Michael Tipper - How to Get Started With Mind Mapping

©Michael Tipper 2008 All Rights Reserved Page 1 of 24

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How to Get Started With

Mind Mapping

Your Introduction to the World’s Most Powerful

Thinking Tool

By Michael Tipper

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© Michael Tipper 2008

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Contents

Introduction Step 1 – Start in the middle of the page

Step 2 – Use blank paper

Step 3 – Start with a central image Step 4 – Different branches for different headings

Step 5 – Add the detail on sub-branches Step 6 – Central branches are larger

Step 7 – Use arrows to link related ideas Step 8 – Have continuous lines Step 9 – Use Key Words Step 10 – Use UPPER CASE lettering

Practice Point 1 – Mind Map the News for practice Practice Point 2 – Mind Map your long hand notes first Practice Point 3 – Use coloured pens Practice Point 4 – Use little sketches



Introduction Many years ago now, well in the middle of the last century as the Beatles were splitting up, men were landing on the moon and England were still holders of the Soccer World Cup (yes it was that long ago!), a British Psychologist called Tony Buzan was exploring the development of his own learning and memory abilities. To do this he studied what the best students and thinkers were doing to get amazing results and came to the conclusion that to be the best in class you probably had the best notes. By analysing the features and processes these people carried out, Tony identified the key characteristics of their notes. To cut a long story short Tony synthesised his findings and developed a note taking technique that he called the Mind Mapping – literally a Map of the way the Mind stored, sorted, prioritised and processed information. This differed from the standard linear verbal structure of words, lines, sentences and lists that children in schools had been taught for years. Instead Mind Mapping presented information in a flowing, colourful nodal structure organising key words and pictures. Today literally millions of people around the world use Mind Mapping in their daily personal and professional lives I have met, trained with and worked alongside Tony over the last few years and have had the privilege to have been personally tutored by this great man. So the information that you are getting here is as good as from the horse’s mouth as you can get. Mind Mapping literally changed my life when I discovered it a few years ago. All of a sudden I found learning much easier and took far less time. Over the years that I have been doing it, my creativity and thinking ability have dramatically improved and the reason I now speak to thousands of people about learning and the brain’s capabilities is because of Mind Mapping.



So hopefully you have got the idea that this is a pretty impressive thinking tool. It has many applications and can be used to great effect in any profession. It has tremendous benefits and what I am going to do in this Introduction to Mind Mapping is to show you how to create one. So where shall we begin? Well first of all let me show you what a Mind Map looks like:

It consists of a central image that encapsulates the topic under consideration, main branches that represent the key ideas of the topic and then smaller branches for the sub-topics and detail. It uses key words, pictures and colour and is a nodal structure radiating out from the central image.

What I shall do is take you step by step through the process of creating a Mind Map.



Now let’s begin with:

Step 1 – Start in the middle of the page And Step 2 – Use blank paper One of the great things about Mind Maps is that they free the mind up from any constraints they may previously have been in place. What do I mean by that? If you give a piece of paper to most people and ask them to start writing something, they will invariably begin at the top of the page and start writing DOWN the page. By starting at the top there is only one way to go and that of course is down. So in terms of choices you don’t have any; you have to go down the page. Although this may seem a trivial point, the fact that you only have one way to go is extremely limiting to the brain and will, after a period of time, constrain your thinking in one direction i.e. down. Mind Maps free up and harness the brain’s natural creativity and one of the ways that it does this is that is by allowing you the freedom to go off in any direction. So rather than start at the top of the page, start in the centre to give you 360 degrees of choice. Yes, you can go in any direction that you want to. Now another constraining factor that “conventional” note taking has is that it is nearly always done on lined paper. This I suppose is a throw back to when we were learning to write and needed the guidance of the lines to help us form our letters correctly and neatly. But now that we don’t need the guidance to write neatly any more, the lines now dictate how we should write on the page and in effect are also guiding our thought process. So instead of lined paper use blank paper.



Another convention that Mind Mapping defies is that of the orientation of the paper. If you use normal A4 paper you will no doubt have it positioned with the short side at the top of the page (portrait format).

