I’ve been really busy these last couple of weeks/months training people and creating new materials for practical solutions. Right now, I only want to share with you a tip I saw helps so many people every day in their usage of mindmaps.
You see, most people don’t really want to create mindmaps that use images, colors and are fun to look at.
People want to get clarity on the things they are thinking about, what bothers them, what makes them move forward, what holds them back and what they actually don’t know 
.
All these things are important to people. They are important to you!
That is why I (often without knowing) have been preaching to people they should use their mindmaps in such a way their mindmaps work for them. No point working on your mindmaps simply to create a mindmap. When you do that, the tool becomes a goal and you don’t move forward.
Create maps that work for you. In 95% of all cases, this means you hardly use any images in your mindmap. You only give structure to the thoughts, ideas and information you have in your head. You combine this with the information that floats around you.
For me, this results in visual maps that give me overview. I might call them practical mindmaps. I could also call them summaps (summary maps) that summarize the information into practical knowledge I can use to move forward.
You do this as well. Create practical overviews. I don’t really care how you like to call them. Call them mindmaps, visualmaps, concept maps, idea maps of summaps. The name and the (software) tool are the least important, the result is what counts.
Imagine yourself setting at your desk… looking at the map you just created and finally understanding your life, business or personal situation. You see in one overview the path you have to follow to create the results you are looking for.
At that single moment in time, you don’t think about a name to describe the technique that led you to this overview. You simply want to move forward… because you now know how to.
That is the feeling I give people when I mentor them into creating practical overviews.
That is the feeling I want you to experience.
Create practical overviews and you are on your way to realizing that!
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Many people are, and have been talking about when and if Mind Mapping will go mainstream soon. After further investigation, I want to give you my thoughts on it (again).
Some of things I hear when my students and I talk about mindmaps are this:
- This is a personal tool!
- Wow, this looks a lot like the way I make notes already
- This method is not clear, I can’t use this. People won’t take me serious!!!
- Can I really use this with my team members?
Different people, different opinions. Some love mindmaps, others get frustrated and really hate them.
Now combine this with things very mainstream like coffee and Windows computers:
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I’m sure you heard before of the Pareto principle or the 80/20 rule (or principle).
This principle tells us that 20% of what we do accounts for 80% of our outcome. This is of course an average number. There are numbers that tell us there is an 70/30 60/40 or a 99/1 ratio. The interesting thing is that in nature the majority of these ratios is unevenly divided. Balance tends to lean towards 100/0 in stead of 50/50.
Today, I want to make you more aware of this powerful principle in mind mapping.
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There are a huge number of really interesting, powerful, nice and handy mindmap software solutions. This can be a bliss, but also a burden. Today I want to tell you why this diversity might be exactly what we are looking for in our software solutions.
Last week I saw I huge overview of mindmap tools on a website. Of course I already knew there are many, many tools you can use. In 2002 I created a website that offered about 25 different mindmap brands to people looking for a nice tool. Yes, that’s right, 25 brands, not different versions.
As you can probably understand, that was a lot of work to keep updated and to learn about each tool. While I could find a nearly perfect tool for a person who wanted to do something special with a tool, I thought this had to change.
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Many people here in The Netherlands are going back to their jobs and schools. A perfect time to take what you thought about this holiday and put it in a mindmap.
Your mindmap can be a wonderful tool to actually SEE what you do and have and who you are. I would suggest you create a mindmap that shows you… well… YOU!
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I was listening to Tim Ferriss this weekend. He is the author of The 4 Hour Workweek. Tim used a wonderful term that will help us a lot in dealing with the information overload.
He said we should cultivate selective ignorance – using a low-information diet. You do have to make sure you use high quality information of course!
Here is the definition:
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