Mind-Mapping

A Tool for Organizing and Decision-Making

by Susan Bellows

There was a famous experiment at Emory University a few years ago. An audience of first-graders, fourth-graders, and adults was asked to count the number of passes made during a college basketball game. In the middle of the game a woman in a white dress carrying a parasol strolled across the court. The adults were so busy counting that not one of them noticed the woman. But 75% of the first-graders did.

As we become adults our focus becomes not only sharper, but narrower, and sometimes we have to play tricks on the mind to get it to open up and do what we want. The "Mind-Map" is a simple idea that gets the mind out of its normal, linear set, using the kind of visual association we use when reading a map rather than what we use when reading a book. Mind-Mapping is a simple idea that works.

Begin by taking a sheet of paper and placing the subject at hand in a circle in the middle. Whenever something comes to mind relating to the subject, draw a line like the spoke of a wheel out from the subject. If that gives you a related idea, branch off the spoke as in the example below. For an entirely new association, begin a new spoke.

Mind-Mapping is both a useful exercise to develop your intuitive, imaginative capacity, and a way to harness that capacity and begin to discipline it just enough to produce useful results.

It is often best to begin by asking a question such as, "How Can I Increase My Business?" Mind-mapping can help you articulate what you want from life and business in just 10 minutes. Mind-Mapping isn't a gimmick, it's a way to get a new perspective on your own ideas. The more you use it the more useful it becomes and the more quickly ideas and obvious decisions seem to "float to the surface." Pick a subject and try it. You'll like it!

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