Portrait Format

This might seem an odd question at this point but have you ever watched television or been to the cinema? I am sure then that you have heard the term “Wide Screen”. Why do you think that “Wide Screen” is such a feature in newer television sets and in cinemas? The reason has to do with our vision. Our horizontal peripheral vision is wider than our vertical peripheral vision. So those clever people who make televisions and cinema screens know this and that is why we have wide screens. And what is the relevance of this to Mind Mapping? When you begin to Mind Map in the centre of your fresh blank page, turn it so that it is in landscape format with the long side of the page at the top. This will align the available space on the page with the way your vision “footprint” naturally occurs. And by doing this you are working more in tune with the eye-brain mechanism and therefore will harness even more of its capability.

Landscape

format

So these first two Mind Mapping steps are:

Step 1 - Start in the middle of your fresh PAGE with your paper on its side in landscape format. This



allows your mind maximum freedom for its thoughts to amaze and impress you.

And

Step 2 - Use BLANK PAPER to allow 360 degrees freedom to express your creative thoughts and stunning ideas. Using boring lined paper will channel your thoughts down a particular path that may not be where you need to go.

Step 3 – Start with a central image So now that we have our fresh blank piece of paper, turned on its side in landscape format and we are ready to begin in the centre of the page, what do we do first? If you were taking notes as you used to do, you would probably start at the top of the page with a Main Heading. In Mind Mapping terms we do the same thing (only start in the middle of the page as you already know) and have the Mind Map equivalent of a main subject heading. Before I tell you what that is, I want to give you another little exercise to illustrate the point I am about to make. I would like you to think back to the moment that you woke up this morning and now recall everything you can that happened to you from that moment until now. Do that for about 30 seconds. Now having done that, one of two things could have happened for you to recall all that happened to you: 1. The first possibility is that a large screen appeared in

your mind, just like a computer screen, and across that screen was a written description of what you did. All you had to do was read the words to recall the day’s events up until now.

2. The second possibility is that another large screen appeared in your mind and it displayed a pictorial re-run of the events of the day. Not necessarily in the order that they happened but nevertheless it was a series of images

So which was it for you, the WORDS or the IMAGES?



The answer of course is that we think in pictures and so you will have seen a series of IMAGES. Now we can think about words but we do actually think in pictures. If you doubt this, think back several thousand years ago, before the written word was developed. How did people think then? Of course it was with pictures. Or perhaps think of it this way – just because someone can’t read doesn’t mean they can’t think. They will think in pictures. You have probably heard the saying “a picture speaks a thousand words”. And the reason for this statement is that to accurately describe a scene would take thousands of words but one picture will give you all the information you need. So as we think in pictures it makes sense that we use pictures as much as possible in our Mind Mapping. So start with a CENTRAL IMAGE that encapsulates the subject of the Mind Map. Now one of the key features of a mind map is that it is drawn using different colours (see the example at the start of this guide). The reasons for this are many but all you need to know is that by using colour you are harnessing the RIGHT part of your brain in addition to the LEFT. That is why the Mind Map is a whole-brain thinking tool. Another reason is that with different coloured branches, you can see quite clearly the different areas of the Mind Map (which neatly leads on to the next habit).

Step 3 - Begin by drawing a CENTRAL IMAGE using at least 3 bright and stimulating colours. The Mind thinks in pictures ("a picture speaks a thousand words") and the colour will help stimulate your memory.

Step 4 – Different branches for different headings



If you are writing conventionally you will separate your themes and ideas by having different headings. It is the same with Mind Maps only each heading is a main branch emanating from the central image. Here is an example to show what I mean. This is the beginning of a Mind Map about Henry VIII and shows the main branches in place:

These branches would be represented by the following headings in a “conventional” piece of writing: Important Dates The Famous Painting His Six Wives Henry VIII and Europe His use of government Henry VIII and the Church

Step 4 - Draw your main creative ideas and thoughts on different coloured flowing branches connected to the central image by using key words and images. Well chosen, these represent the HEADINGS and sub-headings of your topic.



