Category Archives: mind mapping

Good Start for a New Year

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Happy New Year – and let’s start with possibility as summarized in Ben and Roz’s Zander’s wonderful book. You can enlarge the map if you need to by clicking on it

There are two good uses for Maps – note making – getting your ideas down, having a look at them and sorting out what their order should be in order to move toward doing something about them – but also note taking – summarizing other peoples’ ideas and practices. Maps need to be inspirational in this second mode – with reminders of the emotional tone as well as the fact of the message. So that’s why I took the time to add images to this one – created in VisiMap- to make it more evocative. I also added notes under some of the headings.

The Art of Possibility is a great reminder for starting the year. It’s not new, but that doesn’t make it any less relevant. If you want a copy of the map with the attached notes, just ask. It is easy to send. And making further comments about what it says will keep me busy for a few days.

I rediscovered this book in my own library through reading another one, Nancy Duarte’s Resonate. She references the TED talk that Zander gave as a model of what a presentation should be. Meeting him there where he embodies what he cares about is also a model for all of us going forward.

Hyper-thinking

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One of my favourite images of the year is one a padded post – to keep smart phone users from bumping into it and banging their heards. I have no idea whether it has been staged, – purportedly it exists in London England, but it strikes me as a great message for how we are evolving.

Ann Herrmann CEO of Herrmann International uses it as an example of what she calls Hyper-Thinking, – multi-tasking to the extent that we lose all contact with the real world of which we are a part. I see it in my children and grandchildren. I see it in myself from time to time.

Stanford University researchers confirm that multi-taskers perform much more poorly than they think.

The solutions

– Face the fact that complex issues need focused attention
– Plan time to work without interruption; schedule such time and commit to it
– Recognize that your own experience may provide as many insights as Google and let nature influence you at least as much as technology
- Try doodling as an alternative to surfing ( incidentally Mind Mapping with images is a great form of doodling)

Ann also recommends Herrmann International’s Thinking Magnet. It looks like a great tool. More on that later.

One Big Brain?

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“ Robert Wright writing in the New York Times today starts by telling us to focus on the article and not to immediately flip to Facebook or e-mail – and then tests us by including links within his own article – and of course he could cry, “Gotcha” when once I succumbed and did. But the article is provocative in helping us reflect on where things are going.

We all ask the question whether technology is our friend or foe. He issues an immediate good reminder:

“Maybe the essential thing about technological evolution is that it’s not about us. Maybe it’s about something bigger than us — maybe something big and wonderful, maybe something big and spooky, but in any event something really, really big.”

He anticipates a new book by technology veteran, Kevin Kelly entitled What Technology Wants, to be released this fall. What Wright goes on to discuss is the advantages that technology offers in terms of linking us to a much wider perspective. By wandering around the technical universe we are increasing our knowledge in ways we could never have imagined and our neural connectors are benefiting from the new links and associations, – something that Mind Mappers have always recognized as a strength. The real issue is how to keep the balance between making those associations meaningful and simply descending into total triviality.

Wright does end on a positive note:

“But at least the superorganism that seems to be emerging, though in some ways demanding, isn’t the totalitarian monster that Orwell feared; it’s more diffuse, more decentralized, more reconcilable — in principle, at least — with liberty.

And that’s good news, because I do think we ultimately have to embrace a superorganism of some kind — not because it’s inevitable, but because the alternative is worse. If technological progress grinds to a halt, it will be because chaos has engulfed the world; and if we don’t use technology to weave people together and turn our species into a fairly unified body, chaos will probably engulf the world — because technology offers so much destructive power that a sharply divided human species can’t flourish.”

Networks and Associations

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Sample Mind Map created in VisiMap

Roger Cohen has some interesting things to say in today’s New York Times op-ed article.He distinguishes between countries that see themselves as victims rather than acknowledging shortcomings and moving on and those who continue to blame others for their difficulties. He also points out the values of networks. Both Mind Mapping and the Herrmann model are useful here. A Mind Map looks very much like a neural network. The nature of the technique leads one to see associations and interconnectedness. A group profile using the HBDI model shows collective strengths – and sometimes shortcomings. Both tools have value in helping us relate to changing times.

Mind Map Art – Part 2

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Twyla

Being naturally competive I had to make a hand drawn map of my own, – and what better person to choose than Twyla Tharp and her book, The Creative Habit. My daughter-in-law asked to borrow it the other night and I didn’t want to loan it an lose the wisdom it contains.  As I mentioned in the previous post, maps are highly personal. It might not make much sense to any other eyes but mine – but the main points of the book are there, and I can review them regularly to see how I may be succeeding in my own creative objectives, – or not!  It the answer is negative, at least there are ways presented here to remedy it.