Tony Buzan Mind Mapping

Tony Buzan mind mapping is perhaps the perfect example of something being both simple and absolutely brilliant at the same time. Drawing an image where you start with a basic idea or question in the center and then letting related ideas branch out one by one carries with it more benefits than one first realizes.

Or as Tony himself often likes to put it:

“A mind map is a thinking tool that reflects externally what goes on inside your head”.

For many years I had a very limited view on what mind maps could be used for myself. Click here to see what helped me discover the full potential of mind mapping.

Many people believe Mr. Buzan invented the mind map, but that is not the case. However, he is indeed the one who, from the 1970s and onward, popularized the concept and described it in a way so that anyone could access this powerful method of visual thinking.

By reading some of Buzan’s books (which you should) you will get a better idea of how mind maps really can be used to great effect in many different scenarios. However, there is a short cut you can take in order to essentially learn what it took me a decade or so to understand – in as little as a week.

But I’ll get to that in a second.

You see, when I first discovered mind maps I believed they where good for only one thing – to help me memorize notes I had taken in my college classes and from the associated text books.

While that use was certainly most beneficial, it could be compared to owning a Ferrari sports car but only knowing how to drive it in first gear.

That is why I many years later, when a friend of mine showed me how he used a simple piece of mind mapping software to keep track of both ideas and certain computer files at the same time, felt like a big coconut had suddenly been dropped on my head!

Why hadn’t I thought of this?!

Don’t get me wrong. Even if you currently use mind mapping for only one purpose, that is most likely very worth the effort. But the fact of the matter is that I have met many people who basically see mind mapping as just “a cool computer program” – not really knowing how to use the application to its fullest potential.

Until now I have always recommended some of Tony Buzan’s books to people who ask me about my mind mapping techniques. Or more recently the resource library on his website – read my review on iMindMap for more details about that.

But a while ago I stumbled upon an ebook that I think provides an even better kick start to effectively using mind maps to get ahead in almost any area in life.

It is called Power Tips & Strategies for Mind Mapping software, click here to visit the official website.

This ebook written by Chuck Frey is especially ideal for those just starting out with mind maps, but also for those who have been using them for a while but would like to improve the effectiveness of the practice.

This author is by no means as well known or perhaps as “fancy” as Tony Buzan, but I think he has done a commendable job on capturing the essence of mind mapping. I certainly know my mind mapping skills would have gotten to where they are today a lot faster if I would have had access to this book right from the start.

Above all I wouldn’t have made so many elementary mistakes when it comes to using mind mapping software on my computer.

And I should know – having used mind maps for managing everything from brainstorming sessions with a dozen or more people to being the star pupil in a beginners course in Aikido – although most of my classmates were half my age

All thanks to good mind mapping strategies.

When I bought the first edition of this ebook I first thought it was a bit expensive. But with his second edition Frey now offers two versions of his book: one basic version on the efficient and versatile use of mind maps and a “bonus version” also covering the details about particular pieces of mind mapping software.

If you already have mind mapping software that you are perfectly happy with it is certainly enough to go for the basic version of the book.

However, particularly if you are also going to use your mind mapping software for business, presentations and similar tasks I would recommend the bonus version. There are a lot of mind mapping programs out there to choose from, so Frey’s comparison will certainly come in handy when it comes to picking the right application for you.

Because switching back and forth between various mind mapping software is something you definitely want to avoid.

All in all I think that Power Tips & Strategies for Mind Mapping software is one of the fastest ways in which you can take the basic concept of Tony Buzan mind mapping to the next level. It is also an ideal way to prime your mind for reading and learning even more about mind mapping in the years to come.

Click here to visit the official site of Power Tips & Strategies for Mind Mapping software.

Writing about all the mind map examples and possible uses one could think of could easily become the world’s thickest book. But let me try to give a brief overview what it is that makes mind mapping such as great way to solve problems and to quickly assimilate information of almost any nature.

Creating a mind map involves visible thinking in a way most people aren’t truly used to. Taking a central word or idea and throwing related ideas at it in a type of surrounding cloud is not the common way society is taught to organize information. Yet making a map of ideas that apply to that central word, and then relating them to each other in classes that suggest themselves, is the center of this method. And it can be adapted to many personal, study/learning and business-related mind map uses.

For Solving Problems

Among the mind map uses in contexts like business or school, there is a more general benefit that applies every time a mind map is made. Namely the fact that the rather firm, uni-directional, linear way of describing ideas is done away with. Linear organizing of concepts automatically puts them into hierarchies and unconditionally makes some more “important” than others. By engaging in this non-linear visible thinking technique instead, one can keep all ideas on an equal footing, and may entertain concepts that would’ve been dropped using the linear method, but which can now be seen as leading edge and valuable.

This helps with another of the mind map uses as well, which is problem solving. When hitherto unrecognized relations appear in the exercise, the solution to a difficulty might emerge in ways it would not have been thought of before. At the least, as mapping patterns suggest themselves, a framework for the info appears, and a complicated idea begins sorting itself into discernible chunks.  Creating a mind map can thus be used as a way for either groups or individuals to unravel problems or concepts that are extraordinarily convoluted.

A Practical Way To Organize Information

Another of the mind map examples on a smaller scale is more solitary, and involves taking notes. A student in a lecture on a complex subject, or even someone in a meeting who is trying to summarize the debate, can both find mind mapping techniques valuable. As they recognize key words, they can list them in their notes and as other ideas come up that apply to the key words, they can be added in a cloud around those initial words. Whether used by a group to brainstorm, or used by an individual to summarize and clarify ideas, making a mind map is a useful way of discerning the relations of vital ideas.

Although he can’t perhaps be called the inventor of this particular kind of visual thinking, Tony Buzan mind mapping is still very much a name and a term that indeed belongs together in one word.

Tony Buzan has been one of the main activists in getting the fundamentals ways to mind map out into the public sphere. An academic expert and exuberant writer on many different subjects in relation to memory and the mind, he took earlier ideas on the simplest way to make a cognitive map of all the ideas surrounding a central topic, and crystallized them into his very own modern approach. These ideas may first have been conceived by philosophers a few centuries back, but Buzan took them out of the philosophy books and put them into his own more popular books, explaining them in a way that folk today can understand.

Buzan stands on the shoulders of many others who developed earlier predecessors of mind map methods. Allan M. Collins and M. Ross Quillian particularly completed research on “semantic networks,” exploring how learning, creativity and graphical thinking were related. But Buzan also credits the semantic theories of Alfred Korzybski as his inspiration for understanding how to make a mind map. These ideas were given life by science fiction authors like Robert Heinlein and A.E.  Van Vogt, but it was Buzan who put them into popular form and made them accessible to the public.

Buzan believes that mind mapping techniques work with how folks essentially read and absorb info from a page. He claims that they absorb information not by scanning left-to-right, top-to-bottom as most are taught, but in a way more visual, relational way. So when he teaches how to mind map, he uses a much more right-brain way of picking up info, putting ideas on a page and relating them in a more spatial way, instead of in the traditional linear way.

The Tony Buzan mind mapping software, which launched in 2006 and called iMindMap, works in tandem with his many books on the subject of making mind maps, as well as with his web site, “Buzan World.” He produced a series for the BBC on subjects associated with memory and the mind, and since that point, in addition to writing his books and plugging his ideas about the best way to mind map, he has founded or founded many world associations that plug memory and knowledge abilities.  Buzan was one of the twentieth century’s strongest popular voices on the subject of mind skills, and he has continued his work into the present century too.