Use Mind Maps to Solve Problems Creatively

1. Course Introduction: Hi, my name's Phil Jones and welcome to my course how to use mind maps to creatively solve problems. In this course, you're going to learn about a tool that I really like using to solve problems. And that's mind mapping. Mind mapping is away. Teoh. Think visually about problems or to brainstorm, or to simply capture ideas and then sort through them later. A lot of times when we're facing a difficult problem or a creative challenge, we think that we don't have the answer within us. But usually the answer is there somewhere, and we simply have to filter through all the things that aren't the answer that are kicking around in our heads. Mind maps offer an excellent tool to do just that. So in this course will talk about creating ideas, brainstorming and then sorting through those ideas so that we can find the right solution toe whatever problem you're facing or to inspire whatever creative pursuit you have in mind . If that sounds interesting to you, I hope you'll join me for the short course, and I look forward to sharing my mapping with you 2. What You'll Learn: In this course, you're going to learn two main things. The first is how to build a mind map that's very straightforward, and it's just the process of getting your thoughts into a visual format that shows the relationship between those ideas. It also shows how you can deconstruct one big idea into a lot of smaller ideas that gives you better focus on what you need to think about when you're dealing with a challenge or a creative pursuit. The second piece of the course is going to be how you can use that technique, that visual representation of ideas to come up with new creative ideas. So how can taking the ideas that are already in your head putting them onto paper or onto a screen and then sorting them how that relationship can produce new ideas? That's very important, because I think that's the key to using these visual tools to solve your problems and to find the ideas that already exist within your mind. To contribute to that, we'll talk about the two thinking styles that helped produce and explore new ideas, conv urgent and divergent thinking and how being conscious of those two styles of thinking can apply to are creating better mind maps. I think this material can help anyone. So I look forward to sharing it with you. And I hope you enjoy the next few lessons where we get into the details of actually building our mind maps. People learn best by doing. It doesn't make a lot of sense to acquire knowledge. If you can apply it and the application help cement that knowledge. So is part of this course. I'm going to ask you to complete a project and thence to build a mind map, dealing with a specific, creative or actual problems that you're facing anything that you're willing to share with other people so that they can see your thought process and you can get some feedback on it . All right, I'm excited to get started. I hope you are, too. So with that, let's get to it. 3. The Secret to Creative Thinking: I want to start with a primer on creative thinking because in order to solve our problems creatively and to build good mind, maps will have to understand the process that generates those creative ideas. A lot of people assume that they either are creative or aren't. But this actually isn't the case. A lot of research has been done in recent years on the nature of creativity, and they found that it actually involves a structured thought process that creates creative ideas. Creativity doesn't come from some deep mystical well within your mind, though you may have been born with a natural talent or inclination towards it. Instead, creativity is the process of generating connections and finding the right piece of an idea and connecting it to another concept or idea. You have to create something new. Creativity is really the art of remixing existing knowledge with new insights and challenges. When we talk about creativity, were really discussing the process of generating and assessing new ideas to deal with existing challenges or goals. It is a structured process, and it involves both of those components generating novel ideas and then assessing them for their usefulness and then refining them further, so our process is going to cover both separately. The process of generating ideas is known as divergent thinking. You are diverging from one path into many in order to find lots of different possibilities . In the second stage of convergent thinking, you're going to take those concepts and ideas and distill them down as you refine them and focus them. Mind mapping lends itself really well to this activity because it lets you draw all those divergent ideas and then reorganize them quickly to create your convergent refining. Even if you don't feel like you're a very creative person, take heart. This is something that you can learn, and we're going to take steps to learn that by practicing these different thought processes as we build our mind maps. 4. How Mind Maps Work: Let's talk a little bit about what a mind map really is and how that will relate to the type of creative thinking we're trying to accomplish. A mind map is really a graphical representation of different ideas in the connections between them. A mind map is typically hierarchical, with a series of Webb's coming from the center and working their way out. Now this is an excellent strategy for putting ideas into visual medium because it shows how those different ideas are nodes connect with one another. It also gives you the opportunity to deconstruct ideas, because is your brain sees one node. It starts to think of what goes underneath that note. If you're doing this in some other format like, say, traditional notes that are outlined based, you might find yourself stuck on one train of thought because that's where you are on the page. It doesn't. The structure that's linear doesn't lend