Studying to some comes easy and natural while others find it immensely difficult and no matter what they do they can’t find the way to make it easier.
Mind mapping is a technique that can help you learn things faster, memorize things without much trouble, but it is somewhat difficult to master which is why most of those that try it report back as unsuccessful.
It is not all that new of a concept and it has been used for a while but what made it unfamiliar and less known about than it should be is the fact that techniques of mind mapping are used incorrectly.
Mind maps are a surprisingly complicated and technical skillset that needs you to follow a specific set of guidelines for you to master them.
Today we will discuss a bit about that and we will try to teach you those guidelines and how to master them to beat mind mapping correctly. If you find a need to know more about this we can also refer you to zenflowchart.com which will offer you even more info on this and probably learn you a thing or two more.
1. Grouping
Now when you have ideas you should start organizing them into various groups and boxes. This type of organization of data in this way will allow you to make more sense out of some things and simplify the knowledge.
Look at it this way – instead of trying to learn 10 separate things at once you should take those and group them into categories that will allow you to create certain connections between those things.
This will also allow for a lot of smaller concepts that will fit nicely into a bigger picture that are fundamentally larger. It is always easier to work with a larger concept, it allows for more flexibility, instead of having to learn and go through every individual detail.
2. Reflect
This concept that is supposed to help your mind map more successful and easier states that whatever your notes are and however they look on paper should be a reflection of whatever is happening in your mind. This is tied to the way we all take notes when we are learning something.
As you know we all take notes left to right and down the page and it is called linear note writing. The fun part is that our brain does not work or memorize linearly. To succeed in the mind map game, you need to throw away this type of taking notes because it will take your time and not be as efficient as it should be. Note-taking should look messy and without much sense because to tie it all in a big cohesive and possible to interpret “chunk” you need the next thing on our list.
3. Interconnection
Interconnection means that you will now start to group all of your ideas and categories of information that you had and created before and you will start to connect them. The most important thing here is not to connect ideas that already seem connected, but the goal is to go deeper and find more connections outside that small scope or box, or whatever else you want to call it.
You want to allow yourself a way to make new and distant connections that have a lot of potentials to be more meaningful than those obvious ones. This will allow you to appreciate and better understand the big picture more holistically, and it will stop from knowledge being isolated which makes it weak.
4. Less of verbal notes
Here you don’t need to make a lot of notes that are super verbal and complicated because you are already learning in that form way too much anyway. This also takes a lot of time and very often isn’t that productive.
Mind mapping liberates you from that and allows you to memorize, tie in and understand things a lot better without writing much or explaining every little thing to yourself, through your notes. Using this technique, you will allow yourself to spare time, be more creative, doodle more and write a lot more arrows and symbols and similar that will in the end allow you to increase the retention of that knowledge as well as its depth.
Removing from linear style notes is difficult and what you can do to make it easy is remove some words for the beginning, and as you progress remove more and more until you reach that comfort level that will suit your learning style.
5. Directionality
This technique is talking about an idea that we are creating, not just these connections that we were writing about before, and not only are we looking for new and distant connections but we are rearranging these connections in a way that has a very specific order and directionality.
Why is directionality so important? Well, the simple answer is because it gives us flow where that flow is talking about the cause and effect relationship which are fundamentally logical. When directionality and flow are good it means that the organization of things in your mind is good and you managed to best utilize all the previous techniques in the best way possible, and thanks to that your trip towards logic are much easier.
6. Emphasized
This technique seems a bit tangled but it is really easy to understand if you read carefully. What this helps with is reducing the cognitive load of the technique without reducing the cognitive load of learning. Yes, it seems a bit weird but let us explain.
By making the technique itself easier but still making our brain work hard to figure it out you strike a perfect balance where your energy is directed to high-quality learning which is a cognitive load on that side, and at the same time, you have a low cognitive load on executing the technique.
This allows you to have all the techniques present were somewhat habitual and natural where you want to be able to focus on the task at hand. To sum the entire thing in a few words. Emphasizing the elements of the mind map means that techniques become a lot easier while the learning remains high-quality.