For Those Who Have A Complicated Relationship With Feedback
Sara Ismail-Beigi Bartlett speaks with guests about their ideas, perspectives, and best practices regarding feedback. For some, this process can be alarming, but it is essential and a key basis for improvement.
This week Sara gives us a new Business Bite on mind mapping. A visual diagramming technique used to represent different words, ideas, tasks, and concepts branching out from a central idea. It was first popularized by Tony Buzan in the 1960s as a way to enhance memory and creativity. Mind mapping can be used for project planning, brainstorming, and problem-solving. Two key considerations when starting with mind mapping are identifying the central idea and using colors and images to enhance visualization. Mind mapping can help organize information, make connections more apparent, and stimulate creative thinking. Stream more episodes wherever you get your podcasts!
Welcome to Business Bites. My name is Sara. This is the podcast for busy professionals who want the quick hits of business terminology, historical context, and strategies for integration. Today we're diving into Mind Mapping, a creative tool which helps organize your thoughts and ideas.
Mind mapping is a visual diagramming technique used to represent different words, ideas, tasks, and concepts, branching out from a central idea. It can sometimes use colors or images or different physical branches to illustrate relationships and hierarchies between different things.
Imagine it as a big web of ideas and thoughts all connected to each other. You start with a main idea in the center and then literally draw branches and different pieces and parts off of that center idea to show how they interconnect with each other. It can get very large and very creative, but thinking about how each of those components connects back to the central idea is what's interesting about the mind mapping process.
Mind mapping was first popularized by Tony Buzan, an author and educational consultant in the 1960s. He thought of it as a way to enhance memory and creativity, as it can be challenging for some individuals to think of ways to branch off from a main core idea. It was based on an idea that visual and spatial representation of information could improve cognitive processing and problem-solving.
So, again, in English, by getting it out onto paper and thinking about it in different types of spaces, how can we better understand the information that we are trying to present and solve problems from a different perspective? So let's say you want to use mind mapping. Perhaps you're thinking about starting a new project or coming up with some planning and you just don't know where to start. Perhaps there feels like too many different components to consider, big pieces, small pieces, different phases to go through. So, start with your mind map.
In the center, you put in your project goal and create branches off of that goal, perhaps with the specific tasks or the deadlines, the resources, the team members, the things you want to accomplish. And as you are starting to draw these connections, it can help you visualize the entire project and its components. Sometimes, as folks are doing this, they then identify and maybe color code or re-categorize some of the areas based on what they've seen.
Or let's say you and your team are looking to brainstorm some new ideas. You can use a mind map to explore different aspects of that topic. In the center, you would list again what is that main thing you want to focus on, and then branch out into other subtopics or related ideas or other potential solutions. You don't need to worry about whether or not they're any good. But again, coming up with a list of comprehensive ideas of things that could work, or that you'd like to consider, or that you'd like to start thinking about in the future.
If you want to get started with mind mapping, there's two things I'd like you to consider. First, what is your central idea? What is your central topic? Now, for a lot of people, they struggle with just identifying this focus point. It's okay to start with one map and one focus point and then realize maybe I need to step back. Maybe there's a different focus point that I need to think of and just reorient your map accordingly. Or perhaps, as you start thinking about that focus point and keep coming back to it, you'll notice that the related topics or ideas or concepts you're coming up with are connected in different and unusual ways.
The second thing I'd encourage you to do is think about colors and images. Again, when we're writing on paper, or if you're using a whiteboard or other tool for your mind mapping, we're very accustomed to just being in black and white. Our word processors, our email, et cetera. Try to integrate a little bit of color and other imagery to help you think a little differently about some of those ideas. Especially if you're working in a team, other people may benefit from seeing the visual that you're imagining, or the idea that you're trying to get to, or what the result is that you'd like to achieve in the end. These visual elements can help in organizing information and making some of the connections more apparent.
This has been Sara with Business Bites. You can reach me at [email protected]. We would love to hear from you on what other terminology that you'd like bite-sized. As always, give us a quick rating on your platform of choice and share this podcast with a friend. We'll see you next time.
If you want to get started with mind mapping, there's two things I'd like you to consider.
So, if you're looking to start with mind mapping, two things I'd like to encourage you to think about.