Mind Mapping

I’ve rediscovered the power of Mind Maps - especially their use for rapid note-taking and review.

Last night I was at an Officer Training for Toastmasters, and this included the formation of breakaway sessions, where small groups of us went off seperately and had discussions about specific things. My group covered mentoring, and there was a need for somebody to act as scribe and then present the findings to the entire group.

Now the mentoring session went on for around 10-15 minutes, and a lot was discussed, jumping from topic to topic and then curving back round to expand on points that had been discussed earlier. I started - through bad habit - to start notetaking in a linear form, just writing point after point, but very quickly realised that wasn’t going to work. Knowing that I’d have to report this all back in around 10 minutes with barely time to review these notes, I knew I needed to change my approach. And then came the mind map: by giving each broad subject an area on my paper, I could easily return to subjects I’d noted earlier, see the visual connections instantly, and draw logical conclusions between things.

So the conclusion was that 10 minutes later I was able to give a clearly structured presentation about a group discussion that was - although well led - bursting with ideas, connections and interesting points to the degree where I wonder how well I’d have done without using Mind Mapping. I also felt a lot more relaxed, knowing that I understood the structure of what had been discussed, and I knew the presentation would go well.

Now one of the great things about Toastmasters is that you are exposed to people who are Really Good at this kind of stuff. And I’ve always wanted to be able to deliver a quality verbal evaluation with around 5 - 10 minutes preparation (as we often do) without extreme-adrenaline-notetaking. And I now seem to remember some of those who are Really Good at this kind of stuff putting it down to Mind Mapping and my thoughts at the time were probably “One day I’ll look into that” … Well at least the day eventually came!

All hail Mind Mapping!