Barry's SuperBlog

- Leadership Skills, New Thinking, New Psychology for a New Millennium

Mind Mapping STINKS

On 10.05.09, In Creativity, personal productivity, by Barry Mapp

I am a great fan of Mind Mapping as a Memory and Study Tool but not much of a fan of Acronyms for Memory (acronyms only help you remember things you already know quite well – example ROYGBIV to remember the colours of the rainbow is not much good if you don’t know your colours [...]

I am a great fan of Mind Mapping as a Memory and Study Tool but not much of a fan of Acronyms for Memory (acronyms only help you remember things you already know quite well – example ROYGBIV to remember the colours of the rainbow is not much good if you don’t know your colours in the first place. If you do know all the colours then the Acronym is quite useful to arrange the main colours in their correct sequence (Red, Orange, Yellow.Green, Blue, Indigo, Violet)

However the acronym STINKS is of no use in remembering this list of Mind Mapping Benefits but it was good in grabbing your attention. If you think you hate Mind Mapping because it never seemed to work for you, you come here for mutual support. My message to you would be find a really good teacher who will guarantee you will get it or your money back

OR

You are a champion of Mind Mapping – you saw the headline and thought “what drivel is this guy promoting?”

So anyway here is STINKS

Mind Mapping:

Is great for SORTING the thoughts and Ideas you have in your Head. We often suffer from Mental Clutter. Mind Mapping is a great de-clutterer for your thinking. Mind Mapping is first and foremost a “Thought Organisation Tool”

is a great tool for T EACHING. Teaching yourself to learn and using it as a guide to help you help others learn. Mind Mapping was originally devised by Tony Buzan as a tool for study and learning

is exceedingly useful for INTEGRATING thoughts and Ideas. Helps you see the wood from the trees and in doing so helps to integrate important ideas together into a new ‘whole’

means NO MORE LISTS. Well not quite. Lists are very useful if they are for temporary stuff – like doing a to-do list, stuff that you want for today but you won’t need it for tomorrow. The great thing about lists is they take no time to prepare. However for stuff that you need to remember for the longer term Lists are useless and they are lazy. It takes much much more time to learn and remember a list than it does a list that has been reformatted as a Mind Map. (But it takes longer to format a Mind Map than it does a list). So the golden rule lists for temporary stuff Mind Maps for remembering stuff

helps you to uncover the KNOWLEDGE that you didn’t know you knew (the ‘trigger’ effect of Mind Maps can rekindle past memories)

is very good for SPEAKERS. Good to plan a speech, rehearse a speech, and deliver a speech – it just saves so much time compared to any other technique (I did a presentation on this last year at the Annual Convention of the Professional Speakers Association that went down really well).

Oh and the ‘S’ can also stand for SEXY. Mind Maps are just so much sexier than lists or bullet points.

So there you have it. Mind Mapping STINKS

Tweet This Post

People who put People First

On 07.29.09, In Know-How, by Barry Mapp

Quotation: “It is the individual who is NOT INTERESTED in his fellow man who has the greatest difficulties in life and provides the greatest injury to others” Alfred Adler
Potential Application: When recruiting people into financial services (including the CEO’s), or indeed into any Organisation, give highest credence not to paper qualifications, nor the drive to [...]

Quotation: “It is the individual who is NOT INTERESTED in his fellow man who has the greatest difficulties in life and provides the greatest injury to others” Alfred Adler

Potential Application: When recruiting people into financial services (including the CEO’s), or indeed into any Organisation, give highest credence not to paper qualifications, nor the drive to succeed and reach their goals but how much they are interested in other people. Look for people who put people before money.

Tweet This Post

Tagged with: Alfred Adler • Ceo • Credence • Fellow Man • Financial Services • Look For People • Money • Paper Qualifications • Quotation • Recruiting Services

Americans value science, but not all of it

On 07.10.09, In Know-What/Why, Non Political Party, by Barry Mapp

On Science and Scientists, Climate change and the Public – who is thinking clearly?
Just seen the results of this survey from Reuters. Of course we always need to take surveys with a pinch of salt, but I find the results of this particular survey (http://unhub.com/9Vmx) very interesting, particular about current opinions on Climate Change. The [...]

On Science and Scientists, Climate change and the Public – who is thinking clearly?

Just seen the results of this survey from Reuters. Of course we always need to take surveys with a pinch of salt, but I find the results of this particular survey (http://unhub.com/9Vmx) very interesting, particular about current opinions on Climate Change. The problems with surveys is they only leave us with more questions than provide any answers because they never seem to follow up and ask the really interesting things.

First a summary of the survey results with respect to the ’science’ of climate change:

The survey says that “while 84 percent of scientists say the Earth is getting warmer because of human activity, less than half of the public agrees with that”.

There are two things of interest to tease out from this. Firstly the ‘public’ view.

Is it that the ‘public’ are in denial of the ’science’ or is it that actually they don’t believe in the models that the scientists are using? Now it would be good to survey that. My money is on the fact that most of the public simply don’t believe the models. If so that would be very interesting as well to know why.

The second thing of interest is the viewpoint of the scientists. This survey showed that 16% of the scientists surveyed did not believe the ’science’. From what you read in the media I would have thought that it was fewer than 5% of scientists who did not agree with the interpretation of the ’science’. Again it would be most interesting to know more about the scientists who are the ‘non-believers’

So this survey would have been far more useful if we could have found out something about those ‘public’ that don’t believe the ’science’ of climate change (or rather the way most scientists are interpreting the data). Are they all people who just want to go on decimating rain forests etc? Are they actually people (like myself) who want to stop burning fossil fuels and decimating the planet, but have no confidence in the models that scientists are using to predict the global effects?

And the 16% of scientists that don’t believe the (interpretation of the) ’science’? Are they all in the pocket of the energy companies? Or are they merely scientists who are concerned that the data is contradictory or selectively taken and the models are inadequate to make predictions?

Tweet This Post

Tagged with: Burning Fossil Fuels • Climate Change • Denial • Earth • Firstly • Interesting Things • Models • Money • People • Pinch Of Salt • Rain Forests • Respect • Reuters • Scientists • Survey Results • Survey Showed That • Surveys • Tease • Value Science • Viewpoint

Barry's SuperBlog

Mind Mapping STINKS

People who put People First

Americans value science, but not all of it

Categories

Tags

Looking for something?

Visit our friends!

Archives