1000 word Mind Map challenge using iMindMap

Paul Foreman issued a challenge: 1000 word Mind Map

Well I am usually up for a challenge, so I have started my 1000 word Mind Map using iMindMap. This map is partly made and does not yet have 1000 words but I am getting there!

I started with Apple and off I went!

What I found and am finding interesting is that I am returning to the same original word at the ends of branches. I am also fascinated to see where a branch starts and where its little journey takes it.

I will keep adding words and then some images……

Current Word Count: 700+ and still going!

Over 650 words now!

Pi by Daniel Tammet

Here is a new poem  for Pi Day (March 14th) by Daniel Tammet

PI

Three, One, Four, One, Five, and On
The numbers recount their endless tale.
Three – Barefoot green, a silent voice.
White as hunger, One is twice
Bright like babies’ eyes.
Four is timid, envious of E.
Five, Punctuation or a pregnant sigh
Precedes proud Nine, colour of falling night.
Two, an unfastened knot,
A wayward wind, the hollow of Six resounding.
Nearby, Eight, a cloud of fireflies above a lake
Over which I skim Sevens
Remembering that Zero is nothing but a circle.

Roles and Goals

I have just read the blog posting on Mind Map Tutor: The Mind Map in the post which can be downloaded as a template or full image is restrictive in my opinion. Tony Buzan would ask why the Mind Map was not conforming to the much researched and tested one word per line rule and why it did not contain any images. I ask the same.

I have redrawn the Mind Map to suit my purposes and maybe others will find it useful too. If you would like an iMindMap file or PDF version then please contact me and I will forward them to you.

Living on Purpose

Last week’s article, living on purpose, introduced you to big picture thinking of your life. If you always have the big picture in mind, passion, which is a primary ingredient of success, is usually sustainable.

Single-minded focus is undoubtedly the biggest guarantee of success and a Mind Map is the ideal tool to document this focus, as a Mind Map always has a central theme – a single focus.

While having a single purpose and focusing on it, will dramatically increase the chances of you achieving success, does it bring balance into your life?

The need for balance

I believe that having a balance in your life is crucial to sustained happiness, but a balanced life is anapparent contradiction to having a single purpose.

A common complaint quoted in ‘First things First’ by Stephen R. Covey and A. Roger Merrill is:

‘I want to provide for my family and be successful in my career. But my company doesn’t think I’m serious about advancement unless I get to the office early and work late and on weekends.

By the time I get home, I feel exhausted. I have more work to do, and no energy to give to my family. But they need me. There are bikes to fix, stories to read, homework assignments to help with, things to talk over. And I need them. What is quality of life if it isn’t spending time with the people you love most?…’

Does this sound familiar?

Let’s examine how we can remain focused on our main purpose in life and still live a healthy, balanced life.

The Mind Map as a thinking tool

Before we dive right in, I would like to remind you of the Mind Map’s benefits as a thinking tool. It is not for nothing that Tony Buzan, the inventor of the Mind Map, calls it the swiss army knife of the brain.

The Mind Map can be used in many ways as a thinking tool, but one of the ways I often use it, is to Mind Map the big picture and then drill into the details. I use this method to learn something new as well.

Using Mind Maps can be compared to assembling a jigsaw puzzle. You start with the big picture, which you keep visible at all times. From this big picture, you start putting down the pieces you know, one piece at the time, often starting in the centre or one of the corners and building on them.

As you are building your puzzle, it may not look like a cohesive whole, but it is still being built with the big picture in mind. You will see the centre core growing and the corners growing until they start to meet and become one.

Life is often like that. If you only focus on the detail pieces, you lose track of the big picture. If you onlyfocus on the big picture, you don’t do anything. It just exists in your mind, in your imagination.

Putting together Goals for yourself is very similar to building a jigsaw puzzle.

You have to start with the big picture if you want a more fulfilling life. Having the big picture – the purpose -gives you hope and keeps the passion burning. Passion is the one ingredient that is uniquely yours. The amount of passion you put in is often the most determining factor of all.

