overview of the work, increasing your understanding and comprehension, making your study and learning faster and more enjoyable, and vastly improving your memory.
When you review a Mind Map of a book, it is like looking at a photograph album where you immediately remember vast arrays of information with the trigger of each of those ‘thousand words’ pictures.
Novels are easy to Mind Map. With a novel the chapter headings, if there are any, will probably not make the best main branches. Something else, however, will!
All novels are made up of a number of major component parts, which allow you to condense an entire book onto a single page. These main elements are:
Plot – the structure of events
Characters – their type and development
Setting – the places and times where the events of the novel take place
Language – its general level, the type of vocabulary and its rhythm
Imagery – the kind of images the author provides for your imagination
Themes – the kind of ideas with which the novel deals, including such common themes as love, power, money, religion, etc.
Symbolism – where the author substitutes one thing to mean another – for example flowers for love, thunderstorms for anger, calm seas for peace, etc.
Philosophy – some books present a point of view in order to challenge the way we think
Genre – novels can be categorized under different headings, for instance, political, adventure, mystery, detective, historical, etc.
When you Mind Map a novel in this way, you will never again get confused about which character is which, what time is when or what is actually going on! The Mind Map will be like a beacon for you, lighting your way as you progress, and giving you a far richer, deeper and more complete understanding and appreciation of whatever you read.
If you are studying or planning to take further education courses in any subject, book Mind Maps are the ideal way to get that ‘A’!
Computer Mind Maps
Computers can be helpful when you Mind Map! Although it is still your brain that comes up with all the ideas, the latest software can allow you to draw a Mind Map on your screen. The advantages of this are obvious. You can save your Mind Maps in a file and then transmit this information to others. Computer Mind Maps allow you to store vast amounts of data in Mind Map form, to cross-reference that data, to shift branches around from one part of the Mind Map to another, to rearrange entire Mind Maps in light of new information, and to hold global conferences.
Many companies are now using computer Mind Maps for storing and sharing information and for keeping track of projects. Use them in conjunction with handmade Mind Maps – the combination is explosive!
As you have seen, Mind Maps have many and very varied uses.
In the chapter that follows, I will introduce you to Mind Maps as a super-tool for improving your creativity and ability to generate thoughts. First because creativity is such a vital ingredient in our modern lives, and secondly because using Mind Maps creatively reveals a fact about your brain and its potential that will amaze and delight you.
1.4 Making The Most of Your Creativity with Mind Maps
Unleasing Your Amazing Creative Power with Mind Maps
Linear Note-taking and Its Problems
The Worldwide Web in Your Head and ItsCreative Power
The Great Creative Geniuses and Note-taking
This chapter will explore how Mind Maps work through the brain principles of Imagination and Association to maximize your creativity.
Unleashing Your Amazing Creative Power with Mind Maps
Do you feel you are creative?
In this chapter Mind Maps will show you not only that you are, but that you are amazingly creative. To do this, let’s go back to the exercise in Chapter 1.2, on ‘Fruit’. Look back at your own Mind Map or use the sample Mind Map on ‘Fruit’ on Plate 1. There are five main branches radiating from the central image, with three further ‘twigs’ coming off each branch, for a third level of Association. By using your imaginative, associative brain, you added key words or images to those branches. This may seem simple, but what your brain did was actually something quite profound. You took a single concept, ‘Fruit,’ and radiated from it five key ideas. Thus you multiplied your first creative output by five – that’s a 500% increase in creative output.
Next you took your five new, freshly created ideas, and from each of them you created three more new ideas. Another threefold or 300% increase! In no time at all, you started from one idea, and created 15 new ones; a 1,500% increase!
Now ask yourself: ‘Could I create another five words/ideas from each of the 15 words that radiate from the original key five?’ Of course you could! That’s another 75 ideas created!
Could you add another five from each of those? Again, of course you could – another 375 ideas! That’s 37,500% more ideas than when you started! Could you keep going to the next level? And the next? And the next and the next? Of course you could! And for how long? Forever! Generating how many ideas? An infinite number!
Mind Maps demonstrate that you have ∞ creative abilities.
This new knowledge has immediate applications. You can use it to give you the confidence that you will always be able to find an appropriate word, that you will always be able to find a solution for a problem; that you will always be able to come up with creative ideas; that your natural ability to link and connect will always help you with any thinking situation; and that you will always now know that you are smarter than you think!
Unconsciously, you have already been demonstrating this infinite creative capacity all your life. It’s called procrastination! Just think of the incredible creativity, the amazing number of original ideas, that you generate every day when you think of new reasons (excuses!) for not sorting that cupboard, studying that book, doing that unpleasant or boring job … infinite creativity!
When you have generated many creative ideas you can go back, using your mighty association power, and look for links and connections that will generate new super-ideas that will solve your problems, help you make decisions, and help you come up with those new inventions that will make you your fortune!
This infinite association power allows you to generate as many ideas as you want in any creative area. The advantage of this is like the lottery: the more numbers you have, the higher the chance that you will win (come up with the ‘winning’ idea!).
Mind Maps are therefore the best way
