Mind Map Mastery: The Complete Guide to Learning and Using the Most Powerful Thinking Tool in the Universe

139 Pages·2018·3.05 MB·English

by  Tony Buzan

Contents
Foreword by Dominic O’Brien
Preface
Introduction: Why Is This Book Needed?
1. What Is a Mind Map?
2. How to Mind Map
3. What Is Not a Mind Map?
4. Solution Finding
5. The Infinite Applications of Mind Maps
6. The Future of Mind Mapping
Resources
Acknowledgements
Foreword
I have been using Mind Mapping for many years. Today, I travel the world,
teaching business professionals, public figures and entire audiences to improve
their memory and cognitive ability in their personal and professional lives.
However, as a child I was diagnosed with dyslexia and I believe I had challenges
– and still do to some degree – with attention. I have found that Mind Mapping
is a great force to ward off the distraction of Attention Deficit Disorder. In short,
it helps me stay on track.
Mind Maps are powerful tools for focusing and processing information,
formulating a plan of action and getting started on new projects. In fact, Mind
Mapping is a huge guiding hand in every aspect of life – and I can’t recommend
it highly enough!
As well as giving readers the means to transform their own lives, Tony’s new
book, Mind Map Mastery, will welcome them into a lively global community.
The stories and examples show how Mind Mapping is a worldwide phenomenon
that is practised by all types of people. The one thing they have in common is
that they are passionate about the benefits of this thinking tool and go on to share
it with others.
I remain immensely grateful to Tony for inventing the Mind Map, and would
recommend his new book to anybody who wants to improve their thinking and
achieve Mind Map mastery themselves.
Dominic O’Brien,
eight-time World Memory Champion and bestselling author
Preface
“I’m looking for books about using the brain.”
“Try over there,” the librarian said, gesturing toward a shelf of books, “in the
medical section.”
“No,” I replied, “I’ve already gone through those titles and I’ve no desire to
operate on my brain; I just want to learn how to use it.”
The librarian looked at me blankly. “I’m afraid there aren’t any books about that
topic,” she said. “Only the textbooks we have here.”
I walked away feeling frustrated and astonished. In my second year at university,
I was searching for new ways to cope with an increased academic workload, as
my study methods simply weren’t yielding the results I was after. In fact, the
more notes I took, the worse I seemed to do. While I had yet to appreciate the
true limits of linear thinking, that day I realized my so-called problem in fact
represented an incredible opportunity. If there were no books about how to use
the brain, then here was an area with extraordinary potential for research.
Over the years that followed, I studied psychology and the general sciences,
neurophysiology, neurolinguistics and semantics, information theory, memory
and mnemonic techniques, perception and creative thinking. I came to
understand the workings of the human brain and the conditions that allow it to
perform at its best.
Ironically, my research also highlighted the flaws in my own study methods, as
it gradually dawned on me that my lecture notes were word-based, monotonic
and boring; if anything, their linear format offered an incredibly effective way of
training myself to be stupid! Practice makes perfect: if you practise perfectly,
your practice makes you perfect. However, if you practise badly, practice makes
you perfectly bad. When I began to practise more and more linear, monotonic
notetaking, I became more and more perfectly stupid! I urgently needed to
change both my thinking and my actions.
change both my thinking and my actions.
By studying the structure of the brain, I found the breakthrough I was searching
for. The fact that we possess a minimum of 100 billion brain cells, each one of
which contributes to our thinking, inspired me. I found it enthralling that each of
these neurons has tentacles radiating out from the cell’s centre like the branches
of a tree, and I realized that I could make use of this model diagrammatically to
create the ultimate thinking tool.
This proved to be a major contribution to the development of Radiant Thinking
(see page 33), which in turn helped lead to the birth of the Mind Map.
At its simplest, a Mind Map is an intricate diagram that mirrors the structure of a
brain cell with branches reaching out from its centre, evolving through patterns
of association. However, since its inception in the mid-1960s, the Mind Map has
proved to be much more than an excellent means of notetaking: it is an efficient
and profoundly inspiring way to feed our starving minds, intellects and spirits. It
has developed exponentially and, as you will see in this book, can be applied in
many ways – from nurturing creativity and strengthening memory to helping
fight dementia.