But passion without direction, often leads to nowhere. It can also consume you and even lead you down the wrong path. You need something else to restore the balance.

What is balance?

One way of looking at our lives is via four dimensions: physical, spiritual, social and mental. I like the concept of using these four dimensions to ensure balance in my life.

The physical dimension requires or creates resources, the spiritual dimension connects to mission, purpose and principles, the social dimension involves relationships with other people, and the mental dimension requires thinking and learning.

By having a long term view of these dimensions, you start building a picture of a well balanced life. Often, to succeed at something, one of these dimensions become the focus for a short period and it appears that your life is not balanced. It is important at this point to look at the big picture again to give perspective. Balance is determined over months and years, not days and weeks.

A very good example of this is having a new baby. I remember when my daughter was born. She was only four months old when my wife and I decided to leave South Africa to go to The Netherlands.

My wife left her job and spent the next three years in a foreign country where her main focus was looking after our daughter. Her life seemed out of balance at the time. She had no friends, no extended family and no job.

If I look back at the last decade of her life though, I get a very different picture.

Her choice at the times was also very difficult because of the way modern society sees motherhood. I share the sentiments of Rebecca A. Merrill, one of the co-authors of the book ‘First things first’:

‘I’m often troubled by the stigma attached to women who choose to focus their time and effort primarily on motherhood. It is as if society somehow deems it less valuable to raise competent children than to raise the profit on a company’s product line.

A woman who chooses to focus on motherhood, and does so out of a clear sense of her own personal vision, becomes truly energized in her role. She recognizes the value of shaping the characters of future leaders in society. And in the process, she develops competence and character to fulfill other roles. Perhaps a second career or another degree are in the plans, but that doesn’t distract from the task at hand. It is not a matter of capacity, but of chosen contribution…’

It is as if this piece was written for Jasmine, my wife. Today she is in a second career and has another degree. She studied a new degree while being a ’stay home mom’ and when she decided to go back to work, she landed not only a new job, but a new career!

Did her period of focused motherhood detract from her success in any way? I think not! If anything, it gave her the character and strength to accomplish greater things. It also gave her a balance of the physical, spiritual, social and mental dimensions.

When looking at balance therefore, one should not have a short term view. If you are starting a new project, a new business or venture, or having a new born baby, your life may seem out of balance as you are focusing so much time on one thing. This focus is of the utmost importance to succeed. It is the peoplewho don’t have the discipline to focus on what they need to do to succeed, that fail.

This imbalance is often short lived though, if you have your Roles and Goals well defined.

Restoring balance – the power of Roles and Goals

We all have to fulfill different roles in life. Knowing the roles that you have to play, and the goals you have for them, will help ensure that you start, and continue, to live a balanced life.

Take some time out and draw a Mind Map with yourself as the central theme. Draw six branches coming out of central theme and list the roles you have to fulfill in your life. An example of roles could be:

• Father/Mother
• Son/Daughter
• Brother/Sister
• Employee (List job function if you want to)
• Business Owner
• Community Service
• Manager
• Etc.

Once you have these roles on your Mind Map, put down three goals for each of them on your Mind Map for the coming year.

Does this bring a new perspective into your life?

Each role must be seen as a stewardship. You have been entrusted in life to fulfill each of these roles. They are your roles. You’ve chosen them. You also choose the goals for each role. Remember, it is YOUR choice.

Each of the roles contain all four dimensions: physical, spiritual, social and mental so ensure that you set goals using these four dimensions as a guide.

As mentioned, sometimes one of the roles needs more focus than the others. This is quite normal. By having a Mind Map picture of your roles and goals, you are able to bring it back on track to ensure that you have a balance.

I’ve added two Mind Map PDF downloads at the end of this for you to print out and use to define your Roles and Goals.

This one year picture of Roles and Goals is a bit more detailed than the Purpose vision of last week, which is a lifetime vision.

