Accelerate your learning - mind mapping

In today's world with the incredible speed of change you have to find ways to learn quickly. One of the techniques I encountered through my training life was mind mapping. We had set up a learning centre in our office and we bought a video that explained mind mapping which sounded quite interesting. By coincidence, shortly afterwards, I happened to be sitting next to someone at a conference I was attending and I noticed that she was creating a mind map for each talk. She had a A5 size note book and pens with different colours. In one of the breaks I asked her how she came to learn mind mapping. She told me that their team had decided to learn mind mapping for a period of three months and then the use of the technique was optional. They discovered that 8 out of the 10 members of the team continued to mind map and used it for just about everything. So I started too and years later I still use it. We had the daughter of a member of staff working in our learning centre during her gap year before university. I encouraged her to start using mind mapping and she took to it in a big way. She went on to Cardiff university and used it for all her lecture notes. When it came to revision she created mind maps of mind maps and passed her degree with top marks.

The video we had in our learning zone was by Tony Buzan and here is a short video where he explains mind mapping.

Here is an explanation of how to use mind mapping.

A lot of my mind mapping has been using multi coloured pens and a sketchbook. Then I decided sometime back that I wanted a mind mapping app that I could use on my iPhone and iPad. Having looked around I decided that iThoughts gave me everything I wanted and it has served me well.

I've recorded a short video to show how I have used iThoughts to capture my personal vision as a happy retiree.