Tip of the Week: Mind Mapping

As a student, it is always great when classes mix together and relate to each other. This semester I am enrolled in two courses - Creative Thinking and Marketing Management. Different yet definitely related.

In the Marketing Management class, part of our diet of broadening our horizons includes reading a book a week as chosen by our professor. Taking some of my own advice and tips I've been handing out to heart, I am reading ahead and already into the book that's due next week which talks about organization. This book is full of information on how to better organize what you're doing in life so you're not always having to think about or worry about what to do next. There's a section in the book where the author discusses is a tool called Mind Mapping.

Cross over into my Creative Thinking class...we were recently assigned a small project in which we had to develop a mind map and then write a poem about it. Not your typical graduate assignment, but through it I began to enjoy mind mapping. Before this assignment, someone would say the words mind map and I would shudder. Maybe feel a rock in the pit of my stomach. Inwardly groan. I was not a fan. Perhaps I had first been taught mind mapping from a structured point of view in high school instead of just having the freedom to sporadically collect my thoughts through this system.

Through this activity of having to dig within myself and uncover creativity, I am now a beliver in the use of mind maps and see incredible potential in using them. They are messy yet organized. They allow all random thoughts to be collected but still connected to some greater thought. They can be used for huge projects or for the simpliest of tasks.

What I learned through the Mind Map assignment of creating a poem was that each person, whether we originally believed it or not, could indeed construct a poem with deep meaning and a unique way of blending words on paper to share a story. About half of the poems were shared in my Creative Thinking class last night and I was stunned at the what was uncovered. Here were students, who are busy with life, school, work, extracurricular student activities, and family, with amazing pieces of art. And most of them business students - not your typical English writing majors. It made me appreciate creativity more and showed me the benefit of using mind mapping.

Back to Marketing Management...I have a group in my class with a big project we're working on. We recently went through a mind map exercise on ideas for the project and filled up a page with dozens of thoughts. And the great thing about it is that those thoughts are safe on that piece of paper. We don't have to remember to not forget them; we can come back and ponder them when we need to. So my tip of the week...if you have a paper, project, some kind of assignment that may have multiple steps or pieces, try collecting your thoughts through a mind map. You may be surprised at the amount of information and creativity that can pop up through this process.