Focused Mind Maps Workshops
Housewives can use it for Mind Mapping recipes, planning parties and family vacations.
Event management firms can use it for planning and executing events.
We conduct Customized Workshops for the following:
Mind Map for Corporate Executives
The use of Mind Mapping is an integral part of my Quality Improvement project at Boeing. This has provided savings of over $10 million for my organization. – Mike Stanley, Project Director, Boeing Corporation USA.
Note taking
We take notes to remember important points being discussed so that we can recall these points later. This happens when we are in meetings, attending lectures or listening to speakers at conferences.
Majority of us write down stuff in text form as we listen to what is being said. We get so involved in doing it, that we don’t really attempt to even understand what is being said. In the process we take down random phrases, miss some and if the speaker is not organized in his talk, he sometimes side tracks on some other point and we are completely lost. As a result if we go through your notes later we are not really able to get much out of it.
Most of the text of a lecture or presentation has keywords, which hardly form 10% of the total text. Rest of the text is just addition of words to make comprehensible sentences. It is important to capture these key words. But if you do that in text form you will not get a sense of connectivity of ideas.
Mind Mapping is a really good alternative.
In Mind Mapping, the topic under discussion is the central image and the salient points form the branches. Each branch is represented by a keyword or a very short phrase which captures the essence of the point being made. It is further elaborated through more keywords on sub and sub sub branches.
A complete Mind Map will give you the entire gist of your meeting or lecture on one single page.
Project planning
A project involves a number of people from multiple departments and sometimes even external vendors and associates. Getting them all on the same page is a huge task at all times. A Mind Map literally gets them on the same page. Not just that, this page can then be continuously modified to reflect the development of the project. It could be colour coded to depict individual responsibilities and the status of the project.
Presentations
If you are in Sales and Marketing, Presentations are a way of life for you. But even if you are in some other department, at some time or other you will have to make a presentation to your colleagues or bosses.
The first part is to create your presentation. Mind Mapping helps you to ideate and think of different potential points you can make. You can emphasise those points by adding colours and appropriate images. A Mind Map thus completed is your entire presentation on a single page, be it a 20 minute or a 2 hour presentation.
The second part is when you are actually making your presentation to your audience. With a one page Mind Map in hand you can talk extempore without referring to any notes. All the points are captured in the MM so if you have a temporary moment of freeze because you forgot what you had to say, a glance at the MM will bring back your memory and ensure that you do not miss a single point.
Schedule planner
This is the easiest Mind Map to create. A Day Planner e.g. would have Calls to be made, emails to send, meetings to attend as branches so your day’s schedule can be checked at a glance. You can create similar Mind Maps for your weekly, monthly or yearly planner.
Mind Map for Financial Advisors
One Page Financial Plans
As Financial Advisors you routinely make Financial plans for your clients. Some of you may be making only retirement plans or sometimes only investment plans. Whatever plans or strategies you create, they would generally run into a few pages. Most clients would not read these documents and so would soon forget what was discussed and decided and how they had participated in decision making. Later on this could be an issue and even if you have the security of the document you created and shared with the client, the fact is you have one unhappy client on your hands.
A one page Mind Map of the document not only helps you to present your plan to the client, it’s colourful and image rich content actually engages the client much more and helps him understand better. A printout of the Mind Map presented to the client will ensure that he can recap and understand the contents at a glance anytime he cares to look at it in future.
Client Reviews
Reviews especially if they are predominantly investment reviews, the discussion entails showcasing a series of drab figures on excel sheets which gets the best of us either going glassy eyed or yawning.
A Mind Map on the other hand showing a smiley face adjacent to a branch showing good performance or a thumbs-up sign is more memorable. The Mind Map can also show branches linking the figures to specific goals the client is working towards which makes it meaningful to him.
Sales and Marketing
You will find that Mind Mapping your marketing plans and strategies will give you a clear picture of action to be taken and you can also track the progress of the plan by using colour codes and images.
