I came upon this technique several years ago while I was conducting a presentation skills workshop for the British Council in Manila. A young Englishwoman with bright eyes and an easy smile sat through my workshop and seemed to do very little except keep her eyes on me. She seemed to be listening to every word I spoke with an uncanny ease.

At first, I thought she was bored. Then I thought that perhaps she didn’t like what she was hearing or probably knew much more than I did. It was intimidating and scary. Curious, I walked up to her and expressed my concerns. She smiled, held up the Mind
Map® book and her notes in a Mind Map® form. Later in the session, she shared with us the rationale and the benefits of the technique. I went home that night and did some research, called up some friends, and was intrigued enough to spend days and weeks learning more about it. In a matter of weeks I started applying the technique and soon became addicted. It worked fabulously!

Today, I apply it for reading, researching, writing, during meetings, and for public speaking. This is how I define Mind Mapping®: a colorful, two dimensional, quick representations of your ideas, knowledge, and feelings.

The rationale behind Mind Mapping® is that our senses take in a lot of information, and all this input generates responses, ideas, and opinions that cannot be expressed vocally or written down as quickly as they occur. For example, if 10 ideas flash through our minds then we may only be able to express only half of them verbally and less than a quarter in writing. Mind Mapping® provides the answer to this malady: It is like a thought-grabber with eight or ten sets of limbs. Capturing your thoughts quickly gives you time to analyze and qualify them later. This makes your thinking process more effective. Putting down thoughts in images and colors also enhances retention and invites the creative, right side of your brain to come and play!

How to create a Mind Map®

• Draw an image of your topic using three colors at the center of the paper positioned horizontally.
• Make the central image a representation of the topic. Use images rather than words.
• Draw the main, appealing ideas as thick branches coming from the central image.
• Whenever possible, use different color themes for different branches. This will help you segregate and qualify ideas later.
• Maintain one word per branch and keep that word on top of the branch.
• Add images wherever you can instead of words.
• Add arrows between images and branches and ideas expressing relationships or commonalities among the ideas.
• Flow with abandon. Do not judge your thoughts. Grab your ideas first and quantify them later.
• Use capital letters, print, and be creative with your Mind Maps®.

Reading a Mind Map®

A Mind Map® is drawn from the center going outwards and read from the outside going inwards. The primary branches form the main points and the secondary and tertiary branches form the sub-headings or points. The branch and its sub-branches are read flexibly. Read clockwise and then convert single words into simple sentences as you go. Structure, sequence, and polishing off the language in the complete text can be done later.

Benefits of Mind Mapping®

• Noting and reading only relevant words save time.
• Reviewing is graphical and can be done at a glance.
• Concentration on real issues is enhanced.
• Key words are easily discernible since they are placed according to importance for easier recall.
• Clear and appropriate associations are made between key words.
• The brain finds it easier to accept and remember the visually stimulating, multi-colored, multi-dimensional Mind Maps® rather than monotonous, boring linear notes.
• While Mind Mapping®, one is constantly on the verge of new realizations; this encourages a continuous and potentially endless flow of thought.
• The Mind Map® works in harmony with the brain’s natural desire for completion or wholeness.
• By constantly utilizing both the logical left and the creative right side of the brain, the mind becomes increasingly alert and receptive.

Over the years, as an ardent “Mind-Mapper,” I have come to realize that Mind-Mapping my ideas and emotions helps me look at them through a deeper, more colorful perspective.

Mind-Mapping my ideas and letting them percolate for a while allows my subconscious to kick-in and gently delete what is unnecessary, enhance and internalize what is useful and good. The process also increases my faith in the value of the material and confidence in my own self.

I can’t do anything … unless I Mind Map it out!

Yes, you guessed it … I am now hooked onto the idea of getting one’s thoughts down on paper by “mapping it out”, like an architect would do through a blueprint of their design project.

Buzan Licensed Instructor and Coach, Raju Mandhyan, who conducted the 2-day workshop, defined Mind Mapping as a “2-D refection of your own thoughts, ideas and feelings quickly transcribed on paper through images, colors, lines, and key words”.

Brainstorming, planning, writing articles and designing curriculum is a happy cinch with Mind Mapping. Mandhyan, whose Indian last name incidentally translates into Mind and Awareness, made the learning fun, interactive and practice-able. All I had to do as a student was to be there and “absorb like a sponge.” Absorb, I did! It has been almost 6 years since I was first introduced to Mind Mapping … and I have SO made the most of this “gift” Mandhyan extended to me.

