Mind Maps — The Ultimate Getting Started Tool
How you can leverage mind maps to plan, learn, and make decisions
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Mind maps are a powerful tool for getting started with project planning or learning something new or even making decisions.
They help you to overcome the hurdle of getting started in a number of ways:
- A blank mind map is less intimidating than the blank page because it’s easy to create and add to. It removes the friction or resistance often associated with the blank page.
- The mind mapping process is simple enough that you can quickly and easily start writing ideas down.
- By thinking in a visual way, more ideas will come to mind based on the connections you make.
Mind Maps Are Great For Visual Thinkers
They help you to pull thoughts and ideas out of your head and structure them in a way that makes sense to you.
It’s like Dumbledore pulling thoughts and memories out of his head and into the pensieve.
He did this so he could examine them to understand different patterns and make connections.
The mind map in this analogy is the pensieve. When your thoughts and ideas are in this form, it becomes easier to understand them and you can make different connections.
Mind Maps As A Study Technique
As well as being useful for understanding your thoughts and ideas, mind maps are helpful when studying or learning new things.
By structuring content you want to learn into a mind map form, you’re harnessing both “parts” of your brain. These relate to the visual and the abstract aka the left + right brain.
It does this by leveraging the power of the hippocampus.
The hippocampus is a part of your brain that’s responsible for spatial awareness. It helps you to remember where things are in a space.
This means that when you create a mind map, you’ll find it easier to remember where a node or connection was on the page.
This is what makes mind maps a powerful tool for learning.
