Drawing a mind map was invented by Tony Buzan, an English psychologist who has been looking all his life for how to make the brain work faster and more productively. The method quickly spread and now you can find various programs and services for drawing maps on the Internet, including the free iMindMap application for creating a map on the screen of your gadget. In general, it doesn't matter where you create your map - on your mobile device, on your home computer, or manually on a piece of paper. The effect of this is not lost.
What is a mind map?
All your tasks, ideas and plans are somehow connected with each other, but these connections are not on the to-do list. It turns out that you see your goals scattered and from this simple and obvious solutions are often lost.
If you try to write all the cases on a piece of paper and use arrows to indicate how they are related to each other, you will get a more holistic picture, and if at the same time you make the arrows multi-colored, draw small pictures and icons, the information will be better remembered, and on the sheet in front of you will appear an understandable problem or task in the form of a structure.
What to use it for?
A mind map is suitable for brainstorming, solving personal or professional problems. Multicolored cards help students well - in many universities, especially in creative specialties, it is advised to draw such structures and diagrams.
The mind map helps the brain get involved in the problem, fully grasp it and better remember the result. This can be useful for solving any problem, from business development to memorizing history notes.
So, the map will help you if:
You need to simplify your plans and ideas, make them more understandable and easier to understand.
You get information from different sources and you want to create a big picture.
You need new ideas, interesting solutions and a non-standard approach to the problem.
You want to better remember information, such as a synopsis.
Why does it work?
Mind mapping is similar to the thinking process itself. It combines two types of activity - creative and analytical, for which different hemispheres of the brain are responsible. The right one is responsible for spatial orientation, imagination and thinking, while the left one is responsible for analysis and logic.
When, during a difficult explanation, you start walking around the room or drawing something on a notebook, this is an unconscious attempt to make both hemispheres of the brain work.
A mind map helps according to the same principle: in the process of creating it, you use both hemispheres, so that as a result, most of the cerebral cortex works, more neurons are involved, which means that the abilities of memory, perception and thinking grow.
How do I draw a map?
As mentioned above, there are special applications for creating maps, but it is better to draw your first mind map by hand.
Take a sheet of paper at least A4 and lay it horizontally.
Draw in the center the most important problem or idea - the main thing for which you started drawing.
Around the main thought, write problems and ideas that somehow relate to it.
Connect the main task with additional (secondary) thick lines.
Expand the problems and plans in more detail - draw even smaller ones around the secondary tasks and also connect them with arrows and lines.
As a result, you will have a single picture of your problem with all thoughts, ideas and plans. After that, you will probably see some new opportunities.
How to make your card more efficient?
There are a few tips to help make the map easier to understand:
Sign the branches with keywords to make the connections easier to understand.
Use different colors, shapes, arrows, fonts, icons - all these visual elements help to better remember and perceive information.
Arrange secondary topics clockwise around the main idea.
Draw different ideas with different colors.
Don't get hung up on one topic. Nothing good comes to mind - go into another topic, later come back to this one and think about it.
Where to begin?
Each of them has several topics that are constantly postponed "for later", so you can start with them.
Buy colored markers, take the time, and draw your first mind map.
Drawing a mind map can seem like fun - just have fun with the process and you are sure to find a solution for any problem.
