Using The Mind Mapping Technique To Increase Your Productivity
Do you think of yourself as a “right brained” or “left brained” person? Most people will have a strong affiliation with one or the other, but first, you must understand the differences between the two. The left side of the brain deals with numbers, words, logic, lists, and reasoning; whereas the right side deals with color, creativity, idea-generation, imagination, and seeing the full picture. So whilst left brain thinkers tend to rely on logic and analysis in everyday life, right brain thinkers are more artistic and imaginative with less of an emphasis on time or planning constraints.
Developed by Tony Buzan in the 1960s, mind mapping helps you to combine both sides of your brain so that you can solve problems, be organized, and be creative at the same time. This is referred to as “whole brain thinking”.
“Mind mapping can be described as a visual tool that helps us to organize, memorize, learn, brainstorm, and structure information.”
For some people, linear list-making comes naturally when they want to organize their thoughts and ideas, and this is the sign of a predominantly left brain person. Right brain thinkers, however, will tend to create doodles, jot quick notes on post-its, and basically have what appears to be a more disorganized looking process (that doesn’t mean that it’s disorganized to them though!).
It is actually thought that Leonardo Da Vinci had the perfect right-left brain balance. Author, Michael Gelb, discusses this in his book “How to think Like Leonardo Da Vinci”, which describes Leonardo’s life as a scientist and as an artist. Leonardo practiced to achieve ambidexterity in both his drawing and writing skills and his art was incredibly mathematically precise. In addition, his scientific inventions were expressed creatively through his artistic drawings. In the book, Gelb goes on to assert that anyone can become a whole brain thinker by developing the right balance between science/logic and art/creative thinking.
Mind mapping encourages you to use both sides of your brain by not only coming up with ideas and writing them down, but also using drawings and color to brainstorm and express yourself better. For this reason, mind mapping can increase retention by up to 95% in comparison to traditional note taking because it opens up new pathways of thinking for the brain. Mind mapping is about opening up your thought process so that you can integrate both sides of your brain to achieve optimal productivity in your daily work and life.
In order for mind mapping to actually work for you, it’s important that you give it a proper go. A recent study by Chuck Frey of Innovation Trend revealed that the more people used mind mapping, the more productive they became. The study also found that mind mapping immediately and significantly enhanced the productivity of most users.
Digital Mind Mapping Is The Future
The benefits of mind mapping are enormous; it gives you a fresh perspective, helps to generate new ideas, encourages collaboration, and makes it easy to break complex projects into achievable tasks. Does that sound at all familiar? If you’re a Buckets user, it should!
Buckets is designed around the same ethos of encouraging you to free up your mind by getting all of your thoughts out of your head and into a catch-all visual display that is completely fluid and adaptable. Doing so allows you to visualize your goals, interests, and aspirations, across various areas of your personal and professional life.
Mind mapping is more than just another productivity hack, it frees your mind from the constraints of linear thought by combining logic and creativity to allow you to work and live even more productively. After all, life is rarely linear and the way we work has changed dramatically over the past few years with the ever changing economy, so why try to fit a square peg into a round hole?
Whilst mind maps are known as paper drawings, it’s just as easy (and arguably more efficient!) to create your mind map in Buckets. If you still want to do the whole hands-on doodle thing (hey, I don’t blame you, it’s fun!), then you can simply transfer it over to Buckets and fine-tune it once you have a rough draft in place. This means that you’ll have a digital backup on hand as you need it (on your desktop or mobile device) and you can use the features available in Buckets to make your map even easier to manage, such as collaborating with your peers/team and using our awesome Doodle tool to get that right-brain lit up!
Remember, mind mapping is about more than drawing a picture and hoping for the best. Your mind map should trigger creative associations between seemingly disorganized information and provide you with much more clarity about your ideas, goals, and actions required to bring them to life.
How To Transform Your Visionary Mind Map Into An Actionable Project Using Buckets
- Choose a name for your Project
- Create a number of Columns within your Project to represent each area in your life.
- Create Cards within your Columns to contain the thoughts, goals, and ideas you have that belong in each area of your life.
- Create Notes in each Card to add in any ideas or thoughts you have.
- Create Checklists in each Card to break your goals down into a list of achievable tasks with deadlines and labels assigned according to priority.
- Attach any inspiring images/doodles/articles/videos/ to your Cards.
- Invite other members to join your Project to collaborate and mind map together!
Ready To Get Started?
Create your mind map today by logging into Buckets and setting up a new Project to get all of those awesome ideas flowing. If you’d like to share your mind maps with the Buckets community, just send us a screenshot over on Twitter @Bucketsdotco and you might inspire a other members to create their own! We can’t wait to see what you come up with!
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