Creative Planning: Mind Mapping

Below is my valuable mind mapping guide I’ve been using for creating this round of 6 Degrees of Creativity online workshops.

Creative Planning: Mind Mapping

Over the last year, I’ve started to use this visual technique to organize ideas and thoughts and have found it super helpful for projects, meetings or presentations, and things I need help in better understanding or making sense of. Simply said in this article from LifeHacker, “a mind map is basically a diagram that connects information around a central subject.”

The article’s author Melanie Pinola describes mind mapping is way more than “just note-taking” and “can help you become more creative, remember more, and solve problems more effectively.”  She recommends that mind mapping can be used for an endless amount of thought related, learning, or planning activities.

One of the benefits she highlights is that creating this type of visual tool combining images and words can “be more memorable and enjoyable to create and review“.  Pinola also points out the value of the Picture Superiority Effect: “the combination of words and pictures is six times better for remembering information than words alone“:

For my 6 Degrees of Creativity mind mapping fun above, the 6 workshops surround and reach out from the center with all their different parts….ranging from idea content, art making prompts, intention, PDF and video resources, as well as ways for participants to engage this workshop community.

Creating this in visual form was fun to organize everything (to focus on in pieces, as well as a whole) and provided clarity on the purpose of each workshop space.

It’s nice to see what is on paper now ready in virtual form.  Lots more creative goodness begins here this week to artfully enjoy together during the rest of the year– Yay!

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Resources:

How to Use Mind Maps to Unleash Your Brain’s Creativity and Potential

Mind Mapping for Positive Health

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You Don’t Make the Fish, You Catch the Fish

One of my favorite creative people is filmmaker David Lynch, who created beautifully bizarre cult classics such as, but not limited to:  Eraserhead, Blue Velvet, Wild at Heart, Twin Peaks, and more recently, INLAND EMPIRE.  Lynch is also a visual artist who creates paintings, photographs, sketches, drawings, and doodling in his trademark  fashion: strange and mysterious to say the least.

David Lynch is also an avid believer of Transcendental Meditation (TM) and has been practicing this technique for over 30 years. He even founded a non-profit, The David Lynch Foundation for Consciousness-Based Education and World Peace that provides scholarships to implement in school TM programming, as well as funding for universities to research the effects of the program on creativity, intelligence, academic performance, concentration, stress reduction, and managing anxiety, depression, etc. throughout the US and globally.

Lynch often lectures on concepts related to creativity, idea making, and consciousness which I find rather interesting to listen to and motivates me to perhaps take another go at really learning meditation, which I have never been able to get the hang of, but could probably benefit from.

The video below showcases Lynch talking about his thoughts on where ideas come from and how the awareness or “catching ideas” is impacted by your level of consciousness.  He uses the concept of fishing to describe this process further:  it’s just not good enough to bait your hook to attract the fish (seeking the idea), but it is also influenced by how deep your fish line goes (diving into consciousness). According to Lynch, the fish/ideas that “catch” directly relate to your level of awareness.

“You don’t make the fish, you catch the fish…. There are no original ideas– just the ideas you caught”.   David Lynch

Here’s to catching lots of fish and being aware enough to know that the fish are biting!  Check out Lynch’s book, Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness, and Creativity for more.