itself to you coming up with new ideas within that overall train of thought. By contrast, a mind map is more fluid because it is circular and organic. You can go to any part of the map that strikes your inspiration at that moment, That means that you're not pegged into a certain line of thinking, and it lets your creative ideas flow more quickly. Also, when it comes time to reorder things, especially if you're doing this in an electronic medium, you can reorganize those ideas as they come to you, rather than having to think through how each idea goes in the sequence. As you would with, say, traditional Cornell notes. One of the things that helps with mind maps is they cover a level of detail. So as you start to develop further nodes that go down in level, sort of what they refer too often has child nodes. You'll start to get into more detail, so you may put an idea into a parent node and then break it down into child notes and then subsequent child knows. After that, as you're filling in the map, you might start seeing conceptual relationships between notes. So if you put in one type of category, you may think of related categories that might become sibling notes to that. And then, now that you've created that additional sibling note, you might start generating child notes underneath that, that process begins to fill out your map, and it also starts creating ideas without you even having to think about it. The process becomes so natural because you're simply filling in a blank canvas and you have a structure that supports you doing that. That's the basics of mind mapping, and that is what makes it so powerful. So now let's get into the details of how you can construct your map and start filling it in , using the tools that make it so advantageous. 5. Basic Mind Map Structure: Let's talk a little bit about how mind maps are structured. As we mentioned in the previous video, it consists typically of a central hub or idea. This is the central component of the mind map. This is where everything comes forth, forth. You might think of this as your underlying problem or the question you're trying to answer . Underneath that, you have your high level category nodes, and those are the areas that you're going to use as your initial structure to try to pursue that question. So you might think of your basic questions. You're existing. Information, your goals. These are the times of things you might fill out initially in those first order nodes. As you begin to develop mawr what you're pursuing in that mind map, you might start to fill in other notes as well. And the goal here is not to constrain yourself to fill them in as much as you can. Even if something doesn't quite make sense where it fits, you could move it later, and that's the beauty of building out these maps. Part of the structure of mind maps is keeping things to sink. You want the idea itself to become visible. Just when you look at the note, you don't want to go into too much detail because you want to see the overall picture of the ideas. So part of doing that is keeping the notes so clear that when you see that wording or that concept, you immediately know what it means. Now you add further detail by adding those child notes underneath, so you keep those distinct as well, and you continue to deconstruct them. That way you can get to the level of detail you want. But you don't have to worry about losing the overall picture by having too much text so that when you look at the entire mind map, you lose a sense of what's going up. The other concept is that you want to have only one idea per node for the same reason is we want to be succinct is we want to be clear when we're looking at the nodes, what's going on and what those relationships are. It makes it a lot easier to look at the big picture and get what's happening when it's just one idea per note. If you find yourself adding multiple ideas in a note. Simply break it up into two or three as needed. Finally, you'll be doing both convergent and divergent thinking in the mind maps. When you're doing your divergent thinking, you're going to be creating a lot of notes quickly when you do your convert and thinking, you're going to be consolidating notes under different higher level categories or refining them or removing them as needed. The important thing to remember is that we do these processes separately. You don't want to get caught in the editorial mindset. While you're still trying to brainstorm potential ideas, the more free and open you are, the more likely you are to find unexpected and useful ideas. So be open minded and allow things to flow in that divergent phase, and then trust yourself to clean things up and make them more relevant in the convergence phase. 6. How Mind Mapping Supports Creativity: Let's talk about how you can use the mind mapping to connect to creativity. We've already discussed convergent and divergent thinking and how the mind maps encourage you to do both through the function and ease of use. So let's talk about the more abstract ways in which the mind mapping structure should inform your creativity. The first is seeing when I say seeing, I mean seeing the big picture and all the components of both the problem, the situation and the ideas you've already developed. That's why we want those notes to be succinct and clear. Because as you see all of the ideas at once, you're able to notice connections you might not have before. So think about how you would traditionally think through a problem. You might have an idea, and you would explore the pros and cons of pursuing that idea further. You might think about whether or not that idea has worked for you in the past and so on. What you're seeing is one. Slice off all of your experience in your ideas. You're seeing whatever context you can think to bring to that idea, to see if it's good or bad. So you might think of cost, or you might think of how receptive people will be to that idea. But