Any time you attend a lecture or speech, you may find it necessary to take notes. Mind mapping is a powerful tool that will help you capture the important parts of the talk to remember later without distracting you. A mind map is like a road map that helps you organize your thoughts and notes. It is fairly loose in structure, requiring little thought or effort to create, but logically organized at the same time to make your notes easy to interpret later—assuming you can read your own writing, of course. Mind mapping is an ancient tool, having been used in various forms ever since the third century, when the idea was developed by a famous thinker of the period, Porphyry of Tyros. Mind mapping became better known by the public during the 1960s, thanks to the studies of Dr. Allan Collins and M. Ross Quillian.
Instructions
1. Write the subject or main idea of the lecture, such as “Advanced Pyrotechnics,” in the center of your piece of paper and draw a circle around it. The bigger the piece of paper you use, the better. Of course, you do not always have much room to write during these occasions.
2. Identify each major topic of the talk as it comes along. Draw a line for each of these topics that radiates out from the central idea and label each of the lines with the topic.
3. Note important facts and sub-topics for each of the topics during the talk, drawing additional lines for each of these new sub-topics.
4. Continue expanding on each sub-topic until the speaker moves on to the next subject, and then move on to draw a new topic line for the next one. Work your way through each of the sub-topics until you write down everything you need to take away from the talk.
5. Color code branches or ideas after the talk, if you like, to set them apart visually.
Tags: Mind mapping, each these, piece paper