Remember the jigsaw puzzle analogy? The purpose is the centre of your jigsaw puzzle and the roles and goals the corners.

Planning – The next step

Your Roles and Goals Mind Map will give you a roadmap, but the journey still needs more detailed planning though and will be covered in a future article. Be sure to look out for it.

Before we get to the detailed planning though, Goal Setting needs to be covered in a bit more detail. That will be the subject for next weeks article.

Click here for a download of the Mind Map PDF guide.

Click here for a blank PDF template.

I want to be more creative…. how?

Would you like to be more creative in your life and work? It’s really not as hard or mysterious as you might think. We are ALL highly creative individuals, we are all naturally creative, but in many people creativity has been suppressed or squashed to make us conform to our education and learning systems.

One block that prevents many people from boosting their creativity is the notion that creativity is linked to intelligence. Another block is the idea that creative people are born that way.

However ee are ALL born creative, we have to be to survive. Children are naturally creative and learn through creativity, to a large degree, creativity is a learned behavior. It’s a matter of how you approach things, how you act or react to new circumstances, your proclivity to look at things in different ways, your willingness to question, experiment, and take chances. In other words, creativity is not “what you are” as much as “what you do.”

Think of creativity as a muscle. The more you use it, the stronger it gets. To increase your creativity, you simply need to “act” like a creative person. Not surprisingly, people recognized as creative tend to share common traits.

This is so true, many adults will state quite firmly that they cannot draw, that they have never been able to draw. I disagree, everyone of us from every culture and background drew before they could write, it’s the natural step before writing. There is an innate desire and need to communicate, hence children drawing on any surface (sometimes inappropriate surfaces wall, doors, furniture, themselves, their siblings).

Highly creative people:

Have the COURAGE to try new things and risk failure. Every big breakthrough starts as a ‘harebrained’ or ‘what if?’ idea. This doesn’t mean you should constantly go off the deep end, just that you should balance your routine portfolio of solutions with an investment in the new and untried. Over time, the risk is usually worth the reward. We learn significantly from our mistakes and failures.

Use INTUITION as well as logic to make decisions and produce ideas. Gut instinct: will work? Don’t know but lets find out.

Like to PLAY, since humor and fun are the ultimate creative act. Which is to say you just have to lighten up. We all have goals, and quotas, and deadlines, but it’s not life and death. When you enjoy yourself, your brain relaxes and is able to produce more and better ideas. One of those ideas may be just what you’re looking for. This is why the likes of Google and other big corporates have introduced ‘play areas’ for their teams. A relaxed brain in a happy brain, which is a productive and creative brain. I recently did some work with the BBC Children’s department: they have an office space full of children’s toys, in fact it looked like a play group rather than an office. Why they toys? The staff writers and creative teams need to think like their prospective audiences.

Are EXPRESSIVE and willing to share what they feel and think, to be themselves. People are emotional creatures and respond better to people who appear real, honest, and open. Not only is it more interesting, it can also be more persuasive.

Can FIND ORDER in confusion and discover hidden meaning in information. Research and critical thinking are key tools for the creative person. Information is to the brain what food is to the stomach. So-called “writer’s block” or creative burnout almost always results from a lack of fresh information and having nothing meaningful to say. Mind Mapping can release the creative potential by allowing us to see the bigger picture and seeing links between areas and ideas, which may have remained hidden.

Are MOTIVATED BY A TASK rather than by external rewards. You must like the challenge of writing, explaining, teaching, and persuading. Become a fountain of ideas. Einstein and Edison both stated that they had more failures than successes, but with the failures they would not have had the success.

Have a need to FIND SOLUTIONS to challenging problems. Even the most creative people won’t have a solution for everything. If they claim to, they’ve stopped thinking. Highly creative people are those whose eyes light up at a question they can’t answer. That’s the opportunity to learn something new and produce remarkably creative content.