it's all within that one idea. Now imagine you have a map that paints the entire situation. The people who were involved in their concerns, your ideas, all of them in one place. When you see all of those things in one place, you're not considering one idea and whatever other outline considerations you can bring to that idea one at a time. Instead, you see everything that means that certain connections that might not have been immediately apparent to you start to show up. This is the importance of open mindedness. When you have the mole laid out, you can pursue them with a certain ease and calm that helps things show up that you might not have noticed before. The subconscious brain is very powerful at finding connections and mining your existing knowledge for new ideas. But in order to benefit from that skill, you have to give it space to do so. If you're actively trying to force it to come up with ideas, it might stick to whatever you've already decided on. If you see the world for what it is and the ideas you already have And relax and play a little bit, you might find new answers and insights. Another part of this is playfulness. If you are open minded and playful in your generation of a mind map, you tend to find that ideas come to you more naturally. I know it does for me when I'm stuck on something, I like to create the mind map because I don't feel any pressure. That's not the final product, and I don't have any concern about it being perfect. And as a result, I let all my ideas out there and I play around with them and I shift them around in a way that I never would with something that I was writing or a final product that I was creating for someone or my final report of an idea, because what I'm trying to do is just play toe, let my ideas get out there and see how they work together. So try to have fun designed the mind map in a way that looks visually appealing, include imagery and colors and do things that seemingly give your conscious mind a break and let the more creative elements of your personality shine through and that will engage them and activate them in a way that they might start finding those connections that you're not actively looking for. The other side of this is even though you're putting down words into your mind map by virtue of trying to figure out how they relate to each other in space. You're also engaging your visual mind, and your visual mind is very powerful, and it sees the connections between things. It sees relationships, and it has a lot of information that is just waiting to be used. So channel your visual mind not just by including imagery but playing around with how things look together. One of the ways that I found that the visual mind kicks in and mind mapping is when there is a gap in my mind. Map say that I have gone and dug deep into a lot of concepts, and I built out a lot of child nodes from my parent notes. In my main categories. My I will be drawn to the areas that are out of symmetry there shorter they haven't been delved deeper into, and so my brain will start to come up with ideas to try to solve that disconnect. It'll try to fill in those gaps with new concepts. That's really powerful because you're not having to think about doing that. Your brain is doing it for you. These are all the ways that creativity is connected with mind mapping, and we're gonna harness all of them as we build our mind maps. 7. Mind Mapping Software - Freemind: all right in this video, we're going to go over free mind, which will be the application of choice for me and showing you how to create mind maps on your computer. Now there are many different applications for creating mind maps on the computer, and you can really pick whichever one you want. But the reason why I chose free mind for this course is that one. It is free. It's an open source application, so it is easy for you to get access to it without having to pay anything. Additionally, it is cross platform, so because it uses java, it will run just about the same on your PC, your Mac or your Lennox machine free Mine has been around for a long time, and it is pretty commonly used. So a lot of the other mind mapping applications can open free mind native files, which comes in handy if you want to use, say, a mind mapping app on your phone and synchronize between your computer and your phone, which is something that I do personally. Finally, I think free mind is just easy to use, so I think it's a good one for us to start with and then you can determine how you would like to move forward. In the next video, I'm going to show you how to mind map by hand, drawing on a sheet of paper. But I think free mind is a good place to start, so we're going to be using it for the rest of the videos because it works so quickly. And even if you are not particularly artistic, you can still make a mind map that represents your ideas very effectively in free mind to download free mind. I have included a link in the comment below the video, so you can just click on that to get access to and download free mind and install it on your machine. 