Mind Mapping Course — Beginners Guide

1. What Are Mind Maps: What are mind maps? Simply put, a mind map is a visual diagram used to record and organize information. Just like this right behind me, this is a mind map. Mind maps are often created around a single concept or image. They're drawn in the center of a page to which associated ideas, words, and images branch outward. Mind maps can either be drawn by hand or created using a computer, or mobile device, or any variation of software or apps. So now that you know exactly what a mind map is, let's talk about all the different ways in which mind maps can be used. Mind maps can be used as a form of note-taking during a lecture, a meeting, or even while reading a book. Mind maps are also excellent at expanding memory and allow for you to recall information more quickly while at the same time, learning new information with greater ease. Mind mapping also increases creativity, because it helps you visualize information more quickly. It allows you to easily brainstorm ideas, and organize your thoughts, and allow you to think with greater ease. In addition, mind mapping is a really valuable source for gaining greater productivity by allowing you to structure ideas quickly, plan a meeting, a mastermind, or even a upcoming vacation. It also allows you to make more useful to-do lists and action items. Believe it or not, mind maps can even help you outline that book that you've always wanted to write. Are you feeling frustrated? Do you need to solve a problem? Great. Mind mapping is an excellent way to find innovative solutions for both personal and professional problems. They allow you to better organize your thinking so that you can generate more ideas, see the problem from a completely new perspective, and finally get unstuck. Time for a quick review. As we discussed at the beginning of this lecture, mind maps are visual diagrams used to organize all kinds of information. They help with taking better notes, increase memory and recall, and boost creativity. They also allow us to be more productive while solving problems with greater ease and a whole lot faster than before. 2. What You Need to Get Started: Getting started on your mind map doesn't require much. However, you will want a few things to be in place before you start creating one. The first item you'll need is paper. As a rule of thumb, I always start my mind maps with a clean piece of white blank paper. Any standard sized 8.5 by 11 or A4 paper will do. If available a larger sheet of paper is always welcomed as it'll allow you more room to work within and dig into the intricate details of your mind map. In addition to a black pen, the next thing you'll want to have on hand are set of markers. It's fine if you don't have a full set of markers readily available at the moment, but you will want to start with a minimum of four different colors. We will drill down into the details and the science of mind mapping and why the use of color is so important in a later lecture. But for now, know that using a minimum of four different colors will immediately add visual interest and allow you to quickly distinguish each section of your mind map. The third and final item you'll need to get started mind mapping is a subject or topic for your mind map. This subject will need to be centered around one topic, one idea, and a particular thought, one main project or central theme. Lastly, there's no right or wrong when it comes to choosing your paper, your markers, or your subject matter for your mind map. Let's review. As long as you're starting off with a clean piece of white paper, minimum of four different color markers, and one main topic per mind map, then you are good to go. 3. 7 Steps to Mind Mapping: In this lecture, we'll dive deep into the seven main principles of creating a pretty awesome mind map. As well as discuss the structure of mind mapping. Starting with a piece of clean white paper, we'll position it horizontally or in landscape mode to where the widest part of the paper is running left to right. Why? Because turning your paper horizontally will allow you more space to work within than if it was in a vertical position. Next, choose the first color marker you'd like to work with. In the center of the paper, draw an image that represents the topic of your mind map and write the topic of your mind map directly below that image. One thing to note is that it's important to draw the image in the center of your paper, something that clearly represents the theme of your mind map. Since the theme of this mind map is how to create a mind map. Having an image with a brain and two circular arrows around it seems appropriate. The image that we just drew and the center of the paper is known as the central image, because it as an anchor for the main subject in which all connecting thoughts, images, and ideas radiate outward from. Now, that we have our central image drawn in the center of our mind map, we are ready to begin drawing our first main branch. Each main branch you see your mind map will connect with the central