Will CHALLENGE ASSUMPTIONS and ask hard questions to discover what is real. Writing, blogging, or business rules aren’t really rules, only rules of thumb. If you want to wield true creative power, you will always take what others advise with a grain of salt. If you don’t know something from personal knowledge or experience, you don’t know it at all.

Can MAKE CONNECTIONS between old ideas to produce new insights. Combine the little doodles you make on a white board with online video and you get a new approach to explaining things to people in a way they can easily understand. Sometimes the best solutions are simply two old ideas combined together, often with unexpected results.

Will PUSH THE ENVELOPE in order to expand the boundaries of what is possible. Instead of dividing the world into the possible and impossible, it’s better to merely divide it into the tried and the untried. What have you not tried yet?

Are willing to TEST new ideas and compete with others based on results. Isn’t that what they mean by the “market of ideas”? Isn’t that what business competition is about? If you’re afraid of being wrong or losing, your creativity will suffer. There’s no right or wrong answer, there are better solutions and ideas, but everything has its place.

These are certainly uncommon traits for most people. But they’re not difficult. Watch how the creative people you know solve problems and deal with projects. You may choose one particularly creative person you admire and, when faced with a problem, ask yourself, “What would so-and-so do in this situation?”

As you begin to “act” like a creative person, you’ll find yourself actually becoming more and more creative. Result: more and more successful.

Based on an original blog post by Dean Rieck is a highly creative and successful direct marketing copywriter. Developed and commented on further by Tim Fulford January 2010.

Mind Mapping helps with Language Learning

Follow this link to hear Tony describe how to use Mind Mapping for learning a new language: what do you think? Will Mind Mapping or has Mind Mapping worked for you with languages?

Learning a Language with Mind Maps

information overload

“The problem of information overload, therefore, may not be the quantity of it but our inability to know what to do with it.” – Danniel Tammet

Daniel Tammet is a writer, linguist and educator. A 2007 poll of 4,000 Britons named him as one of the world’s “100 living geniuses”. He is the creator of ‘Optimnem’, a website company that has provided language learning instruction to thousands around the globe. His 2006 memoir ‘Born On A Blue Day‘ describing his life with high-functioning autistic savant syndrome was a Sunday Times (UK) and New York Times bestseller. It has sold over half a million copies worldwide, and been translated into 18 languages.

Tammet is the subject of the 2005 award-winning documentary film ‘Brainman’ which has been shown in more than 40 countries. He has also made appearances on the ‘Late Show With David Letterman’, ‘ABC News’, ’60 Minutes’, and ‘Good Morning America’, and been featured in the ‘Times’, ‘Guardian’, ‘Telegraph’, and ‘Independent’ (UK) ‘New York Times’, ‘International Herald Tribune’, ‘The Advocate’, ‘Der Spiegel’, and ‘Le Monde’ (front page) among many others.

Tammet set a European record on March 14th 2004 when he recited the famous mathematical constant Pi (3.141…) to 22,514 decimal places from memory in a time of 5 hours, 9 minutes. His remarkable memory, mathematical and linguistic abilities have been studied by some of the world’s leading neuroscientists at California’s Center for Brain Studies and the UK’s Cambridge Autism Research Centre.

His new book, ‘Embracing the Wide Sky: A Tour Across the Horizons of the Mind‘, is a personal and scientific exploration of how the brain works and the differences and similarities between savant and non-savant minds. Click the ‘books’ link in the index on the left to find more.

10 Ways to improve how you manage information…..

When I was a full time senior manager in a large school I had huge volumes of information to manage. The only way I could deal with it was to apply a huge filtering system to everything that came across my desk or via email. Then I managed the filtered information with a Mind Map dashboard, I had control, I knew how to find the information I needed when I needed it.

Now that I have escaped from this I see managers in many organisations struggling with information overload.

Bill Gates is quoted as saying that ‘….we live in an information democracy…. but while we’ve gone a long way towards optimising how we use information, we have yet to do the same for knowledge.’