8. Drawing Mind Maps by Hand: as I mentioned before, I want to show you how to draw a mind map by hand, and I'm cheating a little bit because I'm using a tablet. But I wanted you to see clearly. So we start with the central idea and we can add some images. This is going to be more free form than working in free mind. So I'll start by telling you a little bit about the benefits. And one of them is the memory. Because you're building this by hand, it's more memorable. It allows you to be more creative and draw images, and it's portable because you can do it just on a sheet of paper of the back of a napkin. I have some suggestions for how to do it well. The first is to iterated, do a rough draft and then improve it later. Be flexible, be willing to move things around by drawing wherever you like. Use images because they help make the process more entertaining and it also makes you remember what you're doing. Color likewise engages the visual mind, which is helpful for memory and creativity, and you can connect ideas more flexibly in a hand drawn mind map than you can in one in free mind. So feel free to connect those knows even where they aren't hierarchical. When you're iterating, you want to look for the best ideas, so you may redraw the mind map and just keep the things that really jumped out at you. You want to be quick with your drawing and as evidence by my poor lightning bolt there be willing to just let it go. Don't don't feel too inclined to make it beautiful. Remember that. Drawing mind maps like this makes you think of the space in which you're drawing things. You have to consider how much room you have that in and of itself helps you engage your visual mind and make things more memorable. So this is an option for you if you want to just carry a notebook to draw these things out . So there you go 9. Basics of Freemind: this video will cover the basics of using free mind to create and navigate around mind maps . So the very first concept that we want to introduce is that of nodes. So, as you can see, here are mine. Map starts with one central note that is the hub of your mind map. That is the central concept for which all the other concepts will emerge in the form of other nodes and branches of thoughts. You see, in this case, my central concept for this mind map is going to be how we use free mind. So it's very meta. We will be making a mind map about making mind maps. So from your central node, and you can see it selected because it's great out you will create child nodes, so those air notes that come at the next level down. So to do that, you simply hit insert, and that gives you the ability to create a note. So now that is the active node. If I hit insert, it is going to create another node in certain will always take you one level down, which is useful as you refine your concept further. So a child node will typically b'more detail or a subsection of information about that higher level note. Now, if you're doing something, that is it the same level. So say you're creating a list of ideas. Under creating a node, you would simply hit enter to create what's called a sibling note. So a sibling node is created again by hitting enter, and that comes at the same level as the previous one. So I can go in here and say, And then I would say use for lists. So as you're brainstorming, you'll typically think of similar ideas at the same time. So being able to go to a parent node created child and then create siblings to that one very quickly by hitting enter is how you'll start to fill in your mind map. So those are the basics. You know how to create nodes by hitting enter to create a sibling and insert to create a child, you can navigate through the nodes very easily by clicking on them, and you'll see that it highlights it to make it active. Or you can use your arrow keys so this is left era or I'm sorry, right arrow, right arrow up arrow to move around the nodes and create new ones. So the next step I want to show you is how you can start to work with existing mind map contents. So one of the things that I always encourage people to do when they're creating mind maps is to play around with them. And I know that I sometimes I'm a little uncomfortable with tearing apart a big structure that I've already created. So a lot of times I will duplicate a branch in other words, this entire structure somewhere else, so that I can edit it without concern. So I'll make a reference branch and you select what you want. A copy, right click and copy, or do control, see? Select where you want to pace that branch and hit paste. And so now I've got a copy that I can move around. 10. Basic Features of Freemind: So let's talk a little bit about how we move nodes, because that's an important element of mind mapping. So I've got these knows here, and I want to rearrange them, right? Maybe I want to get everything at the same level. So to do that I have to do is select my node. You see that? It's great out and I drag it where I wanted to go. So if I drag it to here, you see that it does the Grady in from the left side that indicates that it's going to become a child to that node. That's great out. So there it gets moved. If I want to move my node above another one to make it a sibling, I simply drag it there and the Grady and comes from the top down. So see, I can very quickly move my nodes around to reorganize them. And the benefit of that is that I can start to look at information differently so I can take this structure duplicated over here, and I could start to make lists. So if you're doing something like creating it to do list, you might move all the to do tasks that you have throughout the map and put them into one sequential list where everything's a sibling, and then you can use icons to check off the things that you've completed. So these icons show up along your left hand side. You click on them to make them appear in the note, so it's very easy to move around this content like that. So a lot of times I will create a template or a structure in my mind map and that structure . Let's me copy the ideas over and over again and then move them around as I need to. The next step is collapsing and opening nodes, which is useful when your mind map starts to get a little big. So if you see this icon that appears when I hover over a note, that means I can collapse it and basically hide it from view, which is useful because it encourages you to focus on what's really important at the moment . If I click on that, it expands it. Also, space bar expands or collapses the active node. You can also use these buttons up here, so this gray button closes everything underneath that node, the gray plus sign expands it. This blue one collapses one level so you can do that one level at a time. 11. Advanced Features of Freemind: Another important feature of free