image and spread outward from there. Choosing a different colored marker, let's draw our first main branch, radiating away from the central image. Make sure that this branch is defined, curved and uses color. Why is color a key technique of mind mapping? Well, one reason is that having different color branches within your mind map, you'll be able to quickly distinguish the different information, branches and aspects where they your map, therefore making it easier to understand. Additionally, the use of multiple colors within your mind maps not only adds visual interest, but also adds color, boost levels of creative thinking, increases our brains engagement and naturally uses more of the cerebral cortex. The cerebral cortex being the area of your brain that plays a key role in memory, attention, perception, awareness, thought, language and consciousness. That's a mouthful. The fourth aspect of mind mapping involves using keywords sprinkled throughout your mind map. If you're not sure about keywords, don't worry. We'll be diving really deep in the keywords in another section of this mind mapping course. But for now know that a keyword is one or two main words that sums up the entire ideas, sentence or phrase of whatever it is that your topic is. The keyword should be short and associate with your topic. For every new branch added, you'll also want to add a keyword above it. Feel free to add as many branches and keywords needed to help fill up your mind map. Keep in mind that each main branch represents a different category based on the main central topic you want to explore. The fifth step of creating a mind map involves adding sub branches that connect with associated main branches. Sub-branches allow you to make additional, associated images and connections with your mind map. They also allow for further exploration and expansion upon each new idea or topic. Of course, just like main branches, you can add as many or as few sub-branches as needed. As well as jump around your mind map adding more and more sub-branches as you go. The number of sub-branches that you end up having will, again be mostly determined by you. The subject matter and how deeply you'd like to explore and expand upon each keyword. One important thing to know is that if you're working in an area of your mind map and shift to a completely different area. It's fine because you can easily do so without losing focus. The six step of mind-mapping is to continue bridging outward by creating additional branches. For every new idea, section or thought you have add a new branch. In fact, the possibilities are endless and you're never limited when it comes to mind mapping, which is a very good thing. You can make your mind map even more awesome by adding pictures, symbols, and images at anytime you see fit. All my maps can be made even more appealing by using more colors, more images, more doodles, more arrows, more anything, so be creative on this. Using a combination of color, images, keywords, and arrows will make your mind map more unique, distinctive, personal and of course, memorable. In addition, having a mind map that is rich with color, ideas and all images sprinkled throughout, will help to make your mind map also more engaging. It's easier for your brain to be able to know, reset, remember it. It reinforces connections, and along with increasing memory, you'll also have greater recall of the subject matter that you're mind mapping, which is the best thing when it comes to mind mapping. Now, you'll know your mind map is complete when you can't think of anything else to add. Time for a quick review. The image that we just drew in the center of the paper is known as the central image, because it connects to the main branch, your end as well uses color. The fourth aspect of mind mapping involves the use of keywords sprinkled throughout your entire mind map. The fifth step of mind mapping involves adding sub-branches that connect with associated main branches. The sixth step is continuing to branch outward by adding additional branches. Of course, you can make your mind map even more awesome by adding pictures, symbols and images at anytime. 4. Get Started Mind Mapping: Let's talk about paper and materials and all that good stuff. First of all, I love mind mapping. Mind mapping can be created pretty much anywhere. Literally, I've got my walls painted in chalkboard black paint. All I have to do is just basically take some chalk and put it up on the walls like I have back here. I like being able to put mind maps everywhere. Because sometimes I'm thinking and I want a mind map on the wall to where it'll inspire me like the one back here that I have about inspire creativity. I'll put my maps on all kinds of things. Let's talk about paper for a minute. Now for me, I am a professional graphic designer and I'm really arty, so I like paper. I'm a bit of a geek when it comes to paper, but not to bore you or anything. It's just there's all sizes of paper as far as notebooks and putting my maps on notebooks and everything. I've got a mind map in there to