In a previous video about activating more of your brain, I mentioned a tool called the
mind map and asked if you might be interested in a video that dives a little deeper into
what it is and how it could be useful to you.
This is how that whole thing played out.
So I feel kind of compelled to make this video, but hopefully understanding mind maps might
just help you an incredible amount just as they have for me.
Simply put, a mind map is a visual representation of the various thoughts and ideas associated
with a particular topic.
Think of it as a counter to a bulleted list and more of a spider diagram.
The mind map has been thought to help incredibly with ideation, memory and compilation.
In fact, It has been suggested that mind-mapping can improve learning/study efficiency up to
15% over conventional note-taking.
Let’s take a look at how we can create one.
To start off, you have to have a central theme or concept that you wish to build your mind
map around.
Let’s say you have a quest for World Domination, you simply map out what you need to do and
that could include monopolizing trade between China and the rest of the world, or releasing
an army of cockroaches or zombies on the world, and the rest will be yours…
But for real, you could begin with a central topic such as time management.
Maybe you want to get better at it and plot out what you could do.
Like any topic with sub categories, you’d want to plot out specific areas and then build
or ideate within that.
For instance, you could map out some of your key issues with time management, or identify
things that you could let go off that might buy you more time, or explore certain choices
that you could make that might help with this.
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Now back to the video.
The point is that you can discover as you go about this process, but plotting it all
out can prove to be immensely useful to get the ball rolling and either solve a problem
that you’re having and uncover a golden nugget that you didn’t know existed.
The name of the game here is association so you can go 2, 3, 4, 5 levels deep if it helps
you get down and dirty with the details.
Try to go from broad or general to more and more specific.
These associations build connections which serve as a hack for remembering.
Just know that there doesn’t have to be a fixed structure to any of this.
It’s very personal to you and how visualization can work for you.
There are plenty of stylistic approaches but the only thing that really matters is that
you use keywords, not sentences, and connect your sub-topics to your main topic in a hierarchical
fashion.
One way to make it easier and more appealing for yourself is to use color.
I like to use color for the association lines so that I can categorize sub-topics a little
better in my head.
The great thing about this is that you can use a combination of words as well as images,
using both sides of your brain and more deeply integrating it into your system.
So if you need to draw images to accompany certain keywords, that could prove to be quite
handy too.
That’s really it.
As you can see there are very few rules to follow with this, it’s perhaps one of the
subjective tools I’ve talked about on this channel so feel free to give it a shot and
let me know what topic you’ll create your first mind map on in the comments below.
As always, drop a like on this video and subscribe to the channel for more handy tips and techniques
just like this.
Bye.