mind is you can add notes. So we talked about earlier how valuable it is to keep your ideas very succinct and brief, because you can look at this mind map and you can see exactly what I each idea represents. But if I need to add a little bit more information into that for later review, I can type it into this text box here. So so that text is there, and I can add a lot of text to that area. And as I click over here, you see that that shows up when I hover over it, and it appears in this text box for me to edit later. One other feature that I want to cover before we move on is finding so free mind actually will search all of your nodes If you type control F, you can search for a search term and will bring up notes that match that search term, and that's pretty handy. Uh, there are a lot of other really cool features in free mind, and I'm going toe work on a course to add some additional information to help you become a sort of free mind power user. But for now, you have the basics to really create and modify mind maps by using the insert and enter keys to create child and sibling nodes and then moving the nose around to reorganize them as you see fit. That's the basics that we need to begin our creativity exercises and are problem solving exercises. So now that you have the basics of how to navigate in free mind, I would encourage you to practice with it on your own and just sort of create some mind maps to explore certain things like maybe outline the most recent book you read at a high level or on idea that you've been trying to explain to a friend that's good practice to sort of get a sense of how to navigate within a mind map. So with that will start to apply some lessons of creativity and problem solving within this tool 12. Starting Your Mind Map: Now we're going to connect all of the concepts you've already learned into solving problems . So let's start connecting the dots, your activity. The first thing is remember that creativity in general is driven by divergent thinking and convert and thinking. We've talked about that a lot already. So now we're going to incorporated in how we build our mind maps. We've talked about mind maps and using free mind as a tool to build nodes and explore ideas . So we fill in gaps by seeing the way the ideas connect and seeing places where we could add more information. So now we're gonna build our combined process, which is going to involve building or nodes through divergent thinking, identifying gaps and going deeper by referring toa all of the ideas we created during the divergent thinking process, and then we're going to move them around to try to refine them and find mawr insights based on the things that we have collected already in the divergent phase 13. Refining Your Ideas: I want to take a minute toe, walk you through the process of solving problems in general because doing this is going to be really important for creative problem solving. Now, one of my favorite quotes is that a problem well stated is a problem half solved. So if we can define the problem, we're trying to solve well and do that in this mind map, we're going to have the components we need in order to find the solution. It'll help us brainstorm, and it will help us figure out what kind of idea we're actually looking for us. We can refine it better, so we need to diagnose the problem, and a tool will use to do that is a root cause analysis. So when we build out our root cause, what we're really doing is starting with the main symptom we're solving for and then asking further why questions to really get at the reason why that symptom is occurring. So we keep asking the why question and finding the reason for a symptom and then the reason for the driver. So let's look at what on example of this so it may take me a long time to create courses, So that's my symptoms. So I want to ask myself why? And there are several reasons why and I'm gonna break them out in the notes. I can't seem to finish them, even though I have a lot of progress. Editing the videos takes me a long time. I keep making mistakes that end up needing re work as I work through my course. So all of these air symptoms, But I can go back and say, Why can I not seem to finish them? Well, cause might be perfectionism. I worry too much that it has to be better than it ISS, and that keeps me going back over and over again. So why is that? It might be because I'm not used to working in public that I'm not used to releasing things to a wide audience of strangers. It's not something that I've done much of before. I used to working with people in my job and in my career that I know a little better. So why is it that I am not used to working in public? It might be because my standards are too high, so I expect so much of myself that it becomes difficult. So this is the process is really continuing to drill down further and further into the why , until we get to some root cause. So editing is taking me a long time. Why, it's because I need more editing practice. Why do I need more editing practice? Because I'm not practicing the right things. And why am I not practicing the right things? Well, because I don't know what the right things are. So you can really follow this process for whatever problem you're facing by continuing to ask good questions and really get to the the root of what your problem is. And once you've broken down those root causes that lowest level that you can get to reasonably, you're going to brainstorm each as an individual question, and your mind map gives you an opportunity. To do that, you can see what elements you might be able to change. What are the things that you can explore and improve? So, for example, we can look at the lowest level root causes that we found from that example earlier, paste them into this node and start exploring them later. So what are some potential solutions here. Now I'm going to my divergent thinking. I'm gonna throw out as many ideas as I can. I'm