I have been wanting to jump onto the mind mapping bandwagon since quite some time. I have known about it but never really got started with it. I am used to taking notes, but the habit of jotting down everything resulted in copious notes which was an absolute information overload. This sometimes made it difficult to go back and cross refer topics. What I really needed was a way to gather enough bits and pieces of information which was easy to recollect and easy to correlate.
Mind maps offer a method for learning, organizing, relating and reviewing information. It is a tool for the brain that captures the thinking that goes on inside. Unlike notes which are linear in structure, the brain may keep switching between thoughts and each idea grows organically as one spends more and more time on it. Not all information is gathered right away, but one can always go back and expand on the map by adding newer pieces of information. This organic growth of thoughts can be captured visually, allowing a person to connect related topics and be creative in the way the information is organized for easy recollection.
A mind map involves writing down a central theme and thinking of new and related ideas which radiate out from the center. The central idea could be as simple as a shopping list or as complex as “purpose of life”. By focusing on key ideas written down in your own words and looking for connections between them, you can map knowledge in a way that will help you to better understand and retain information. A visual representation of the brain’s activity allows for better brain storming, analysis of gathered information and generation of new ideas. Effectively the map is summarizing information and so it is ideal to use keywords rather than complete sentences to capture the essence of the thought. This gives more clarity and is easy to recollect. Use of colors and images to associate the concepts make the map more engaging and cant be forgotten easily.
So is it just a glorified way to take notes? Not at all. Mind maps are more than a note taking approach. It allows for thinking to be as free flowing as imaginable, brain storm enough on the topic at hand and any digression can still be catered to by mapping it appropriately. One can always come back to topics and expand further if that’s how the brain is diverging and new chain of thoughts ensue. Putting things in a visual manner helps with planning, problem solving, putting together information from multiple sources or even understanding complex ideas. It helps to get the bigger picture and broaden the understanding of the topic. It allows to focus on exploring one sub topic or idea and dig into sufficient details before moving onto next sub topic or idea. This approach reduces the mental clutter since you focus only on one thing at a time. This makes you less overwhelmed with the amount of information and helps you cope.
To gauge the benefits of mind mapping, one has to get started and inculcate this as a habit. As most things, this too needs practice. Start with basic tools i.e. a pen and paper and draw out the thoughts, add clumsy doodles, be creative, gather all there is to the topic. Few scribbles and corrections are still okay. A better understanding develops over time and creating, storing and recollecting information becomes more effective. Using mind mapping software is the next logical step. This has distinct advantages when making changes to the maps for reorganizing information, changing related topics, adding hyper links for internet reference etc. Regardless of the medium, what a mind map achieves is a holistic view of the topic at hand, by accumulating enough information in sufficient depth and charting out its inter connections. The visualization of the entire topic accommodates all possible chains of thoughts, shows how they can be inter-related and grants it clarity for the reader, who is easily able to recall all the information that was organized, reviewed, learned and stored.
The power of mind maps lies in their simplicity. They can be creative and fun and offer loads of benefits to get a better understanding of any topic, no matter how complex.
EDIT: Attempted to make a mind map for the contents of this blog post.
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