Over the years, the Mind Map has been misunderstood by some and
misrepresented by others, yet my vision persists of a world in which every child
and adult understands what a Mind Map is, how it works, and how it can be
applied to all aspects of life.
This book aims to show you how a good Mind Map can feed you as an
individual, and how the Mind Map itself continues to grow, expand and evolve
in order to tackle the new challenges we all face on this planet.
And now, as we advance into the 21st century, the Mind Map can be accessed
and utilized in new forms that mirror our burgeoning new technical possibilities.
Mind Maps can still be hand drawn, of course, but they can also be generated by
computer program, they are available online, they have been traced in the Arctic
snow, they have adorned the sides of mountains and they can even be etched by
drones in the sky.
Join me in this great adventure and prepare to radiate your mental power far
beyond anything you have ever experienced before!
TONY BUZAN
Introduction
Why Is This Book Needed?
A Mind Map is a revolutionary thinking tool that, when mastered, will transform
your life. It will help you process information, come up with new ideas,
strengthen your memory, get the most out of your leisure time and improve the
way you work.
I devised the Mind Map initially as an innovative form of note-taking that can be
used in any situation where linear notes would normally be taken, such as
attending lectures, listening to telephone calls, during business meetings,
carrying out research and studying. However, it quickly became clear that Mind
Maps can also be used for ground-breaking design and planning; for providing
an incisive overview of a subject; for inspiring new projects; for uncovering
solutions and breaking free from unproductive ways of thinking, among many
other things. In this book, you will come across innumerable exciting
applications for Mind Maps. They can even be used as an exercise in their own
right to give your brain a workout and boost your powers of creative thinking.
In Mind Map Mastery, you will discover how Mind Mapping can help you
access your own multiple intelligences and realize your true potential. The
practical exercises in this book are designed to train you in this expansive way of
thinking, and you will discover the true stories of other people, including master
Mind Mappers and world-renowned experts and pioneers in their fields, whose
lives have been radically transformed by Mind Mapping.
Your brain is a sleeping giant, and Mind Map
Mastery is here to help wake it up!
A New Way of Thinking
When I introduced Mind Maps to the world in the 1960s, little did I suspect what
lay ahead. In the preliminary stages of my research into human thinking, I used
an early prototype of Mind Mapping to improve my studies. This was a form of
an early prototype of Mind Mapping to improve my studies. This was a form of
note-taking in which I combined words and colours. It evolved when I started to
underline the keywords in my notes and realized they made up less than 10
percent of what I had written down. Yet these keywords unlocked core concepts.
Through my study of the ancient Greeks, I knew I needed to find a simple way
to make connections between the keywords so that they could be easily
memorized.
The ancient Greeks developed a number of elaborate memory systems that
enabled them to perfectly recall hundreds and thousands of facts. These systems
relied on the power of imagination and association to make connections through,
for example, the method of loci. This was one of the techniques invented by the
ancient Greeks to improve their memories and is also known as the Memory
Journey, the Memory Palace or the Mind Palace Technique (see box, right).
I came across the method of loci during my research into human thought
processes, but I had been unwittingly introduced to another mnemonic method in
the very first minutes of my very first day at university. This was the Major
System – a phonetic method developed by the German writer and historian
Johann Just Winckelmann (1620–99). In the first lecture of my university term, a
sardonic professor, built like a barrel with tufts of red hair sprouting from his
head, walked into the lecture room and, hands clasped behind his back,
proceeded to call out the roll of students perfectly. If somebody was absent, he
called out their name, the names of their parents, and the student’s date of birth,
phone number and home address. When he had finished, he looked at us with a
raised eyebrow and a slight sneer. He despised his students, but he was a
marvellous teacher – and I was hooked.
How to Build a Memory Palace
According to the Roman orator Cicero (106–43 BCE), the spatial
memorization technique known as the method of loci (or places, from the
Latin loci) was discovered by a Greek lyric poet and sophos (wise man)
called Simonides of Ceos (c.556–c.468 BCE).
In his dialogue De Oratore, Cicero describes how Simonides attended a