gonna look for input from others. I'm gonna look at popular courses to try to find out what the differences are. I could then put that underneath that node. I could focus on the outcome. Is this helping someone? If that's helping someone, then it's worthwhile enough. I can ask for input from you of my students and try to understand what I can do to improve . I can Onley focus on important questions because then I'm intrinsically motivated or I can focus on content. So all of these are just divergent thinking examples of me going through as many ideas as I can following the process that we've already outlined. But you see how I'm crafting my map that defines my problem and then gives me room to brainstorm potential solutions based off that well stated problem 14. Brainstorming Solutions and Pulling Everything Together: So hopefully now in the process, you have defined your problem and stated it well, which will make it easier to identify a solution. So now we're going to build a plan. So we're going to go back to the root cause analysis that we created in an earlier video, and I'm gonna take the items that we identified moved him to. This new node that I've identified is where I'm going to do my planning and so I'll create a plan for addressing this first issue that I've identified, and I'm going to start brainstorming potential solutions. So I've looked at these broad solutions that I created in the divergent thinking. And now I'm doing my refining. This is my convert gin thinking. I'm taking the elements of those existing ideas, and I'm making action plans out of them. So the things that come under these planned notes or what I'm going to use my actual action steps. So do this by looking back at all those ideas, refining them, thinking about the ones that you like, you can sort and order them and then come up with a specific action item or plans. So now let's go to the combined process step, and we want to make your whole mind map into a full tree. We want all of the branches to serve as a guide where we can find the ones that seem the most promising again is part of our convergent thinking and prune the ones that are un promising. So the ones that don't really offer us a lot of opportunities solve the problem or at least don't seem like they will. We're going to move past those and really put them elsewhere, hide them under other nodes and keep them in sort of a reference area. And now we're going to really try to refine our potential solutions list. So let's start by creating challenge statements, and these are things that help us, Dr Brainstorming. So we've identified the areas that we want to focus in on, but we may need to do a little bit more fleshing out to develop more ideas and more potential plans. So what you can do is create thes challenge statements, which are things that you want to address or solve. So in this case I'm addressing, my standards are too high. I don't know editing well and I'm not sure people will like my courses, right. Those were the challenging statements. I want address for my problem. So I go back to my concept of addressing quantity over quality. That's my mindset that I want to take into addressing these problems in brainstorming new solutions. So to do that, I'm going to use a couple of different prompts that helped me create new ideas. Uh, I'm going to try to do things that are a little bit outrageous. I'm just gonna liberate myself to be as outlandish as possible. So I can say, you know what? I'm gonna put c g I and my courses, which is very unlikely to happen. Even less likely to happen is I can add Tom Hanks and Meryl Streep to my courses because they're so good at performing. Or I can have some sort of Willy Wonka s golden ticket prize to encourage people to take my courses to improve the quality there in So all of those ideas are outlandish and probably won't come to a solution. But each of them might offer me an indication of something that will be a solution. So if I want to put C G I, for instance, in my videos and probably not gonna do that. But I could buy animation assets or create my own. That is something within the realm of possibility. So maybe those are ideas that are promising. I could use gifts, or I could buy some generic animated GIFs that might be able to add a little bit of punch to the video quality. I can't get Tom Hanks and Meryl Streep and my courses, obviously. But what I can do is practice my delivery and performance because that's what those two amazing actors remind me of this the ability to deliver the motion to speak well. So maybe that's something that I can practice so I can practice getting in character. I might not be able to do a golden ticket, but maybe there's bonuses I can offer. Maybe, like Willy Wonka, I might be able to offer some one on one consultation to serve as a mentor to people who want it. So even when ideas were crazy, they do provide you with new angles to consider in solving the problems. So that's your next step. Pull those things out and try to find those new angles 15. Conclusion and Next Steps: I really appreciate your time and taking this course I'm honored and privileged that you stayed all the way through. And I hope you learn some tools that are going to be helpful and meaningful for you and whatever process or challenges you are trying to solve. I really find that mind mapping helps people open up and be more playful and creative in their thinking. And I hope that you find the same thing in your own life. And if you do, I hope that you share it with others. It's been a point of personal pride and joy to be able to share this with people in my professional life and now with you on skill share. If you found the course helpful, I would appreciate it if you leave a review so that others can also find the course and hopefully benefit from it as well. Again, I can't thank you enough for your time. And I hope that I see you in another class later on. Thanks and bye bye