Learning from Leonardo : Arte/Scienza and Mind-Mapping : Page 2 of 2
Learning from Leonardo: Arte/Scienza
Mind Mapping: Making the most of your right- and left-brain
By Linda Dessau
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Ten Ways Mind Mapping Can Help a Creative Mind
- Connection. Mind mapping provides a visual guide to the connections between ideas; you can see all your many ideas laid out in the same place.
- Creativity. Opens the floodgates and calls on your senses, not just your thinking mind; mind mapping is a visual and tactile process, gets you away from the computer and back to using paper and pen.
- Awakening. Lights numerous sparks, evokes new ideas and challenges you to be open to them.
- Confidence. Shows you the breadth of your work and ideas, immediate visual feedback of your efforts.
- Practical. Gets you into action and moving forward; "dump" now, organize later.
- Forgiving. Non-intimidating and non-judgmental; there's no wrong way and no wrong answers on a mind map; bypasses the inner critic.
- Structure. Gelb provides basic "rules" (pages 176-177) and these rules are explained, not just decreed; mind mapping provides a form for your formless ideas.
- Passport. Provides access for you and your ideas into the left-brain world; helps you to help left-brainers understand your ideas.
- Safe House. A place for your ideas to live while you're contemplating them; nothing gets lost; no fear of forgetting; you don't have to know what you're going to do with them yet.
- Infinite. You can stop your mind map and start again; you can re-do it so it's a closer interpretation of your current thought process; you can add to it or scribble things out and write over them.
I've used mind mapping twice recently, with very successful results. Once was to create an article for my Everyday Artist newsletter. It was a topic I'd been pondering for months, and I'd also been colleting opinions and feedback from readers and experts beforehand.
I was left feeling a bit overwhelmed about how to turn it all into a coherent piece! My solution? Maybe I'll try a mind map!
As a result I was able to pull together all of my thoughts as well as the quotes and interviews I'd collected. The mind map loosened me up and, most importantly, got me into action!
The second time was when I was working on THIS article. I was eager to try it again, now that I'd had a refresher on the "rules" of mind mapping.
There's no reason we have to settle for scattered thoughts just because we're creative. And there's no reason to settle for a mediocre trickle of ideas because we desire a structured finished product.
We can enlist both parts of our brain to work together and watch our creativity pour forth AND take shape.
Mind Mapping Examples and Resources
- Here is the mind map I created to pull my thoughts together for this article.
© Linda Dessau, 2006.
About the Author | More by Linda Dessau
Linda Dessau, the Self-Care Coach, helps artists enhance their creativity by addressing their unique self-care issues. Feel like your creativity is blocked? Sign-up for the FREE e-course, "Roadblocks to Creativity" by visiting www.genuinecoaching.com.
04/10/06
