Do you ever feel like you have some great ideas, but when you sit
down to write them, they’re not so great? Or even worse, you can’t
really get a sense of what the ideas were?
In one of my graduate student coaching groups we have been
discussing the difficulty of translating partly formed ideas into words
on paper. One technique that makes use of a normally underutilized part
of our brain is called “Mind Mapping.”
What is a Mind Map?
Tony Buzan, who created the word “Mind Map” and has written extensively on it, describes it as a powerful graphic technique that
makes use of the way our brains naturally work. He says it has four characteristics.
1. The main subject is crystallized in a central image
2. The main themes radiate from the central image as branches
3. Branches comprise a key image or key word printed on an associated line.
4. The branches form a connected nodal structure
How Do You Mind Map?
Mind mapping is best done in color. If you have some markers or colored pencils, and a sheet of white paper, you’re ready. If you don’t, just use what you have. Start with the central idea that you are trying to wrap your mind
around. It could be the big picture (e.g. your next chapter) or a smaller idea (e.g. the next few paragraphs.) Write it down in one or two words at the center of the paper, and draw a circle around it.  If there is a symbol or picture that you can put with the words, sketch that in. The idea is that you are activating the non-verbal side of your brain. The quality of what you draw is not important, since you will be the only one seeing it. The same is true for the ideas you come up with. Don’t edit, just put in what comes to mind. There are no rules for the way to proceed from here. I tend to break rules, anyway. The way my mind works, I start thinking of related ideas, categories, and ideas, which I write in little circles surrounding the circle in the middle. I then use lines to connect them. Tony Buzan likes to draw curved lines emanating from the center, and write the related or associated ideas on the lines. The result looks like a tree emanating from a central spot. My technique looks more like a bunch of lollipops. As you continue to add associated ideas to your outer circles or branches, you continue to draw the connections. You will notice as you fill them in that there are cross connections that appear. I find it helpful to draw lines between those interconnecting ideas.
How Does a Mind Map Help?
The brain is an associative network, and the right hemisphere (in most people) is responsible for non-verbal, visual, associative and much creative thinking. Normally when writing, we are mostly making use of our left hemisphere, which tends towards the analytical, one-thought-at-a-time approach. Our internal thoughts, however, are not shaped like that. Thus we have a roadblock as we try to get our brilliant thoughts on paper. By using a Mind Map as a starting point for thinking, you can bypass the blockage and feeling of overwhelm caused by overly analytical thinking. The Mind Map allows you to see more than one thought at a glance, and in doing so helps clarify your thinking. It shows the way ideas are interrelated (or less related than you thought.) It allows more access to creative, non-linear parts of our brain.
How Can Grad Students and Professors Use Mind Maps?
At this point, you’re probably thinking, “How is it that Gina writes so brilliantly and clearly? How does she keep all her creative thoughts straight?” The secret is that I use Mind Maps to write my articles. So it’s not a high IQ but my Mind Mapping skills that got me where I am today.  Here are some helpful ways to make use of Mind Mapping.

1. Use it for brainstorming ideas for your proposal or new research project.
2. Make a Mind Map of your next chapter or the one you’re currently stuck on.
3. When planning your career, make a Mind Map to show the pros and cons of your available options.
4. Use a Mind Map to take notes.
5. Mind Mapping can help keep you awake and interested in your subject.
6. Prepare for an upcoming meeting with a Mind Map and use it to explain your ideas.
7. Use it in teaching, both to prepare classes and for handouts.
Play around with Mind Mapping. You’ll find it’s a refreshing break from the one-foot-in-front-of-the-other way that we approach many things in life.

To be up there with the best strategic thinkers, you need to use the left and right sides of your brain, a skill which takes practice as well as confidence. Having the logic and creative sides to your skillset are of immense value.

Here are some skills that the very best strategic thinkers have, and use, every day.

They Have a Vision

They are great at both thinking with a strategic purpose as well as creating a Visioning process. They have both tools in their kit and they use both to complement each other. This form of supportive thinking and seeing the future, creates a way of thinking and evolving strategy that is focused and yet broad.