In a sales situation try explaining your ideas by drawing a Mind Map instead of using so many words or spread sheets. It will not only be interesting and easy to understand for the potential customer, but many a times you will find that the act of drawing a MM becomes a conversation starter or an ice breaker with them.
Schedule Planner
This is the easiest Mind Map to create. A Day Planner e.g. would have Calls to be made, emails to send, meetings to attend as branches so your day’s schedule can be checked at a glance. You can create similar Mind Maps for your weekly, monthly or yearly planner.
Mind Map for Teachers
Preparing and delivering memorable lessons
Children are the most creative and imaginative human beings. As they grow older and move from school to colleges and later get on to the routine of earning a living, this creativity keeps diminishing and adults have to relearn how to become creative.
The creative instinct in school kids would make them take to Mind Mapping instantly.
As a teacher you have a tool in Mind Maps to explain your lessons in a clear and concise manner. Mind Maps consolidate huge amounts of complicated data in bite size information through keywords so as to bring the important facts into focus and all this presented as an at-a-glance overview in one page.
Each lesson you create in the form of a Mind Map, will have all these elements. Besides, these Mind Maps would be colourful and will have associative images, which will not only retain the interest of your students but will also help them etch it into their long term memory. Studying and revision for the exams will be a breeze.
Creating bright and independent thinking students
Mind Maps are creative thinking tools and youngsters being naturally creative, MMs are perfect tools for them.
Teachers can foster healthy discussions on topics and capture individual ideas on Mind Maps. These captured ideas visible to everyone on the same Mind Map gets everyone’s creative juices flowing and students can not only forge links between existing ideas but can also come with more ideas of their own.
This fosters an enthusiastic and participative atmosphere in the classroom and makes for engaged and bright students.
Mind Map for Students
Note taking
You are listening to your teacher and taking down what is being said at the same time. In the hurry to write everything down you stop listening and so hardly understand what is being said. Do those notes make any sense to you?
On the other hand if you Mind Map the notes, the topic forms the central image and each branch depicts each point explaining the topic.
While mind mapping you actually listen so that you really understand what the teacher is saying. This enables you to use only the keywords to describe the point on the branch. As the teacher goes deeper into the point, you extend the branches to sub branches and sub sub branches. The keyword need not be in text form, it can also be represented by a symbol.
If you miss a particular point or do not understand it well, you can draw a blank branch and ask for an explanation at the end of the lecture.
The Mind Map thus created gives a great overview of the topic. You can then add appropriate images to make it more memorable.
It is pertinent to add here that notes taken in class through a Mind Map should not be considered as final notes because you will find yourself scribbling in the margins or the branches may not be smooth, the writing could be a little hurried etc. It would be really fruitful if a new MM is drawn as soon as possible using the existing one as reference point, almost like copying the notes from Rough book to Fair book. This simple act of copying will also give you more insights into the topic and enable you to understand the topic better.
Studying and Revision
If you have read the description on Note taking, studying or revising a topic is a continuation of the process.
A normal study session requires you to read pages of text. If the notes are taken in the traditional manner in linear form, most students struggle to understand their notes because to start with there was little understanding while taking the notes itself. This means you have to start all over again, maybe read the textbook and compare it with your notes. This is boring, time consuming and not very productive.
A Mind Map created at the time of the lecture has enabled deep understanding of the topic already. A quick read of that chapter from the textbook would enable you to enhance the Mind Map with addition of a point or two.
A Mind Map thus created is complete with all the information that is needed for study.
At the time of exams, revision of the topic again entails reading the notes all over again. It means you try to remember what was said and understood.
A Mind Map rich with symbols and images are memory triggers of their own.
Besides the Mind Map is a one-page diagram and replaces pages and pages of text. So what would take hours of reading to complete a topic, a Mind Mapped topic can be done in minutes.
Once you have gone through your Mind Mapped notes, you can easily guage your understanding by re-drawing another Mind Map. Studying in this manner enables understanding and memorizing the information more efficiently, accurately and quickly.
A side effect of this process could be that you would actually start enjoying your studies.