Step 5 – Add the detail on sub-branches Now having got the main structure of the Mind Map by turning all your main headings into branches, you now need to add the detail to those branches. Here is what the completed Mind Map about Henry VIII looks like so that you can see what I mean:

Step 5 - Add more important facts and further detail to your coloured branches so that the Mind Map grows and expands in a radiant fashion like a tree with branches and roots that mirrors the way the brain thinks.



Step 6 – Central branches are larger If you have a look at the Mind Map of Henry VIII you will see that the main branches (Dates, Government etc) are thicker than the more detailed branches. The reason for this is quite simple. The main branches represent more important information (in relation to the central image) whilst the sub-branches are the detail and so they need to be thicker to give them greater prominence on the page.

Step 6 - Make your CENTRAL BRANCHES, associated key words and images larger and more prominent than other branches to show their importance in relation to the central image.

Step 7 – Use arrows to link related ideas One of the disadvantages of taking copious pages of “conventional” notes is that often, things will link together or be related in some way and generally these things do not always appear on the same page. A series of asterixes and coded symbols can relate information in different pages and little notes like “See * on page 37” might also help but in can get confusing. On a mind map, because all of the information with the topic is on one page, simply draw an arrow between the two connecting words or images to show the relationship. Having this bigger picture view of the relationship will satisfy the cravings of the right brain.

Step 7 - Link ideas and related facts using brightly coloured ARROWS or your own personal code to show the important relationships. This will give you a global perspective of your topic and a much greater appreciation of its structure.



Step 8 – Have continuous lines The most important point to realise about Mind Mapping is that its effectiveness is because it mirrors the way the mind works. The flow of associations from one word to the next when you are thinking about something happens because of continuous connections between those words/ideas/concepts in your mind. The reason that you never connect two very different ideas together is because in your mind there is no physical link between the two concepts until of course you think a particular connecting thought. For example until this moment you probably never imagined Her Majesty the Queen riding a unicycle. Up to a few seconds ago, the two concepts of the Queen and a unicycle may never have entered your mind together because there was no particular link between them. Now there is, because I have put that link in your mind by merely suggesting the possibility of a link. Without that suggestion you may never have made that connection and so you would never have had that thought. The two concepts would have remained separate forever (unless of course she did take up unicycling!) When you are creating a mind map, it is important that the lines connecting the key words and images are continuous with no breaks whatsoever to mirror the flow of associations in your mind. Otherwise the mind will see the ideas as unrelated. If there is a break in the line, it is like having two completely disassociated and unconnected ideas in your mind. The continuous line connects those ideas and allows the mind to recall the relationship much easier.

Step 8 - Connect the branches of the Mind Map with CONTINUOUS LINES to show the continuous flow of associations.



Step 9 – Use Key Words Imagine that I was your teacher and that I had some very important information for you to learn. It is vital that you learn this information and as your teacher I insist that you memorise it. Now you do have a degree of choice in this matter. You can learn the information from one of two forms. The first choice you have is a single piece of paper that has 25 key words written on it. The second choice you have is a document that has 25 pages of written text. Which would you choose? When I ask this question in the seminars I do with pupils they always opt for the single page with key words. I think anyone in their right mind would take the shortest route to achieving the goal and so their choice is understandable. Now some people might think that they are being lazy but that is because they do not appreciate the power of key words. Consider this story: My first career was in the Royal Navy and I spent 16 years as an Engineer Officer, completing my time in the Submarine Service. In the early part of my career I spent quite a bit of time in surface ships and my first ship was called HMS PENELOPE. I spent all of 1985 in HMS PENELOPE learning all about the engineering department and had plenty of opportunities to see different parts of the world because during that year we visited the Falkland Islands. We sailed from Plymouth in the UK in July and headed down to the South Atlantic. On the way I discovered that I suffered from seasickness in a really bad way. As we got crossed the equator and headed down into the South Atlantic the weather got rougher and rougher (remember it was winter in July in the Southern Hemisphere).



