3 Ways to Use Mind Maps

I recently picked up a copy of The Mind Map Book, mostly by accident. I was looking for memory books in a Half Price Bookstore, and came across it in the Memory section. It is written by one of the most prolific authors on memory, Tony Buzan, but it is a departure from some of his other memory books.

Mind mapping is essentially brainstorming on paper, but Buzan has really applied this simple technique to multiple arenas. Mind Maps can be used to help make decisions, take notes, give presentations, organize complex data, and much more.

It is surprisingly simple and easy to use, but there is a lot you can learn from it. Your brain will do most of the work for you once you get started, and you will be surprised by the associations you will make beween different ideas.

For authors, there are three main ways I would suggest using Mind Maps:

1. Outline books you have read. This is a great way to have a "bird's-eye view" of an entire book. You can fit an entire book on one page, and it will have almost too much information. Very helpful if you make one of these for each book as you read it. Not only will you remember the material better, you will be able to refer back to your map to refresh your memory.

2. Brainstorming writing ideas. I always urge authors to come up with new ideas, but it can be difficult. Using Mind Maps, you should be able to brainstorm a lot of ideas quickly. The goal is to come up with a new category or a new idea, and be the first author in that category. After all, if you are first, you are the best by default. Use the Mind Map to find more ideas than you will ever be able to use.

3. Outlining your book. Use a Mind Map when you are doing your initial outline of your book. This will help you organize your data better, see associations you missed before, and spark new ideas. It will also help you break down your book into small chunks to write on. It is much easier to break down your book into smaller parts to get your writing started; sitting down to write 300 pages at once is daunting for anyone.

Use these links to find Mind Map material online. I highly recommend picking up The Mind Map Book.

Wikipedia Definition
Free Online Mind Map creation - limit 3
Mindtools Info

See my first mind map here. Have you made any mind maps? What do you find them most useful for?

How to Outsource Your Memory and Never Forget a Quote Again

One of the most frustrating things for readers and writers is forgetting where a quote came from. I hate it when I remember a great quote, but can't remember which book it is from. After flipping through a few books and searching for it online, I often give up.

Enter Evernote. I first read about this tool in The 4-Hour Workweek but have been putting off really testing it out for awhile. Now I can't believe that I have gone so long without it. In short, Evernote is a online note taking and storage program that uses text recognition and tagging. That may not mean much at first glance, but it changes everything for me.

Now when I finish a book, I flip back through and take a picture of any page that I have highlighted a quote on with my Evernote program on my iPhone. After snapping all of the pictures, you can tag them with the name of the book, project, and any other information you need to help keep it organized. This is is the best part . . . your notes are then uploaded to Evernote online and the text you just took a picture of is now searchable!

If you want to find every quote you have highlighted in any book that contains the word "reformation" it takes about 5 seconds. Or if you need to search all the notes from a project you worked on a couple of years ago, its a piece of cake. Best of all, its free up to a certain data limit. You can take it for a test run and see if it is right for you.

I have only scratched the surface of the things you can do with Evernote, and will post more about other things you can use if for in the future. What are some uses that you can think of? Will this change how you research your next book? Are there any other programs out there that you think are better?

3 Myths About Creativity

Creativity is considered a gift from above; some people have it, some don't. My goal is to help people rethink what creativity is, how it works, and how you can apply it to writing your books.

1. Creativity is not just a gift. It is an acquired skill. The sooner that you accept this the better. Creativity is something you can work at and achieve. Very few people are born with an innate creativity that flows from their fingertips as paintings, books, or music. Most of the time the most creative people are the most determined, those who push through failures to find success.

2. Creativity not something you think up. It is something you do. Steven Pressfield has a great book on creativity for authors called The War of Art. While his underlying philosophy is wrong, he has some excellent advice for all of those trying to actually do something creative. One of the first lines in his book states, "There's a secret that real writers know that wannabe writers don't, and the secret is this: It's not the writing part that's hard. What's hard is sitting down to write."

3. Creative ideas do not come from nothing. You have to work at it. Ideas fuel creativity. If sitting down is the the hard part for writers, staring at a blank page is not any easier. Ideas fuel our thoughts, and when they are put into words they produce books that can be great. One of my all time favorite books is a guide to creative thinking. This book has about 40 concrete tools you use to fuel creativity. Just using one of the techniques this book teaches will give you more ideas then you can possibly use. Read my review of Thinkertoys here.