for that is the Mind Map!
Mind Mapping is easy…
…Or is it?
I’ve recently been criticized by a number of ‘certified’ Mind Mapping instructors. Who, correctly, claim that I am breaking certain laws of Tony Buzan, the inventor of the Mind Map.
Those criticisms made me relook at my Mind Maps and my personal style of Mind Mapping. I came to some interesting conclusions, which I’d like to share with you today. These are my experiences and my opinions and not necessarily a scientific fact.
To illustrate some of my points, I will equate Mind Mapping to running. Before you run off, thinking that I have finally ‘lost it’, please humour me by reading further.
Running is one of humankind’s most natural activities. The statement, ‘You must walk before you can run’, is understood by most people.
While running is one of the most basic human functions, have you seen the industry it has created?
Here are some examples:
- Running Books
- Running Coaches
- Running Shoes
- Heart rate monitors
- Energy Drinks
- Cabo-loading products
- …and much more…
These examples prove that even though we have been running since childhood, there is always room for improvement, and there is a huge, lucrative market.
I’ve chosen running as an example, as I view myself as a runner, even though I haven’t really run seriously for years.
At the height of my ‘running career’, I spent lots of money on ‘running stuff’.
I subscribed to monthly magazines, bought books and went to lectures on running. I bought special running tops, shorts and even a heart rate monitor.
I have a book called ‘Lore of Running’, by professor Tim Noakes, on my bookshelf. It is dubbed ‘The Runner’s Bible’ by the British Journal of Sports Medicine and contains 1,277 pages. That is not for casual bedtime reading! It is an encyclopaedia of running. It contains scientific studies, shoe buying tips and of course training programmes. All of this is backed up by scientific evidence.
I can see that you may be beginning to ask, ‘What’s your point?’
Let’s cut to the chase. If you did not read any of the thousands of books on running; Never read articles on how to buy shoes, socks, pants, vests, etc.; Never had a personal coach; Don’t know Arthur Newton’s ten laws of running. Would you and, more importantly, could you, enjoy and benefit from the act of running?
I hope your answer was a resounding, ‘OF COURSE!!!’
The same applies to Mind Mapping.
While you would enjoy the benefits of running, you could also be doing everything wrong. You could injure yourself. You may never win a race. Running a marathon will most likely be impossible.
The conclusion?
It all depends on the runner you want to be and the school of thought you want to follow. I’ve quoted Newton (not Isaac) above. Tim Noakes, the author of ‘The Lore of Running’, uses and adapts his laws in the book. Are his laws valid?
Even with all the scientific evidence and academic backing, Lore of Running still has its detractors.
I’ll use one of the laws from the book, ‘Train first for distance and only later for speed’ as an example.
This law can be debated forever without coming to a conclusion. Scientists and various other ‘experts’ can come together, each bringing their own evidence, and still we won’t get to a unified outcome.
Do we…
- stop running?
- learn the rules?
- subscribe to Runner’s World?
- employ a personal coach?
- read all 1,277 pages of ‘Lore of Running’?
…Before we start running?
The answer, I hope, is an obvious ‘No!’ To run, you need to start running.
The same applies to Mind Mapping. To Mind Map, you need to start Mind Mapping.
I deeply respect Tony Buzan, the inventor of the Mind Map, and the efforts he has put into taking Mind Mapping to the masses. His views on mental literacy in his early works inspired me to be an ‘evangelist’ on Mind Mapping.
Yet Tony Buzan is also a great marketer and a great entrepreneur. He has made lots of money from Mind Mapping. He has books, videos and now endorses the only official Mind Map Software, iMindMap.
Global Mental Literacy will come at a cost, a huge cost.
Living in Africa, I don’t see this mental literacy translating to the masses easily. The costs are simply too huge. Like basic literacy, some will develop high skills of literacy, but others will simply have basic literacy skills.
If we can’t get basic literacy right, how can we tackle mental literacy?
My response is, one person at a time. With the understanding that I am teaching basic mental literacy in most cases and advanced mental literacy only in some cases, I’ve put together some Web resources to get you started. The websites that I have created on Mind Maps and Mind Mapping (MindMapTutor.com and recently UsingMindMaps.com) are free resources. I hope that it will add value to people’s lives and get more people to use Mind Mapping than before.
It’s as simple as that. Hopefully many of you will explore Mind Mapping further and advance you mental literacy just like a novice runner preparing for a marathon.
Who knows, I may even make a buck or two!
Mind Map Software
I promote free Mind Map Software such as Xmind and FreeMind, even though they don’t meet the requirements of Tony Buzan’s strict laws. I believe that it will increase the mental literacy of the people that use them and if you really want to go further with Mind Mapping Software, try the commercial versions.
This is not unlike buying and reading ‘Lore of Running’. I know many people who have acquired the book only after they started running seriously as adults. Like me, they first read articles, journals and other material. Later, they borrowed the book from the local public library and read a lot of it. Only after that did they finally buy the book.
My advice on Mind Mapping is the following:
- First walk before you can run
- Start Mind Mapping
- Explore the laws if you need to grow further
A good way to learn Mind Mapping is by example. Look at the examples on MindMapTutor.com, UsingMindMaps.com and other websites and simply start Mind Mapping.