I can vividly remember being so ill that I went to bed for a full 3 days and couldn’t eat anything. I was so ill that at one point the medics considered injecting me with foodstuff because I was not eating. Then one day the Chief Stoker decided he had had enough of one of his team not pulling his weight so he decided to do something about it. I can remember lying on my bunk feeling dreadful when the Chief Stoker suddenly dragged me out of it. He frog-marched me up to the bathrooms, threw me in the shower and turned on the cold water. And he said something like “Sort your life out sonny otherwise there is no place in this man’s Navy for someone like you.” This came as a bit of a shock (the water was freezing and his choice of words were a little different than the ones I am allowed to write here!). I then realised that I had to do something about my seasickness and so over the coming months I found ways of dealing with it. So there is a little (true) story for you to consider. There are 328 words in that piece of writing and I wonder how long it would take for you to learn it. I am not going to ask you to but if I give you the following key words I am sure that you can recall much of the story in quite some detail:

HMS PENELOPE FALKLAND ISLANDS SEASICKNESS CHIEF STOKER

In fact the only key word(s) you might need is

HMS PENELOPE

Because at this moment in time, just by looking at HMS PENELOPE, you can no doubt recall most of the story in quite a bit of detail. In fact, as an exercise describe the story out loud to see how much you do remember (without looking!!).



Hopefully you were able to recall just about the entire story. So what happens now? Without getting into a seminar on Memory and Recall, you will lose the ability to recall information very rapidly unless you review it on a regular basis. But instead of having to re-read 328 words again, you could just look at the following 4 key words on a regular basis and they would remind you of the story:

HMS PENELOPE FALKLAND ISLANDS SEASICKNESS CHIEF STOKER

In fact you may only need to look at just the following key word to remind you of the story:

HMS PENELOPE

Step 9 - Choose KEY WORDS to summarise important ideas and concepts. Out of 100 standard words of written text, only about 10 are really important and it is much simpler to remember 3 or 4 pages of key ideas than to memorise pages and pages of boring and tedious notes.



Step 10 – Use UPPER CASE lettering Let’s have a look at another Mind Map:

If you look carefully, you will see that the words are written in UPPER CASE instead of lower case. The reason for doing this is quite simple – words in UPPER CASE look more like an image than scrawled hand writing and so will be visually more memorable. Another benefit of writing in UPPER CASE is that you are will take more time because you are not used to writing in capital letters and so it is likely the words will be neater.

Step 10 - Print your key words clearly in UPPER CASE. They will be easier to read but also capital letters are more like an image than your scrawled handwriting and so will be visually much more memorable.



Practice Point 1 – Mind Map the News for practice A key skill for you to be able to develop is the ability to take Mind Map notes in meetings, seminars and anytime where someone is sharing information with you by speaking to you. This is instead of writing long hand notes like you have been used to doing all these years. Now I can remember this being a bit of a challenge when I first started Mind Mapping and so this habit really helped me to get proficient at taking Mind Map notes when I was listening to someone speak. What I used to do was try and Mind Map the news from TV or radio. At the start of the news the presenter would say: “Good evening welcome to the evening news. Here are today’s headlines:

President Raises Taxes Gold discovered in Chicago Donkey wins Oscar Dallas Cowboys win the Super Bowl….”

At this point I would have 4 branches on my mind map for each of the headlines, probably choosing the following key words:

TAXES GOLD DONKEY SUPER BOWL

Then as the presenter talked about each news item I would add finer detail to each of the main branches.



All of the information would come very fast indeed because on prime time TV it is important to get the message across in as few as words as possible and in the shortest time. Often it was difficult to keep up with the newsreader but once I had done this a few times, going back to classes where the information came at a much more leisurely pace (by comparison) it was so much easier to Mind Map. Believe me, this practice is really worth it to develop your skill and confidence in the technique.

Practice Point 1 - Practice Mind Mapping the fast paced information rich NEWS from TV to develop the skill for use in class.

Practice Point 2 – Mind Map your long hand notes first When you learn a new skill like Mind Mapping it feels very strange because it is so different to the way you have been used to doing things. Now “different” does not mean “wrong” but it will mean you will feel uncomfortable until you get used to it. And that discomfort can potentially get in the way of you developing remarkable thinking abilities by using Mind Mapping. So here I am, a complete stranger, trying to get you to change your note taking habits in the time it takes you to read this guide. It is a challenging task for me and you have to try the techniques in faith and trust that they work. So where should you start? Well take it in small steps so the first thing I recommend you do is take some of your notes that you have in longhand and Mind Map them first to get used to the technique. Then once you have become proficient at that, start taking your notes using Mind Maps. If at any time you feel you are missing stuff because you are not writing everything down, go back to what you are used to and write in long hand again. Mind Map these longhand notes later on.



