and teaching about the theory and application of Mind Maps. Having struggled through my student days, I was determined that everyone should have the benefit of this liberating thinking tool.
Mind Map Handbook is part of this determination to make Mind Maps accessible to everyone.
Part One introduces you to what a Mind Map is, how Mind Maps work and the many ways in which they can help you excel at what you do.
Part Two focuses on how to use Mind Maps to harness the power of your verbal intelligence and become brilliant with words – whether you are reading, speaking, remembering or understanding them.
Part Three shows you how Mind Maps can help you unlock your creative genius and become the ideas person you’ve always wanted to be. Mind Maps are the Swiss Army Knife for the brain, and with them you will sharpen your powers of thought and be able to generate new ideas with speed and ease.
Mind Maps wonderfully and dramatically changed my life for the better. I know that they will do the same for you.
Be prepared to be amazed – by yourself!
In this chapter I will answer the following questions:
Just What Is a Mind Map?
What Do You Need to Make a Mind Map?
How Can Mind Maps Help You?
Just What Is a Mind Map?
A Mind Map is the ultimate organizational thinking tool. And it is so simple!
The very basic Mind Map below is a plan for today. Each of the branches emanating from the central image relate to different things that need to be done today, for example, calling a plumber, or doing the grocery shopping.
A Mind Map is the easiest way to put information into your brain and to take information out of your brain – it’s a creative and effective means of note-taking that literally ‘maps out’ your thoughts.
All Mind Maps have some things in common. They all use colour. They all have a natural structure that radiates from the centre. And they all use lines, symbols, words and images according to a set of simple, basic, natural and brain-friendly rules. With a Mind Map, a long list of boring information can be turned into a colourful, memorable, highly organized diagram that works in line with your brain’s natural way of doing things.
You can usefully compare Mind Maps to maps of a city. The centre of your Mind Map is like the centre of the city, and represents your most important idea; the main roads leading from the centre represent the main thoughts in your thinking process; the secondary roads or branches represent your secondary thoughts, and so on. Special images or shapes can represent sights of interest or particularly interesting ideas.
Just like a road map, a Mind Map will:
Give an overview of a large subject or area.
Enable you to plan routes or to make choices, and will let you know where you are going and where you have been.
Gather together large amounts of data in one place.
Encourage problem solving by allowing you to see new creative pathways.
Be enjoyable to look at, read, muse over and remember.
Mind Maps are also brilliant route-maps for the memory, allowing you to organize facts and thoughts in such a way that your brain’s natural way of working is engaged right from the start. This means that remembering and recalling information later is far easier and more reliable than when using traditional note-taking techniques.
What Do You Need to Make a Mind Map?
Because Mind Maps are so easy to do and so natural, the ingredients for your ‘Mind Map Recipe’ are very few:
1 Blank unlined paper
2 Coloured pens and pencils
3 Your brain
4 Your imagination!
How Can Mind Maps Help You?
Mind Maps can help you in many, many ways! Here are just a few!
Mind Maps can help you to:
be more creative
save time
solve problems
concentrate
organize and clarify your thinking
pass exams with good grades
remember better
study faster and more efficiently
make studying a breeze
see the ‘whole picture’
plan
communicate
survive!
save trees!
Let’s compare your brain and the knowledge in it to a library.
Imagine that your brain is a newly built and empty library waiting to be filled with data and information in the form of books, videos, films, CDs and computer discs.
You are the chief librarian and have to choose first whether you wish to have a small or a large selection. You naturally choose a large selection.
Your second choice is whether to have the information organized or not.
Imagine that you take the second option, not to have it organized: you simply order a dumpster of books and electronic media, and have it all piled in a giant heap of information in the middle of your library floor! When somebody comes into your library and asks for a specific book or place where they can find information on a specific topic, you shrug your shoulders and say: ‘It’s somewhere there in the pile, hope you find it – good luck!’
This metaphor describes the state of most people’s minds! Their minds, even though they may – and often do – contain the information they want, are so horribly disorganized that it is impossible for them to retrieve information when they need it. This leads to frustration and a reluctance to take in or handle any new information. After all, what is the point of taking in new information, if you are never going to be able to access
