How to... #2 - How to Mindmap...the art of mapping your mind...(unless you have a mind like mine!)

When it comes to planning an assignment, one of the most common forms planning takes is a mind map, but how exactly is one constructed?

First and foremost it depends if you are taking a structured or unstructured approach. (Both are equally valid and don't let anyone tell you otherwise, at the end of the day it is whatever suits you.)

For the more structurally minded among you, there are already a plethora of existing theories and indeed suppporting software (Mindgenius is a name which springs to mind) which can assist you with the process of beginning from your main or root idea and breaking out into the various subsections from there. This kind of approach hinges on moving from the general topic outward to the relative subtopics and then detailing those subtopics in a series of further outward going branches with the result being

something which resembles plant roots and as an approach is perfectly applicable to the wide majority of assignments. You can be as detailed or developed in the sub-branches as you wish, ranging from simply noting topic headings to writing more developed points and in the case of Mindgenius, this software then allows you to export your mindmap to MS Word and automatically constructs a document relative to the information you have put in the mindmap, so if your sub-branches are incredibly detailed, the exported document will be close to a completed essay!

Myself however, I am a non-linear, creative thinker and so I opt for a more unstructured approach, letting my mind guide itself through more of a web with ideas overlapping and interlinking until I see the whole idea take form in front of me and I can be confident there are no "loose" threads, so to speak. More often than not I work on paper (the bigger the better, I virtually repapered my student room during studying!) but that is just my personal preference and I am no stranger now to technology with OneNote in particular allowing the facilty to continually expand further and further out with ideas.

While it might seem preferable to beging from the root idea or main question, which I sometimes do, at other times I might simply put the question at the top of the page as a reminder and let the creative mindmap attempt to

answer it by placing what I believe to be relevant peices of information and moving them around to see if and how they tie together. What I find to be the main advantage of this approach is that whereas a structured mindmap might help with organising ideas and information under their respective branches, the more creative type which I am discussing here allows you to develop your answer as well as organise, because it might be the case that, as previously noted in both the "How many drafts of my work should I do?" and "Where do I begin with academic writing?" posts, it is not unusual for you not to have a clear idea of your answer when you first begin and it can be useful to be able to simply throw down all ideas and all relevant material and see, through a process of connecting arrows and lines, where things do and do not interlink. Indeed I frequently say that students should, at the early stages of constructing their work, simply write everything, no matter how nosensical down, even it is just to get it out of their heads. You never know where a piece of information might become useful.

A final point to remember when it comes to mindmapping is that there is no one single way which is right for every person, just as their is no one single mind which is common to every person. It is your mind, your thoughts and your ideas

and therefore whatever way you decide or choose to plan organise or write down your ideas (so long as it ends up in the approved form for submission!) is completely fine. It might even be the case that mindmapping does not work for you and that is ok as well. All this is, is one idea that has worked for me in the past and for some other students, but whatever you decide to do at the end of the day is the right thing.

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