When you follow the philosophy of “Learning is an ongoing process”, then in that quest you
attend webinars, lectures, conferences and read lots of books on the subject under study.
To make the most of webinars, conferences and lectures, we take notes.
In my Mind Map training workshops I cover “How to take Notes through Mindmaps” as an
important topic. I will write about it sometime in near future.
The reading of Articles and Books for upgrading our knowledge is also an activity we do
regularly.
Articles, even very good articles are generally read and forgotten. We rarely take notes of
our insights on them. Some of us may save them if they are downloadable, but even after
that we rarely read them twice because it entails reading at least 2-3 or even more pages.
I have found creating MMs to remember and record our insights of a good article very
useful. I have saved them in a separate folder and re reading any article is a breeze because
it is one page and colourful. Even a glance across the MindMap triggers the memory and
ensures immediate comprehension.
2 sample article MMs are illustrated below.
Summarising a book may require a little more time and effort but the reward is well worth
it.
How many times have you come across a book which after reading you felt that you had
wonderful insights and that you will require to refer to it multiple times as part of your
work? Mind mapping that book converts it into a one page summary.
At first attempt, Mindmapping a 200-300-page book would appear to be a daunting task, so
let me break it down to you.
It is essential that you read the book completely before you attempt to Mindmap it. This will
give you an overall understanding of what the author has to say. It will also tell you whether
it is worth spending your time to Mindmap it.
Most authors are quite structured in their writing. The first thing you do is to check out the
chapters in the book. They could form your main branches.
If there are sections and each section has a few chapters, then either the sections become
main branches and the chapters their sub branches or you could retain the chapters as the
main branches and use “Floating text” and “arrows” in your software to show which
chapters are part of which section.
After that, read each chapter carefully to understand the gist and capture it through sub-
branches and sub-sub-branches of each Main branch corresponding to that chapter.
Remember this is your personal Mindmap because the insights you get from the book are
personal. In fact, you could depict your learnings on the MM by drawing additional branches
at appropriate places in a particular distinct colour. So those coloured branches depict your
learnings at different places (or chapters) on the Mind Map.
A summary of your beloved book thus created through a Mindmap will be a matter of
pride for you and a source of easy access to repeated views of your insights.
Going through the Mindmap will be like re reading the entire book in 2-3 minutes.
As an illustration I have showcased the MindMap of the book “The Victory Project: Six steps
to peak potential” authored by Saurabh Mukherjea and Anupam Gupta.
It is a wonderful book which you will realise when you go through the Mindmap.
Note: Please read the MM clockwise from 1 o’clock to 11 o’clock i.e. From topmost right
hand branch, clockwise to the topmost left hand branch.