As you get more and more comfortable with the technique, you will lean on longhand notes less and less until you only write Mind Map notes. Believe me the effort is worth it because once you master the technique you will have much better quality notes and because you are using a brain friendly approach, your understanding of the subject will be deeper.

Practice Point 2 -Take your NOTES in Long Hand form, Mind Mapping them at your first review, until you are confident enough to Mind Map “live”.

Practice Point 3 – Use coloured pens I have mentioned on a number of occasions that the Mind Map is a brain-friendly technique. One of the reasons for this is that it harnesses the left AND the right brain and so utilises more of the brain’s power and potential. Studies carried out in the 1950’s and 1960’s identified that the neo-cortex (the thinking part of the brain) was divided in half as shown below.

As you can see it was discovered that the LEFT SIDE of the cortex predominantly processed lists, logic, lines, words, numbers and order whilst the RIGHT SIDE processed



rhythm, space, day-dreaming, colour, imagination and the global (big picture) perspective. I can certainly remember from my own schooling that much of the learning I did was processed through the left side of my brain with little attention to the right. What research has shown since the right/left brain split was discovered, is that if you use both sides of the brain at the same time, i.e. whole brain thinking, you will get much, much more out of your thinking. So by mind mapping in colour you are introducing the RIGHT SIDE of the brain into your thinking and therefore will think and learn much better. It will also make your notes more interesting to look at.

Practice Point 3 - Use brightly coloured PENS and highlight markers to bring your text based notes and handouts alive. This will stimulate both sides of your fabulous brain and will make the information more memorable and far more interesting to read.

Practice Point 4 – Use little sketches

In Step 3 (Start with a central image) I told you that we think in pictures and so your mind map should start with a picture in the centre. You should also use pictures throughout your mind maps and if you go back and look through the examples I have shown you, you will see that there are lots of little pictures in addition to key words. A typical response from many people at this point is: “But I can’t draw” Often this is said in a whining voice as they recall all sorts of horror stories about how bad at drawing they are and how foolish they have felt in the past because of their ability ( or lack of) to draw. It is important that you understand you do not need to be a good artist to be good at mind mapping. Simple little sketches that mean something to you are all you need to do.



They do not have to be works of art as long as they mean something to you. You may find that after mind mapping for a while you might suddenly find a talent for drawing. I know that is what happened to me.

Practice Point 4 – Understand that you don't have to be a great artist to draw a good Mind Map. Use thumbnail SKETCHES and squiggles that mean something to YOU.

So let’s remind you of the Mind Mapping Steps once more before you look at the summary Mind Map of this guide: Step 1 – Start in the middle of the page

Step 2 – Use blank paper

Step 3 – Start with a central image Step 4 – Different branches for different headings

Step 5 – Add the detail on sub-branches Step 6 – Central branches are larger

Step 7 – Use arrows to link related ideas Step 8 – Have continuous lines Step 9 – Use Key Words Step 10 – Use UPPER CASE lettering

Practice Point 1 – Mind Map the News for practice Practice Point 2 – Mind Map your long hand notes first Practice Point 3 – Use coloured pens Practice Point 4 – Use little sketches





Want to Know More? I hope that you have got some value out of this guide and now you should be able to get started on using Mind Mapping in your daily life. It is a skill and you do need to practice but believe me the rewards are worth it. If you want to find out more information about Mind Mapping including articles about how to use it, information about the best software available and example Mind Maps then just visit me at:


If you would like to discuss the options open to you for sharing the benefits and the “how to” with you and your colleagues then simply contact me direct on:

Tel +44(0)207 873 2013 Fax +44(0)207 526 2047

Or e mail me at:

[email protected]

http://www.michaelonmindmapping.com/

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Michael Tipper - How to Get Started With Mind Mapping