I’ve always had a hard time getting ideas from my head onto paper. When faced with a blank page, I freeze. I get overwhelmed and want to quit before I start. Mind mapping, for me, is a way to draw the ideas from my head and have them jump onto the paper. By taking away that overwhelmed feeling of having to get everything done in one shot, I’m able to free up my thoughts and get stuff done.
I start by taking sticky notes and writing just a small idea on each one. From there the words start to flow freely; more and more information appears on those sticky notes, which I am then able to transfer onto pages in a notebook. On those pages I’m able to organize the thoughts into different categories. Because you’re literally moving your thoughts around by picking up the sticky notes and reorganizing them, it really gets the creative juices flowing. As I view those different categories in front of me, I’m able to condense and edit that abundance of information to create a narrative thread. This allows me to solve the problem that I was faced with in the beginning: getting ideas from my head onto paper.
My father introduced me to mind mapping right before an intimidating video interview I had to do. I was experiencing that same frightened feeling of freezing and wanting to give up, but I was able to use this mind-mapping tool to organize my thoughts and solve the problem. This has since become my go-to problem-solving tool.