Mind Mapping and Brainstorming
Mind Mapping and Brainstorming:
Use your creativity to develop your marketing plan, solve problems in your business, and develop new ideas.
There is plenty of time in life to be organized, linear, and list oriented. There is a time and place, however, to discard these modes of thinking and let your brain drift. Make connections. Quantity is better than quality. Curb your logical thinking. But how do you take your brain to this place where creativity rules. It’s called Brainstorming. And Mind Mapping is one of your brainstorming tools.
Brainstorming
If you are not an intuitive brainstormer, there are some rules, more like guidelines, that you can use to get your team rolling.
- Clear your mind of all your preconceptions and traditional understanding of the world.
- Focus on quantity, not quality. This may seem counter-intuitive, however, the more ideas you generate, the greater the chance of stumbling upon a radically new and effective idea.
- At this stage there is no critical thinking. Do not analyze the thoughts of your colleagues until further in the process, when you are developing feasible solutions to your problem.
- Unusual or seemingly strange ideas should be encouraged. You never know what ideas may trigger thoughts in others.
- Designate one person (not the facilitator) to take lots of notes; jot down everything that is said, no matter how outlandish. Use poster paper, dry erase board, or index cards.
- Use mind mapping to organize all the thoughts and ideas and generate new ideas. Use the index cards and some tape to create a large mind map on a blank wall. This makes it easy to rearrange your thoughts.
Mind mapping is an exercise in freeing your mind from linear, text based thinking. Mind mapping uses images, hierarchy, and connections to encourage free thinking. Generally a mind map starts in the middle of the paper with a word or short phrase and a corresponding image. Remember though, a mind map can be whatever you want it to be. The following are steps to create a mind map.
- Start in the middle of the page with your topic. Landscape style is recommended.
- Add subtopics in a radial pattern around the topic.
- Continue adding degrees of topics until you are down to the details.
- Draw lines connecting all your topics and subtopics. Use varying thickness, color and style to emphasize key points.
- Make connections between similar or related topics of different branches of your map.
- Use pictures, symbols, and codes! Lots of them. When one of your topics reminds you of something, jot it down or sketch it out. It doesn’t matter if you can draw. These visual cues will help with leaps of logic.
- Use the text size, font, cases and characteristics to develop hierarchy, emphasis, and personality.
- Use at least three colors in your mind map. More colors will stimulate your brain. Use them to emphasize important points.
- Keep your topics to a single word if possible, or a short phrase.