What is Mind Mapping?

Mind Mapping is a method of visual thinking. Mind Maps improve your ability to brainstorm, evaluate and learn information in a fashion that is brain friendly.

A Mind Map is a picture that represents thoughts, ideas, tasks and other such topics that radiate and link to one central keyword or thought. This visual approach helps generate new thought paths, helps structure your ideas, provides a clear means of thought presentation and is well proven as a study aid.

Mind Maps make use of the human brain's ability to associate detailed information with one single image. For example, if asked to describe your front door, the image of your front door would appear in your mind's eye and you could describe in some depth the appearance of your door.

This is how Mind Maps work. They take volumes of info and turn it into a visual snap shot.

As the saying goes "A picture is worth a thousand words".

The Mind Map below shows what factors are involved in creating happiness for this individual. If asked to write a list she may have been overwhelmed as to how to respond. She may also miss how inter-related the factors are. A good illustration of The whole being greater than the sum of its parts, and illustrated perfectly in a Mind Map.





Mind Mapping is useful all in aspects of life, including personal thinking, education, and business thinking.

How to Mind Map

Research over the years has shown that black and white, left to right text is not at all brain friendly, and what the human mind loves most is colour, shape, keywords, and things that allow it to build instant associations.

We all have associations tucked away in our minds, some date back to our early childhood, but when we see, smell, feel or taste something associated with a memorable moment, our brain is triggered to recall the memory from deep within you. It is a powerful human ability and one that mind mapping draws upon, a visual trigger to recall information.

If you are just starting out with mind mapping then let's take a look at the basic guidelines to help you get the most of your mind maps.

✔ Use a landscape page ✔ Think beyond A4 ✔ Start with the main thought in the centre
✔ Use an Image for the Central Thought ✔ Make important keywords stand out ✔ Show relationships
✔ Use colour ✔ Use visual associations ✔ Use easy to read fonts - avoid script fonts ✔ Use lowercase, your brain prefers it
✔ Liberate your thoughts, take risks and don't judge ✔ If you hit a mental block, move to a different branch
✔ Go with the flow, set your creativity loose ✔ Relax and enjoy!

So having given you a list to read, let's see that at as a Mind Map

Who is Mind Mapping for?

The answer to this is quite straight forward, everyone.

Mind mapping is used by small children as part of their education and developement, it is used by the teachers devising their curriculum and this useage spans the entire educational system from kindergarden to University.

Maureen Cain has published a report on the success of Mind Mapping within the classroom.

In 2002 the BBC reported on how Mind Mapping was helping children with Dyslexia.

Businesses are reaping the benefits of mind mapping in all aspects of the organizational structure from use in areas such as human resource planning through to leading edge product innovation and development.

There really are no limits to who can use Mind Mapping, with it's benefits being applicable to all areas of life.

Mind Mapping

IQ Matrix - Accelerated Learning Mind Maps to inspire
Mappio - The Mind Map Gallery
Mind Map Art A show case of some beautiful hand drawn and software generated Mind Maps


Free Images & Icons

Start your own collection of Images and Icons to use in your Mind Map Projects simply start a new folder in Finder to categorise your collection, then drag them from here directly to your MyThoughts for Mac Mind Map. Or using iPhoto Library Manager, start a new Image Library and save your freebies to iPhoto so that they appear in the MyThoughts for Mac Media Browser.

Buy Images & Clip Art

iClipArt offers an inexpensive source of transparent background photos and clipart ideal for Mind Maps.