BookYol

Concept

Mind Mapping

Mind mapping is a quick, judgment-free way of generating ideas: you write one topic in the centre of a page, branch out through rings of free associations, and then combine words from the outer rings into new options that your careful, familiar thinking would not have produced.

Ask yourself what else you could do and the same few answers come back. That is not a lack of imagination. The brain serves up its most rehearsed ideas first, and design researchers call this pull of the familiar fixation. In a 1991 study, David Jansson and Steven Smith showed engineers a sample design and found they copied its features, flaws included. A mind map is a cheap way around that pull. The first ring of associations is usually predictable. By the third ring the words loosen and get strange, and that is where the useful material sits. Speed is the point, because pausing to judge each word brings the careful editor back. In Designing Your Life, Bill Burnett and Dave Evans start the map from something that genuinely energises you. They then combine words from the outer ring into new roles to sketch and test. A map gives you raw material, not a decision.

A real-life example

Mark teaches chemistry at a secondary school in Leeds and feels stuck. He writes 'explaining things' in the centre and spends five minutes branching out: students, whiteboards, then recipes, his grandmother's kitchen, radio, bread. In the outer ring he circles 'bread', 'radio' and 'explaining' and combines them into a short podcast on the chemistry of home baking. It is not on any list he has made before. He records three episodes to see whether he enjoys it.

How to use it

  1. 1Write one topic that energises you in the centre of a blank page. Pick something you enjoy doing, not a problem you need to solve.
  2. 2Set a timer for five minutes and branch out at least three rings. Write down every association without judging it, and stop only when the timer rings.
  3. 3Circle two or three words from the outer ring and combine them into one role or project. Then give it a name and a quick sketch, so it can be tested.