I came across a post by JD Meier who works for Microsoft and I was intrigued by the content which suggests 10 ways to improve how we manage information.

As I read the post I digitally Mind Mapped as summary using a Nokia SU-1B digital pen.

10 ways to improve how you manage information

I humbly acknowledge the post by JD Meier which can be read below.

“The problem of information overload, therefore, may not be the quantity of it but our inability to know what to do with it.” – Danniel Tammet

One of the most important skills I mastered early on at Microsoft, is information management.  My ability to organize information directly impacts my success.  For me, information management is the key to daily productivity from researching to learning faster to keeping my email inbox empty.

When I first joined Microsoft, I found myself spending four or more hours on administration and email.  Then one day I decided … enough is enough.  From that point on, I refused to spend more than 30 minutes a day between email and administration overhead.  That day marked the start of my pursuit to find the best ways to handle and organize information.  While my motivation helped, it’s actually finding and creating effective techniques that really made the difference.

Here are ten of my favorite ways to manage information:

1. Factor reference from action.   Carve out action items, To Dos, and tasks from your incoming streams of information.  if it’s not an action, it’s reference.  I first learned this practice when I was dealing with information overload as a support engineer.  I ended up cementing the idea while working on our Microsoft Knowledge Base.  The Knowledge Base is a vast collection of information, where each article tends to be optimized around either action or reference.
2. Create lists.  Make a new To Do list each day and use it to organize your key action items for the day.  Create checklists for your common routines.
3. Create collections.  Put things into collections or think in terms of collections.  Consolidate your notes into a single collection that you access quickly, such as in a personal notebook, a Word document or etc.  Consolidate your thoughts or ideas into a single collection.  Consolidate reference examples of your heroes or stories you can use for inspiration.  Consolidate your “ah-has” into a single collection.  Note that by single collection, I don’t mean you have it all in a single document, although you can.  Instead, I’m thinking of collections of items, much like a photo album music collection.  By stashing things of a similar type, such as “idea” or “note” … etc., you can determine the best way to arrange that collection.  Maybe it’s a simple A -Z list or maybe you arrange it by time.  For example, when I keep a journal of my insights, and each time I get an “ah ha”, I write it down under the current date.  This way I can easily flip back through days and see my insights in chronological order.  While I could arrange them A – Z, I like having my most recent ideas or inspirations bubbled to the top, since chances are I’m finding ways to act on them.
4. Put things where you look for them.  Where ever you look for it, that’s where it should be.  If you keep looking for something in a certain place, either just put it there when you find it or add some sort of pointer to the actual location.   While you might logically think something belongs in a certain place, the real test is where you intuitively look for it.
5. Keep things flat.  Out of sight, out of mind holds true for information.  Avoid nesting information.  Keep it flat and simple where you can.  Think in terms of iTunes or a playlist.  A well organized playlist is easy to jump to what you need.
6. Organize long lists or folders using A-Z.    When you have long lists or big collections, then listing things A-Z tends to be a simple way to store things and to look things up fast.   Once a list gets long, A-Z or a numbered list is the way to go.
7. Archive old things.   When information is no longer useful for you, consider archiving it to get it out of your way.  This usually means having a separate location.  I’m a pack rat and I have a hard time letting things go, so I tend to archive instead.  It let’s me get things out of the way, and then eventually get rid of them if I need to.  Archiving has really helped me get a ton of information out of my way, since I know I can easily rehydrate it if I need to.
8. Bubble up key things to the top.  When you have a lot of information, rather than worry about organizing all of it, bubble up things to the top.  You can effectively have a quick, simple list or key things up top, followed by more information.  Keep the things up front simple.  This way you get the benefits of both exhaustive or complete, as well as simple.  Whenever you have a large body of information, just add a simple entry point or key take aways or summary up front.
9. Know whether you’re optimizing for storing or retrieving.  Distinguish whether you are storing something because you will need to look it up or refer to it a lot, or if you are simply storing it because you might need it in the future.  For information that I need to look up a lot, I create a view or I make it easy to get to the information fast.  For example, I might use a sticky note since I can quickly put it wherever I need to.  For a lot of information, you simply need a quick way to store it.  What you don’t want to do is have to work to hard, each time you need to file a piece of information.  This I is where having a place for things, using lists, and organizing information in a meaningful way comes in handy.  For most of my reference information, I organize it either by A-Z or by time.  This way I don’t have to think too hard.  I don’t create a bunch of folders for my email.  Instead, I just store it all flat so it’s easy to search or browse or sort.  For example, if I need to find an email from somebody, I simply sort my email by their name.  Just by asking the question whether you’re optimizing for fast filing or for fast lookup will get you improving your information management in the right direction.
10. Create views.  Create views for the information that you need to frequently access.  For example, you might put sticky notes of information that consolidate just the key things.  As an analogy, think of your music store versus your playlists.  You store might be a large collection organized A-Z, but your playlists are views that are more focused or have themes.  You can apply this metaphor to any of your information collections.

