Imagine you have to write down as many uses for a brick as possible. In general, people would just start listing all their ideas. However, what if you started from a broader perspective, such as thinking about the properties of a brick. It is heavy, so you could use it: as a paperweight, to hold down a garbage bag while raking, as an exercise weight, to grill juicer chicken, etc. It is also thick, so you could use it to prop up a planter or as a doorstop. It is red, it is hard, it's rectangular and others.
Brain is highly responsive to visuals and graphics; it processes images faster than words. Nevertheless, what if I tell you that you could use a technique to advance your creativity, memory and problem-solving abilities. It will be great if you could expand your range of tools to get a competitive edge and leverage full potential of your brain. Would you still be limiting yourself to conventional ways? A powerful graphic process provides the absolute tools to unlock the dynamic potential of the brain.
To put it simply, this technique extracts ideas from your head to visually represent or outline information. It translates what is in your mind into a highly organised visual picture.
That is mind mapping: Once you start, the possibilities seem almost endless. By starting out with the basic questions-who, what, why and then following each thread.
Mind map unleashes the power of the human brain it helps to keep your thoughts focused and organised. The concept that whether you are more of right brain person or a left-brain person has become quite popular in the recent times. If you put more use to your right brain, you think more logically and if you put more use to your left-brain, you think more creatively.
While scientifically speaking, a person always uses his whole brain, what mind mapping does is that it creates synchronization between both sides of your brain without any conscious effort. This helps the mind in building richer connections, which proves to be more effective in easily retaining longer and complex information in the end.
Mind mapping provides practical solutions and save so much time by focusing on the important aspects of your problem. With mind maps, you branch out all the aspects of your problem and are able to investigate each branch thoroughly. To find the 'solution' to your problem becomes your central idea. It also helps you to discover new relationships among unrelated ideas and lets you hold every little information, in order to help solve problems and make better decisions.
‘Too much of anything is good for nothing.' The statement holds true for the conventional methods of learning. However, with the help of mind mapping, you learn to focus on what is relevant and or valuable, and void out the rest, which makes complete learning process easier and less overwhelming.
Remembering even complex information is easy if you use the right approach. The shortcuts used in mind mapping help you make connections that you can easily remember and think with clarity. One of the major advantages of mind mapping is that it favors information retention and usage. It is more than visually processing/representing information, it is about finding ways to understand, store and use new information in an efficient, instant and productive manner.
Another advantage of is that it is an integrated approach to information processing. It forces you to connect new to existing information, draw complex conclusions, see the bigger picture in order to transform it into knowledge.
The writer is Sunanda Rao,Founder-director of Conccept