Saturday, September 1, 2007

MindMaps an Interesting Tool

Being always a seeker of better ways to do things and the constant thirst for ideas led me to pick up a book titled 'How to Think like Da Vinci' by Michael J Gelb. Little did I realize that it would completely change the way I think or analyze in terms of the process. One of the topics I came across in the book fascinated me. It was the topic of Mind Maps.

In its most simplest form its just a way of depicting information about a topic which encourages free thinking and removes the shackles of linear thinking. It's been such a great asset to me that I would like to share briefly about it with Illustrations.

Steps involved

  1. Begin with a symbol /picture/Topic at the center of the page. This opens the mind to free flowing thoughts.
  2. Write down keywords relating to the central picture.
  3. Connect the keywords with lines(branches) radiating from the central picture
  4. Print one keyword per line
  5. Use colours and Pictures/codes for greater association and emphasis.


    In this Sample using Free Mind I have used an example from my work.

Some tools that can be used for mind mapping are

  1. Freemind (A Free java based tool) available at http://freemind.sourceforge.net which requires Java Runtime atleast version 1.4.0
  2. Mindjet's MindManager available at www.mindjet.com
  3. Smart Draw available at www.smartdraw.com


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