Well, there you have it.  Those are my top 10 favorite techniques for organizing information.  I’ve had the privilege of learning and modeling from many great colleagues and mentors.  The beauty is, I get to practice my information management skills every day while hacking my way through the information jungle.  These skills save me a ton of time whether I’m reading books, taking notes, learning something new, or just about any time I’m dealing with information.  It’s deliberate practice with immediate results.

Two More Ways to Improve Your Information Management
As a bonus, I’m including two additional techniques that significantly changed my game:

1. Periodically sweep things.   No matter how well you organize things, you’ll need to periodically sweep.  Sweeping simply means cleaning things up after the fact.  Periodically, allocating a block of time to go back through and clean up some of your messes.   Things will always get out of disorder over time.  Time also changes what’s important.  When you revisit things, after the fact, you also gain the benefit of hind sight.  Make the time now and then to make a pass through your collections.  Get rid of what you don’t need.  Archive things that you don’t currently need.  Restructure your information to support your usage scenarios.  This is one of those vital practices that really makes the difference if you actually do it.
2. Reduce friction.   Whenever you find that you’re working too hard to either find, organize, or use your information, pay attention to the friction.  Work to reduce the friction.   This might mean getting more information out of your way.  It might mean bubbling more things up to where you can find them quickly.  The key is to make it easy to use your information, and don’t let it become a burden

Bill Gates: The Road Ahead: How ‘Intelligent Agents’ & MindMappers

“Most of us now live in an ‘information democracy’…. But while we’ve gone a long way toward optimizing how we use information, we haven’t yet done the same for knowledge…. But as software gets smarter about how people think and work, it’s starting to help them synthesize and manage knowledge, too… new generation of “mind-mapping” software can also be used as a digital “blank slate” to help connect and synthesize ideas and data—and ultimately create new knowledge.”

From: News

Health & Safety and OFSTED love them or hate them?

Two weeks ago the report shown above appeared in the TES: Why was it that the school felt that because the dog was a pet they would not need to complete a Risk Assessment?

I failed to understand the argument. I put pen to paper and responded (letter shown above).

Risk Assessments are often poorly written at best and at worst don’t exist. Schools need to spend more time thinking about the situations they expose themselves to. The much publicised ‘conkers and googles’ situation was looking at a minor hazard with and equally minor risks. The loose dog is a different issue and needs to be looked in a different way. What is usually required is a bit of training and thought, the use of common sense and sensible approach. On this occasion OFSTED were quite correct to suggest that a Risk Assessment should be undertaken.

Is Mind Mapping missing from Education systems?

There are many of us who believe that Mind Mapping is a key element missing from education in the UK and other places around the world. It is missing from teacher training and then of course missing from the education system, schools and lessons. The people who miss out the most are of course the children our potential great thinkers, creators of the future.

Read this article here

Also my previous article.