For me, this “tool” / technique has certainly:

· helped me get MORE organized
· be MORE analytical with the tasks, projects I handle at a given time
· kept me MORE intact … especially where meetings, appointments or schedules are concerned
· allowed me to showcase a level of commitment, quality and creativity, too

That one significant day of October 3, 2001 at The Peninsula, Manila … was definitely NOT a coincidence.

With Mind Mapping, I was able to identify programs for the IT training courses I was assigned to market. This paved the way to formulate the appropriate marketing collaterals to the target market of the company.

With Mind Mapping, I received a grade of 98% for the project in my Events Coordination course. Using Mind Mapping, I feel like a creative genius and I am now working on projects, arts, literature and I am also managing and running my own consultancy in a most innovative manner.

Those who got to meet and network with Mandhyan’s Guru, Tony Buzan, last March at the Mandarin, Makati City claim that it was one of the best training events the country has experienced in years. I bet all those who walked out of that interaction will become Mind Map aficionados like me. Well let me, then, welcome you into a world of clear, creative and conscientious thinkers.

Ana Marie G. Herrera (March 29, 2007)
Consultant – Events: IT, eMarketing, Project Management

All of our grandest achievements, every life-changing incident, in reality, pop out from the wellspring of our beings as an idea, a thought or as an emotion. At the root level it is like an abstract seed that has to take form, which has to be substantiated, structured and styled in a way to be accepted by the world outside of our beings. This process requires generating, sorting, challenging and then simplifying it to be presented in a written or a spoken form—conversations!

I am firm believer of the fact that every word we express creates change, however minuscule, but it definitely and surely creates change. And, the kind of change our words create is a secondary question. A story that blurs through my mind is that of a father who hands his young son a bunch of nails and asks him to go and hammer the nails in the trunk of a large tree in their backyard. The son, without asking for any reasons from his Dad, does just that. A week later, the father instructs the son, again, to go out into the backyard and pull the nails out from tree-truck. This time, the son obeys but comes back curious and annoyed at having labored purposelessly when the father explains, “Son, our words are like the nails you hammered into that tree. When used for a purpose they can build and when used senselessly they can, like the scars left in the tree-trunk, create permanent damage.

Now, I take back the word “minuscule.” Every word we express, gives a new direction to who we are, what we want to become and how we want to influence people and the processes that surround us. So, as when an idea, a thought or an emotion pops up from the wellspring of our minds and intellect, it would behoove us let that idea or emotions pass through severe, internal, quality control.  Ask yourself, if the thought your expressing has ethical groundings. Check if it will do justice to a positive, constructive purpose for all those it addresses. Verify and future-pace the long-term output it will create and then finally, with utmost care, express it with a willingness to learn from it and openness towards the feedback and the results it generates. That is leadership conversations in a nutshell.

Raju Mandhyan

Author, Coach and Trainer

www.mandhyan.com

Many of us, especially in North America speak more than one language. In the business world the language of the day may be English but in our heads we communicate in Chinese, Tagalog, Korean, Hindi or Malaysian.  That is because the basic building blocks of our early learning were assembled kinesthetically, and all these kinesthetic inputs are labeled in the language that our mothers spoke.

The downside of such a situation in the mostly English speaking world is that every time a Chinese thinking, English speaking person speaks to English thinking, English speaking person his thoughts need to go through a translation process in his own head. This translating process is tedious, strenuous and can cause errors in communications.

Several years ago, in Hong Kong, I was in a sales meeting with an apparel buyer from the USA. These meetings would take hours and we would go through numerous designs, specifications and pricings in many different ways.  Halfway through our discussions I’d be exhausted while he was alert and raring to go. I was taken aback when he asked me, “Raju, what language are you thinking in?”   I realized that when it came to analyzing figures and specifications, I was thinking in English but when it came to making decisions which required an emotional input, my mind would unconsciously switch to my native tongue. These mental switches in thinking and the communicating would leave me much more exhausted and strained than him during our interactions.

Today, brain research tells us that not only do we shift to the language of our childhood when it comes to emotional matters but we also largely think in pictures when we think across languages. The basic building blocks of our language were generated through touch and vision. 

Therefore to ease the strain of shifting from one language to another in our thoughts, it would help if we recognized that pictures are a universal language. It will help if we can do a lot of our idea generation, problem solving and decision making with pictures. The words ‘manok’ in Tagalog, ‘murgha’ in Hindi or ‘kwe’ in Chinese conjure up the image of the same chicken. A picture does speak a thousand words.

The art and science of Mind Mapping® as originated by Tony Buzan largely depends on converting information, thoughts and feelings into a multi-colored, two dimensional picture of our thinking process. It makes cross-cultural business meetings, problem solving and planning a breeze.

Look up How to Mind Map at www.mandhyan.com