Mind Mapping Brainstorming

Welcome to Mind Mapping Brainstorming. This article provides insight on how you can tap into your creative side with limitless expression. This style of creative purpose is fantastic for this Day and Age with our lives so full of pressure and limited time.

Please enjoy this article provided by my father Tom Ware!

You’ve probably heard the expression “going outside the square” when people are talking about creativity and innovation. The expression comes from the old ‘connect up the following dots with only so many lines, all of which must be straight ’ intelligence test. It’s a brain teaser. In order to get the answer right you had to come up with something the average person would probably not think of.

To get the answer you had to go way outside of the perimeter made up by the dots that comprised both the outside and center of the square.

Going outside the square was a sort of ‘quantum jump’ in ‘insight.’ So, too, was Tony Buzan’s breakthrough when he came up with Mind Mapping way back in the late 1960s.

The Mind Map, on the other hand, because it has no set boundaries, and proceeds outwards in a seemingly chaotic way in all directions from a central point, does not have this limitation. A mind map can virtually go on forever, jumping from one subject to another as it goes.

For example: water, ice, ice cream, cream, milk, cows, dairy, farm crops, horse riding, horse racing, car racing, crashes, hospital, doctors, disease, health, youth, juveniles, delinquents, gangsters, goals, bars, taverns, grog. See what I mean? It opens up the mind, so to speak.

So how does it work? In brief, we come up with a concept we want to expand upon . For example, supposing we were looking at the concept of, say, wishing to promote yourself or our business. We would take a large, blank sheet of paper and place it on a table or desk in front of us. In the center of that sheet of paper we might write in the word My Business. You could write in your name, place a portrait photo of yourself right in the middle, or simply draw something which represents you or your particular objective.

Let us say, for example, that you are in business as a professional public speaker. You are the spider, so to speak, at the center of the web. You now need to build your web or mind map.

You might figure that you need to take three major tacks to expand your business. They could be Promotion, Writing, and Speaking. So around that center point you’d write those three things.

" Mind Mapping is a system of note making, or note taking (it can be used for either) where, instead of jotting down notes in handwriting, or short-hand, the student" – or creator, as the case may be – draws a sort of spider’s web of diagrams, pictures, words, icons, all manner of drawn and written things, as both an aid to memory and a aid to thinking up, remembering, and simply bringing into existence, new concepts. It gets the mind working more efficiently.

What is actually happening here is that with Mind Mapping the ‘mapper’ is actually utilizing a greater part of his mind-brain. We know that many of us think in pictures. We know, too, that the usual way of learning things is to write out lists, lists which proceed downwards until we run out of ideas and then stop writing. When we stop, it is almost as if we’re saying, “Well, that’s it. I’ve reached the end.” We then attempt to learn and remember what’s in those lists.

So we now have a center point with what like a three-leaf clover around it. One leaf is Promotion, another is writing, whilst the third is speaking. So, at this point, it looks like we’ll be going out – or mind mapping – in three directions. So, under Promotion we might draw additional leaves. One could be Internet, another Personal Contacts, a third, Media, a fourth, Social Organizations, whilst a fifth might simply read “Others.”

So what have we got? Now we have surrounding the word Promotion: Internet, Personal Contacts, Social Organizations, Media, and Others.

All right. Let us simply attach even more to just one of these. Let us take, for example, Social Organizations (who we wish to influence in some way) the list attached to Social Organizations for a would-be for a professional public speaker could include: Service clubs, e.g. Rotary, Lions, Jaycees, etc. It could also have another branch coming off with National Speakers Associations, and a third with Chambers of Commerce. There would be as many as you could think of at that time. Others could be added as they come to mind. And they will come to mind – your subconscious will see to that.

Can you see how it is growing? You start at the center and keep on adding things as they occur. And believe me, they will occur. You are, in a way, brainstorming. And because we think in this way, rather than in the linear, ‘make a list’ way, we find that the ideas just keep on coming.

Eventually a complex picture will gradually evolve on our once blank sheet of paper. The three major shoots or branches will have many lesser branches coming from them, and twigs for these, and leaves from the twigs. I’m using a tree analogy here. Those branches could contain pictures, icons, numbers and numerals of all description; names, places, etc...

You can use different color pens or pencils for each major branch. Also, you’ll probably find that as you move out on those branches and sub-branches there will be moments where to ‘cross over’ from one branch to another. Sort of like a creeper or vine growing across.

It is true that one picture is worth a thousand words. We have nearly a thousand words here, so maybe an actual diagram of a Mind Map will help.

I hope you enjoyed this article Mind Mapping Brainstroming.  This is a part of the creative series for Bloggers, businesses and entrepreneurs provided by Marty Ware to help you achieve amazing results online ans offline.

You can visit Marty Ware's Blog to find more great content http://martyware.com.au