Map Your Creative Ideas

Mind maps are a great way to set personal goals, make decisions, solve problems and plan for the future. Mind maps are also a great journaling tool and can be used to plan, communicate and develop creative ideas.

But first of all, what’s a mind map?

A mind map is like a map of a city. Let’s say you’re thinking about your next holiday. The central point of your mind city is ‘holiday’ but thoughts about where you could go, how much you might spend, who would go with you perhaps, branch out like freeways from that central starting point. As you go along one route you notice little sub-routes branching off at odd intersections. Following these new paths leads again to interesting new branch points.

If you could watch your thought processes you would see the map expanding, creating new patterns and adding new sub-branches of its own accord, quickly, surely and with great complexity.

Mind mapping is basically the process of capturing these thoughts quickly and easily by drawing a diagram that looks, in essence, very similar to a map of your mind. Or at least how you might think your mind processes would look if you were able to take a snapshot of your thought paths.

Get started now

Here’s what you need to get started:

• a large sheet of paper
• coloured pens and pencils
• imagination

Start at the centre of your page. Find an image or a picture of your central idea. You could draw something, use a photograph, or perhaps a picture from a magazine. If your central idea is HOLIDAY use an image of the place you want to get to or a picture of a plane, boat, car etc.

Draw thick branches radiating out from your centre point. Make sure to use separate colours for each branch. Colour adds energy and helps your creative thinking. Write a key word along each branch, for example, PLACE, MONEY, CLOTHES, EQUIPMENT.

When you have your main branch ideas start adding the sub-branches. These are the thoughts that naturally generate in relation to your theme. For example, if one branch is DESTINATION you could add branches for the different places you would like to visit. Let’s say London, Paris, Berlin. These branches would then break down into third-level branches such as Museum, Tower, Harrods etc.

Print clear key words on all the sub-branches and add small images as you go. Eventually you might fill the whole sheet.

As you continue I can guarantee you will see connections that would never occur to you if you were writing a simple list.

mind map

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