To run, you have to put on your running shoes and step out the door…
Forward this on to others. Remember that comments are most welcome. I’d love to hear about your experiences with Mind Maps.
A good Mind Map has structure
Background
This article was prompted by a conversation I had with a colleague. She said she was going back to linear notes for the minutes of her meetings, as she found the Mind Map minutes to be too unstructured. She felt that the Mind Map rendition of the minutes were ‘all over the place’. When the minutes were reviewed at the next meeting, nobody new what was said or what needed to be done. It was chaos!
I immediately jumped in by responding that it is often a lack of Mind Map theory that causes this to happen, as a good Mind Map has lots of structure.
Before I go into telling you how to get structure into your Mind Maps, let me give you some background information on my work environment. We use Mind Maps extensively at work. There is almost no group session that happens without Mind Maps being used somewhere in the session. We use a commercial software package across the organisation and use a PC with a projector in most meetings. A Mind Map is displayed on the screen and the meeting is often run with the Mind Map as a guide. The chairperson is therefore often the person creating the Mind Map notes as the meeting progresses.
Even our brainstorming sessions often use Mind Maps as the facilitating tool, but this depends on the preference of the person running the session.
Mind Map Theory
During the last few articles, I’ve been criticised for not using a single word per branch, as recommended by Tony Buzan, the inventor of the Mind Map. Well, if these critics were to come to my workplace, they will cringe at the verbose Mind Maps being produced.
Most of the people that use the software don’t have any Mind Map theory. They simply use the tool and get on with the job.
The Mind Map as a tool is amazingly simple to use and results can be outstanding with little or no training. Mind Map Software has made the adoption of Mind Maps by a broader audience much easier. With a little training and understanding of some of the main concepts though, your Mind Maps can be even more effective.
Let’s review the ‘unstructured’ problem
If you are taking notes in a meeting, or during a brainstorming session, the notes are written down in the order that they occur. i.e. chronologically, as a meeting is naturally a chronological event. Often a chronological rendition of the meeting is not the best way to record the essence of the meeting, as people tend to jump from one topic to the next.
While the notes are obviously being recorded chronologically, they don’t have to be structured chronologically.
A lot depends on the skill of the chairperson. The better the chairperson is at structuring and controlling the meeting, the better the notes will be. Often, you may not be the chairperson, but you may be the one taking the notes. What do you do in this situation?
Handling unstructured Mind Maps
Tony Buzan, in the Mind Map Book, mentions the value that his brother Barry added to the development of Mind Maps. One of the principles that Barry added, and I think one of the most important Mind Map Principles, is the concept of Basic Ordering Ideas (BOI’s). A Basic Ordering Idea can be seen simply as a category for your notes. If you categorise your notes according to relevancy, you will immediately have more structure.
Two of the key elements of good memory systems are association and hierarchy. While this aids with memory, it also has an important, sometimes unnoticed, benefit: Clarity!
If you categorise your thoughts and structure them according to levels of importance, you will naturally create a hierarchy associated to the correct Key Ideas. When you then return to a Mind Map that is categorised according to the Basic Ordering Ideas, with important points as the main branches and lesser important, or details, on the sub-branches, you will naturally be able to recall the event.
The recall is often with such clarity that it is scary.
So, how do you bring structure to an unstructured situation?
There are three ways to take down notes.
- Take them down simply as they occur
- Take them down and structure them as they occur
- Take them down with the intention of restructuring later
All of these approaches are much easier if you are using Mind Map Software to take down your notes.
If you are not able to structure your notes during the meeting, you have to visit the notes afterwards and restructure it according to Basic Ordering Ideas. Revisiting the minutes soon after the meeting also serves to refresh your memory and increase your ability to remember and recall it later.
The Next Meeting
By restructuring the Mind Map, you will also provide a good structure for the next meeting. So, when reviewing the minutes at your next meeting, the attendees will be faced with a well structured Mind Map that reflects the outcomes of the previous meeting.
By going over this with them, you will get the whole group on ‘the same page’. You will also have a structure for the current meeting. By simply using this Mind Map to run the current meeting, you will naturally have structure and find that when you visit the minutes after the meeting to restructure it, you will probably have very little to do.
You will also find that your meeting will also be more effective, as you will have clarity.
You would have created structure out of an unstructured situation. If you have never structured your Mind Maps according to Basic Ordering Ideas before, you may be pleasantly surprised by the results. Your Mind Maps should have more clarity and more purpose. They should also be easier to recall and easier to understand.
I’ve used meeting notes, or minutes, to illustrate the value of structuring your notes. The concept of Basic Ordering Ideas, is very important if you are studying, presenting, or writing. By organising your Mind Maps into a structure, you will not only be able to remember the material better, but also convey it better to your audience, whether they be your readers, your examiner, or simply the attendees of your meeting.
Comments on are most welcome on my blog, MindMapTutor.com. I’d like to hear your experiences with Mind Maps. It also allows me to address any issues, or problems you may have with Mind Maps. The chances are good that others will be having the same problems. Your problem could then become the feature of a future article.
While MindMapTutor.com is devoted to tutoring you in the use of Mind Maps and also tutoring you with the use of Mind Maps, I’ve started a more general website on Using Mind Maps. Have a look.
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