A little reflection please

Now that you’ve finished this exercise I’ve the following questions for you:

This first exercise on ‘Success’ took you a total of 15 minutes. In your view, what are the differences with ‘normal’ messages which you simply write down?

If I’d asked you to express your thoughts on the theme of Success instead of producing a Mind Map in just 15 minutes, would the number of thoughts and their depth have been similar?

In my seminars I often get the following feedback when I ask these two questions:

The Mind Mapping process provides a flow of associations and so it’s much easier to add new thoughts.

In this way significantly more ideas are generated than in normal messages.

The structure of the Mind Map allows you to add new thoughts at every point without having to squeeze them in somewhere.

The practice of working with key concepts and branches enables you to penetrate a theme much more quickly and deeply.

The spatial arrangement of branches displays connections and links between themes which could not be identified in linear representations.

A Simple Technique with Many Applications

Mind Mapping involves a couple of easily assimilated ground rules. With this set of rules you can apply Mind Mapping to many situations, wherever information has to be structured and organised. This could also be as simple as a compiling ‘shopping list’ (see Figure 1-4). But you’ll usually use Mind Mapping in more complex areas.

Frequent applications of Mind Mapping are:

Manuscripts and ‘cribs’ for lectures and presentations

Notes from texts and books

Notes from talks, presentations and discussions

Project management

Knowledge management

Exam preparation