tell me about the plant cycle process, so we've got that there. I've got my maps inside of just regular notebooks. It's one of those things where, and this is my map that I created. I've got grid paper, I'll put my maps on, I think you get the point. It's one of those things where whether I'm using my favorite Bristol paper or large sheets of paper or whatever it might be, over sized paper. The more room you have for creating your mind map, definitely the better. For example, later on in this course, I've got this as a mind map and I just only did this particular section for mind mapping as far as mind mapping the reptilian brain to demonstrate that you can create a really artistic looking mind-map. You don't have to have a mind map that is super artistic. You can just be crazy and basically just take a Sharpie pen and make a mind map like this. With this mind map, I was doing some brainstorming of a course that I had for a Udemy course. I was like, yeah, I'm going to just take a Sharpie and put this up on the wall and create a real simple mind map, so I'll have that somewhere in the bonus section of me creating this fun little mind map. We've got all sorts of mind maps that you can create. The thing is, and then there's pens and I won't even go into all that, but the thing is, is that at the end of the day, whether I am using just a simple sheet of 8.5 by 11 paper for creating my mind-map or even a Post-It note for creating a mind map. But a lot of times what I have on me is this right here. This right here is just a real simple type of notebook. It's something that I have with me and I'll take with me to meetings. I'm not going to take large sheets of paper with me or if I'm out and about or like I said at a meeting, I'll just go ahead and create my map using just a gel pen. This right here, real-time mind maps to where I'm sitting in a meeting, I'm listening, I'm engaged, I'm asking questions, and at the same time, I am drawing little doodles and all things to let me know that what I need to be doing in as far as my part for a meeting or whatever. I said all that to say that it doesn't matter, just grab some paper, grab a pen If that's all you have and you don't have four different color markers, it's fine, grab whatever you have and let's start creating a mind map. Now that you know exactly what mind mapping is, we've talked about the seven different types of mind mapping techniques and things that you'll want to do that's different, the structure of mind mapping. The next thing that we're going to do is draw a mind map together. Get your popcorn and paper and whatever you need to get going and start mind mapping. All right, see you in the next lecture. 5. Practice Mind Mapping Together: Right now, let's go ahead and create a mind map together. We're going to be using just standard. This is 8.5 by 11 sheet of just printer paper. Nothing special about it, but we're going to be using that. We're also going to be using just colorful markers. I've grabbed about, let's see, six colors and these are the colors of the rainbow. So yes, we're going to be using rainbow colors for our markers. We're also going to be using just a typical Sharpie. I'll go ahead and focus. We're also going to be using a typical just plain Sharpie marker as well as a Pilot G-2.0 or 0.38 gel pen. Let's get started. Right now what we're going to be doing is we're going to be following the steps to mind mapping, the seven different steps. I am going to be creating a mind map about my passions. Let's create a mind map about passions. It doesn't have to necessarily be a passion, but I just want something that you love or something that you like strongly or just like, somewhat. Well, we're going to be creating a mind map right here together. Go ahead and grab just a typical sheet, 8.5 by 11 or A4 paper, a Sharpie marker if you have it and if you have nothing else, then just use a pen. It's not that big of a deal. I'm going to go ahead and draw my central image in the middle. Since we're talking about passions, I am going to draw a heart right here in the middle of the paper. I'm going to roughly color it in, nothing like super fancy. I am going to talk about love. I'm going to put it in a nice scripty fun. It looks pretty. There we go. We're talking about love, we're talking about passions. I'm going to have over here an orange. One of my loves is graphic design, so I'm going to put that keyword, graphic design right here. This is not in any particular order at all. It's just things that come to me. That's the nice thing about mind mapping is that you do not have to go clockwise or counterclockwise. You can go all over the place. So as you have ideas, you can put them down. I definitely, of course, love my lovely family. Family is going to get a couple lines. I think this deserves a line of its own, and that is creativity. Creativity is also one of my loves. I love being creative, having a creative mind and we haven't used blue yet. Let's use blue. This is something unfortunately I haven't done for a while, way too long, is travel. I love to