Ondrej Holzman When Petr Mára opened this year's iCON Prague, he stated that the goal of the entire event is not only to present various products and services, but above all to show how such things work. And his words were perfectly fulfilled by the very first speaker in the sequence - Chris Griffiths.
Practically unknown in the Czech environment – after all, he also had his premiere at iCON in the Czech Republic – the Englishman brilliantly demonstrated in his lectures how to use mind maps in everyday personal and professional life, which can be quite different, better and more productive thanks to them. Chris Griffiths, a close associate of Tony Buzan, the father of mind maps, said at the outset what is usually the biggest problem with mind maps: that they are very often misunderstood and misused.
At the same time, if you get the hang of them, they are an excellent tool for both memory and creativity. According to Griffiths, who has been in the industry for a long time and very intensively, mind maps can increase your productivity by up to 20 percent if you include them in your workflow appropriately. That's a pretty significant number, considering that mind maps are, very roughly speaking, just another style of note-taking. After all, Chris confirmed this when he stated that just as you can take notes everywhere, you can also make mind maps for everything. He was responding to a question about whether there is an area where mind maps cannot be used.
The benefit of mind maps is that they help your thinking and creativity. It also serves as an excellent memorization tool. In simple maps, you can record the content of lectures, the content of individual chapters in a book, and other details, which, however, you will otherwise forget up to 80 percent of by the next day. However, if you write down each important part in a new branch, you can come back to your mind map at any time in the future and you will immediately know what it is about. Invaluable additions to such maps are various pictures and thumbnails, to which your memory responds even better than to text. In the end, the whole mind map is one big picture as a result, and the brain has an easier job of remembering it. Or to remember more quickly later.
When creating mind maps, it is important to remember that this is a rather intimate and personal thing. As a rule, such maps do not work for several people, but only for the one who created the map with his thoughts. That's why you don't have to be shy to draw all kinds of pictures in them, even if you don't have graphic talent, because they evoke different associations very effectively. The mind map is intended primarily for you and you do not need to show it to anyone.
But it's not like mind maps can't be used for more people at all. For Griffiths, they are an invaluable help, for example, during coaching, when he uses mind maps to discover their strengths and weaknesses together with managers, which he then tries to work on. At that moment, for example, both parties bring a mind map to such a meeting and try to reach some conclusions by comparing each other.
Classical notes could probably serve such a purpose, but Griffiths advocates mind maps. Thanks to simple passwords, which maps should mainly consist of (there is no need for long texts in the branches), a person can eventually get to a much more detailed and specific analysis, for example of himself. The same principle applies to project mind maps also to SWOT analyses, when it can be much more productive to create a mind map for weaknesses and strengths and others than simply writing them in clearly defined "bins" and points.
What's also important about mind maps - and Chris Griffiths often alluded to this - is how much freedom you give your brain when thinking. The best ideas come when you're not concentrating. Unfortunately, the educational system works completely against this fact, which, on the contrary, urges students to concentrate more and more when solving problems, which means that only a small fraction of the brain's capacities are used and we practically do not let 95 percent of consciousness stand out. Students are also not given any creative and "thinking" classes to help them develop their own creativity.
At least thought maps contribute to this, where, thanks to various passwords and currently created associations, you can relatively easily work your way to the core of a specific problem or developing idea. Just take a break and let your brain think. This is also why, for example, Griffiths prefers that people create mind maps, if he wants to see their output, always at least until the second day, because then they can approach the whole thing with a clear head and full of new ideas and thoughts.
20% doesn't seem to me subjectively like a dizzying improvement in workflow. Thanks for any improvements though. What sw/app does the speaker use/recommend?
iMindMap + DropTask
http://jablickar.cz/recenze-imindmap-7/