Tool #1 – Mind Mapping

As I started thinking about my own information worker’s toolbox, it occurred to me that I do have some things that I habitually use in my working life. “Habitually” is probably too strong a word, but there are some tools that I repeatedly find myself using over and over again. At the very least, I know them well enough to explain what they do for me and why I keep on coming back to them. The first of these is mind mapping.

What needs to be said up front is that if you want learn how to do this properly, then the best thing you can do is read Tony Buzan’s book.  What I am going to talk about here is my usage of mind mapping for certain tasks.

How I got started with mind mapping is a bit hazy now but I seem to remember attending a training course early in my career that introduced it as a brainstorming technique. (ie. a long time ago!) Tony Buzan claims to have invented modern mind mapping and certainly wrote what are the generally accepted guidelines for creating a mind map:

1. Start in the centre with an word/image of the topic.
2. Build out ideas related ideas to the central topic, with each word/image placed on its own line.
3. All the lines should be connected, starting from central thicker lines and radiating organically out from the centre.
4. Keep a clear hierarchy of ideas. i.e. The words near the centre start generic then get more specific as you radiate out.
5. The lines should be the same length as the word/image they represent.
6. Use images, symbols, codes, as much as you can.
7. Print all the words.
8. Use more than one color.
9. Show emphasis of important ideas and associations .
10. Create your own personal style.

My own style follows these rules except: I use one colour (black) and I only use words not images.  I am also quite particular about the stationary I use too. I carry around an A4 visual diary with very thick, high quality paper and a particular brand of ball point pen that pumps out a lot of ink when you use it.

I use mind maps almost exclusively for taking notes in meetings. I spend a lot of time in meetings and I have found that they very rarely proceed in a linear fashion. There will be a central topic but the conversation will jump around quite a lot between the various ideas.  There will be a great deal of detail on some issues but almost nothing on others. I find that traditional notes with sentence structure and verbs and nouns never really capture the sense of the meeting very well at all.

However, when I mind map a meeting, I find myself  thinking critically about the conversations and how they relate to the meeting over all. You can’t help but comprehend  the logic behind the discussion as you draw it. I  can also see areas that have been discussed heavily and other agenda items that have barely been touched. I  have also developed the habit of “colouring in” the connecting lines around a branch while people are discussing that topic. This means that looking at the size and boldness of the lines gives me a really good indication of what areas we spend most of the time on.

I feel that I come away from meetings with a much better comprehension of what was discussed. Easily more that what I would  have got if I had just sat there passively listening and maybe taking a couple of lines of notes. I find I don’t often need to refer back to these mind maps because I remember what was said and what it meant. However when I do, I am not just seeing words, I am seeing ideas and their relationships to each other which is of far greater value.

One specific kind of meeting I use mind maps for is the weekly catch-ups I do with my staff. As I map out all the projects they are involved in and capture all the issues or problems they are facing, the act of mapping seemingly has the effect of bringing it under control.  I come away with a good mental picture of where they are at and most of the time they come away with clearer appreciation their own workload and what need to be done. Its a way of organising problems and freeing up mental capacity to solve them rather that just remembering them. Also, don’t start one every week. Instead I refer back to the previous one and build it out with the new information which give a sense of progress as well.

Another less common task where I turn to mind mapping to help are the occasions where I need to read an important work document like a business case or discussion paper. I find it very hard to concentrate on this sort of material. Its not written to be enjoyable and rarely is. While I will set out with the best intentions, invariably I end up zoning out, skipping paragraphs and flipping pages till I get to the end and only absorbing a fraction of the information.

However, If I set myself the task of creating a mind map of the document, that turns it into  a completely different task. One that I can get my teeth into! I am building something, thinking about the structure of the information and how each piece fits into the whole. Subsequently, I can quote whole lines and figures for the document but only because I forced myself to transform it into something that made sense for me.

So, in terms of an information workers toolbox,  you can use mind mapping to accelerate comprehension.  Whether it be meetings, staff reviews or just getting your head around business documents, the act of using this technique will  force you to put a structure around it and make it more palatable to your brain. I hear it is also quite good for creativity and brainstorming activities as well but that is not what I use it for right now.

There is a reason I choose Mind Mapping as my first tool to write about. It is easily the one I use the most.