Mind Maps
A Powerful Approach to Note
Taking
Related variants: Spray Diagrams, Spider
Diagrams, Spidograms, Spidergrams and
Mindmaps
Mind Map™ is a trade mark of the Buzan Organization
Mind Mapping is a useful technique that improves the way you take notes, and supports and enhances your creative problem solving. By using Mind Maps, you can quickly identify and understand the structure of a subject, and the way that pieces of information fit together, as well as recording the raw facts contained in normal notes.
More than this, Mind Maps encourage creative problem solving, and they hold information in a format that your mind finds easy to remember and quick to review.
Popularized by Tony Buzan, Mind Maps abandon the list format of
conventional note taking. They do this in favor of a
two-dimensional structure. As such, a good Mind Map shows the
'shape' of the subject, the relative importance of individual
points, and the way in which facts relate to one another.
Mind Maps are more compact than conventional notes, often taking up
one side of paper. This helps you to make associations easily. And
if you find out more information after you have drawn the main Mind
Map, then you can easily add it in.
Mind Maps are also useful for:
What's more, they are very quick to review as you can often refresh information in your mind just by glancing at one. In the same way, they can be effective mnemonics: Remembering the shape and structure of a Mind Map can give you the cues you need to remember the information within it. As such, they engage much more of your brain in the process of assimilating and connecting facts, compared with conventional notes.
Drawing Simple Mind Maps
The original Mind Tools site was planned and researched using Mind Maps. They are too large to publish here, however part of one is shown below. This shows research into time management skills:
Figure 1: An Example Mind Map
To make notes on a subject using a Mind Map, draw it in the following way:
As you come across new information, link it in to the Mind Map appropriately.
A complete Mind Map may have main topic lines radiating in all
directions from the center. Sub-topics and facts will branch off
these, like branches and twigs from the trunk of a tree. You do not
need to worry about the structure produced, as this will evolve as
you develop your mind map.
Note that the idea of numbered 'levels' in Figure 1 is only
used to explain how the Mind Map was created. All we are showing is
that major headings radiate from the center, with lower level
headings and facts branching off from the higher level
headings.
While drawing Mind Maps by hand is appropriate in many cases,
software tools like Mind Genius improve the process by helping to
you to produce presentation quality Concept Maps, which can easily
be edited, distributed and redrafted.
Improving your Mind Maps
Once you understand how to make notes in the Mind Map format, you can develop your own conventions to take them further. The following suggestions may help to increase their effectiveness:
Click on the thumbnail below for a great example of a mind map that has extremely high visual impact.
Key points:
Mind Mapping is an extremely effective method of taking notes.
Mind Maps show not only facts, but also the overall structure of a
subject and the relative importance of individual parts of it. They
help you to associate ideas and make connections that you might not
otherwise make.
If you do any form of research or note taking, try experimenting
with Mind Maps. You will find them incredibly useful!
The Cornell Note Taking System
Effective and efficient note-taking
When you're taking notes at a meeting, conference or training class, how much information can you hope to recall? Do your notes help you easily recall the key points and actions? Or do they help very little even just a few hours after the event?
Over the years, there have been many "tried and tested" systems of note taking proposed for students and business people alike. The Cornell Note Taking System is a very simple yet effective system.
Originally developed for students by Walter Pauk at Cornell University, it is effective whenever you need to take notes and recall information.
The Cornell System is a great way of organizing your notes so that you can later identify the key points and actions, and recall information easily. With this system, you organize the notes as you take them; there is no need to go extra effort of rewriting your notes. So the system is both effective and efficient.
Speed Reading
Radically Increasing Your Reading Speed
Speed Reading can help you to read and understand written information much more quickly. This makes it an essential skill in any environment where you have to master large volumes of information quickly, as is the norm in fast-moving professional environments. What's more, it's a key technique to learn if you suffer from "information overload", because it helps you to become much more discriminating about the information that you consume.
The Key Insight
The most important trick about speed reading is to know what information you want from a document before you start reading it. If you only want an outline of the issue that the document discusses, then you can skim the document quickly and extract only the essential facts. If you need to understand the real detail of the document, then you need to read it slowly enough to gain the full understanding you need.
You will get the greatest time savings from speed reading by learning to skim excessively detailed documents, although the techniques you'll learn will help you improve the speed of all the reading you do.
Technical Issues
Even when you know how to ignore irrelevant detail, there are other technical improvements you can make to your reading style which will increase your reading speed.
Most people learn to read the way young children read – either letter-by-letter, or word-by-word. As an adult, this is probably not the way you read now: Just think about how your eye muscles are moving as you read this. You will probably find that you are fixing your eyes on one block of words, then moving your eyes to the next block of words, and so on. You are reading blocks of words at a time, not individual words one-by-one. You may also notice that you do not always go from one block to the next: sometimes you may move back to a previous block if you are unsure about something.
A skilled reader will read many words in each block. He or she will only dwell on each block for an instant, and will then move on. Only rarely will the reader's eyes skip back to a previous block of words. This reduces the amount of work that the reader's eyes have to do. It also increases the volume of information that can be assimilated in a given period of time.
A poor reader will become bogged down, spending a lot of time reading small blocks of words. He or she will skip back often, losing the flow and structure of the text, and confusing his or her overall understanding of the subject. This irregular eye movement makes reading tiring. Poor readers tend to dislike reading, and they may find it harder to concentrate, and understand written information.
How to Use Tool
Speed reading aims to improve reading skills by:
These are explained below:
You will be able to increase your reading speed a certain amount on your own by applying these speed reading techniques.
What you don't get out of self-study is the use of specialist reading machines and the confidence gained from successful speed-reading – this is where a good one-day course can revolutionize your reading skills.
Key points:
By speed reading you can read information more quickly. You may also get a better understanding of it, as you will hold more of it in short term memory.
To improve the speed of your reading, read more words in each block and reduce the length of time spent reading each block. Use a pointer to smooth the way your eyes move and reduce skip-back.
SQ3R
Increasing Your Retention of Written Information
SQ3R is a useful technique for fully absorbing written information. It helps you to create a good mental framework of a subject, into which you can fit facts correctly. It helps you to set study goals. It also prompts you to use the review techniques that will help to fix information in your mind.
By using SQ3R to actively read a document, you can get the maximum benefit from your reading time.
How to Use the Tool:
The acronym SQ3R stands for the five sequential techniques you should use to read a book:
Key Points:
SQ3R is a useful technique for extracting the maximum amount of benefit from your reading time. It helps you to organize the structure of a subject in your mind. It also helps you to set study goals and to separate important information from irrelevant data.
SQ3R is a five-stage active reading technique. The stages are:
If you use SQ3R, you will significantly improve the quality of your study time.
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