travel. People who have known me for a while know that traveling is really something that is near and dear to my heart. What I want you to do is I want you to draw your central image in the middle. You can use love, you can use like, you can use whatever topic you're wanting to use, but put that in the middle. You don't want to make your central image too big. We're going to be talking more about central images and branches and keywords and stuff in the upcoming lessons. But for now you want your central image to be located in the center of the page. I just used a representational item, which is a heart. Everyone understands that love and hearts go together no matter what kind of culture or wherever you're from. We've got a couple of different colors, I'm also going to turn this. I'm going to write a little bit more about graphic design. I love graphic design. I love being able to be free and create. I love communication. Let's connect these lines. Communication, that's a longer word, won't all fit there. I also love, as far as you know, travel and everything. I love taking pictures, so I love photos. I love definitely language. It's always fun when I travel to another country, whether it be in Malaysia or Mexico, Spain, wherever I love language. This is going to make me want to travel. All the different types of food, of course the culture. You can't have culture without the wonderful thing known as people, I love people, I love all the five senses involved as far as smells and sights and touching, just how things feel. How does the brick feel on my hands when I'm walking down? How do things sound such as the cobblestone beneath my feet? What kind of crunching sound does that make? I'm going to leave that alone because I'm getting way too excited about travel and I want to travel right now, I want to go. But right now we are creating a mind map. So creativity, I love definitely creativity. I love being able to have design, and I'm going to take this and graphic design is a huge part. I'm just going to put a star next to here. Yeah, that's a star. Graphic design is a huge part of creativity and being creative for me. Also photography, I've mentioned it before. I love photography and writing of course. I love being able to write and create courses such as this. My God who else? Not many other people get geeky about mind mapping courses, but for me, it's fun, it's creative and it's a great way to express that creativity. Then there's also drawing and all the markers and I'm just going to make a sub-branch for markers and tech, iPad would definitely be in there. I love iPad and how you can be creative on an iPad. I love creating Udemy courses. I even have like Skillshare and so forth. Now, certainly last but not least, I want to talk about my family. Since they're getting lost in this equation, I am going to bring it out by putting a little yellow halo and sparkly miss around family. I love my kiddos. I've got two kids. I got a boy who's just precious and a handful, and a little girl who is just the sweetest little girl ever. That's a fact. I love my family, my husband, we have fun. We've known each other since we were 16. We're no longer 16. I am no longer 16 instead, I am proudly 41 and with an 18 month old is awesome and a seven-year-old. We got get togethers and extended family. Extended and of course you got to love Christmas. That's not a Christmas tree. Let's draw a Christmas tree like this. Definitely Christmas. Then we'll just write Christmas is way more fun with little kids and family and everything and just dinners, conversations at dinners and everything. Anyway, I'm going to leave this like this and because I am artsy, I'm going to go ahead and sign this over here. Put my signature right there, and what is the date? That's readable. Here we have the mind map that we just created. Let's try and get all that in the frame. We've got the mind map that we just created. Your mind map will look something entirely different but it's fun because with mind mapping, it's completely personal. You can do whatever you want to do. Get out some paper, just regular paper. If you can find markers, all the better. If you don't, then just use a Sharpie or in that case a pen or whatever it might be. Just go ahead and create your mind map. See you in the next lesson. 6. Quick Start Challenge: Time for a quick start challenge. Man, that is one good looking mind map. We just went through and create this mind map. You've seen mine. I now want to see your mind maps. Definitely reach out on social media, connect with me on Facebook or Instagram. Either one will be just fine. On Facebook you can reach me at, Aisha Creativity Coach and on Instagram it's a lot more simple. You can reach me at Aishaborel. Also definitely use the hashtag mind map revolution because that is exactly what I'm trying to create here. I want to get people mind mapping all over the world and sharing their mind maps with one another. Join in the revolution and share your mind maps with me and everyone else out there. I look forward to seeing your mind map.