Are you stuck in a creative rut, either as an individual or as a team? Does your linear thinking stifle your capability to come up with breakthrough ideas?
Unleash your creativity using a concept called “mind mapping.” Around since the 1960s, the concept of mind mapping utilizes several elements within the brain to stimulate more creative thinking. Mind maps combine words, images, colors, numbers, logic and graphical relationships to encourage non-linear, visual approaches to thinking and solving problems. The Mind Map Book by Tony and Barry Buzan (see our review) explains the scientific reasoning behind the approach, and provides examples of how mind mapping can be used for different purposes.
Until a few years ago, mind mapping was just a curiosity to me. For those (like me) who are artistically challenged, a graphical approach to thinking presents some challenges when those graphics must be hand-drawn. Moreover, hand drawings are very difficult to modify; adding content to a mind map generally requires squeezing in the new information using teeny-tiny print. Finally, for a person like me who likes to store (and back up) every piece of information electronically, hand-drawn mind maps don’t fit well into my filing methodology.
MindManager – developed by a company called Mindjet – eliminates all of the shortcomings of hand-drawn mind maps, and provides capabilities that extend mind mapping way beyond what could be done by hand.
