My management invited a mind mapping guru to conduct an extensive seminar to some selected employees on mind mapping. Wiki defines Mind-Map as a way to simply find words and ideas from your imagination — if “imagination” sounds difficult, put simply, your thoughts. Consider the following key questions: Have you ever felt swamped by information? Are you suffering from the “too much to read, too little time to read it” syndrome? Do you find it hard to organise your thoughts into a logical flow? Do you easily forget important facts, figures, dates or events? Or, do you find it hard to keep up when making notes in meetings? If so, then there is a great chance that mind mapping could make life rather easy and as organised as it can be.

A mind map is actually a diagram used to represent words, ideas, tasks, or other items linked to and arranged around a central key word or idea, and is used to generate, visualize, structure, and classify ideas, and as an aid in study, organization, problem solving, decision making, and writing. The following are the benefits of mind mapping:

Learning — Reduce those ‘tons of work’. Feel good about study, revision and exams. Have confidence in your learning abilities.
Overviewing — See the whole picture, the global view, at once. Understand the links and connections.
Concentrating — Focus on the task for better results. Using all of your cortical skills attracts your attention.
Memorizing — Easy recall. ‘See’ the information in your mind’s eye.
Organizing — Be on top of all of the details for parties, holidays, projects or any other subject.
Presenting — Speeches are clear, relaxed and alive. You can be at your best.
Communicating — In all forms with clarity and conciseness.
Planning — Orchestrate all details and aspects ? from beginning to end ? on one piece of paper.
Meetings — From planning to agenda, to chairing, to taking the minutes the jobs are completed with speed and efficiency.
Training — From preparation to presentation they make the job easier and much faster .
Thinking — Having a method to analyze thoughts ? almost a way-station’ for them.
Negotiating — All the issues, your position and maneuverability in one sheet.
Brainstorming — Random thoughts are generated and appropriately assessed in real time.
*Source: http://www.mindmapper.com/mind/mind4.asp.