Make Time

In a busy businesses and organisations, be they small or large, making the time is vital. At the top of their game key strategic thinkers take time out. Maybe a retreat (maximum points!); maybe a day in a hotel foyer; maybe an afternoon somewhere/anywhere, with a blank sheet and a thinking hat on. Whatever works for them – but they do it.

Are Not Hasty

The clue is in the description, Strategic Thinking is not about today, tomorrow or next week. In close partnership with holding a clear vision for the business future, these two create the tomorrows of the future. But not tomorrow! This is shaping, coaxing, tuning for a quality business performance in the years to come. Great exponents take time to fine tune, revise and engineer quality futures!

Absorb and Notice

They are truly aware. In any business, there are clues, often subtle, both internal and external, to help guide future direction and realize opportunities. Great Strategic Thinkers take all of this in, so that as they set aside time to think, they have a full deck of information to guide them. Sometimes, it’s an ‘aha’ moment on vacation, when they observe something that resonates; it might be on a morning walk out in the country; it might be what someone says as they serve them coffee. Making links, however tenuous, is what makes this work so well.

Review Often

The best Strategic Thinkers check that their thinking has been validated. Is it going to work, against a world of regular, consistent and yet sometimes volatile change? This activity is a moving target, so to build a better understanding, snapshots; benchmarks and regular stocktaking are all very useful to confirm the quality of the thinking – and absorbed into the skillset for their and their organizations future.

Learn from Experience

Over time, these folk use their experiences, small and large, to think better on strategic issues. This makes their use of this time really efficient and particularly effective. There are learned short-cuts to the perhaps more formalized strategic planning process and experience is a huge, valuable added bonus.

Use a Team

By utilising more than just their own brain (though this is vital for some of the process!), those great at Strategic Thinking bounce ideas off others in the workplace and encourage their input above and beyond their delivery of the day job. The old adage that 1+1=3 in the input of thinking is hugely valid. And 5 people make a much more significant contribution than 2 – and so on!

Realism Rules (A Little!)

Although they create ideas very openly, key strategic thinkers have a sense of realism and honesty about what is achievable in the longer term. This is not to hold them back; more it is to deliver success. They underpromise and overdeliver, whilst also ensuring that the day to day business of the organization – the ‘now’ – is served adequately too. That’s what gets the business paid today, whilst building the future of tomorrow.

Have Clear Milestones

By creating checks in their thinking, to review progress, they have the opportunity to tweak. They have an innate ability to spot the twists and turns necessary. A 5,000 mile journey by a jet plane reaches the destination only by regular and consistent course checks and adjustments.

Are Non-Judgemental

Because the route to a successful future is not bounded by judging their, or others, thinking as they get creative – that is for elsewhere – better ideas flow. Open minds are encouraged and the detail tested later. Open minded thinking needs real checks and balances – but AFTER the openness has stimulated the breadth of imaginative ideas only such freedom can provide.

In the most successful organizations over the years and decades, where the test of time has shown them the excellent businesses they are, the Sony’s, Coca Colas, Nokias and Toyotas of this world think ahead and encourage great Strategic Thinking at least somewhere in their busness plans.

In a cut-throat today world of this year’s bonus and dividend, big business has a tendency to look short-term and manage that efficiently and well. A sustainable future needs more, whatever size your business is.

Positive thinking is an avenue utilized by lots of individuals in the world over for many different reasons. It is a way of using the mind and its creative thinking to allow positive thoughts, dreams, ideas, goals and other notions to drift through your mind, allowing for a greater comprehension and acceptance of these things. By practicing higher order thinking skills, you are opening yourself up to experiencing good and beneficial results in your life. You will begin to see the good in situations instead of focusing on negative areas, you will not be confined on things that have brought you unhappiness – instead you will see it as a learning curve.

Not everybody believes in the power of positive thinking and they scoff at the idea of the subconscious mind playing a role in setting our goals. They do not believe that creative thinking can have any impact on their life whatsoever and that anything they acquire in life is all due to fate – it was meant to happen that way. This is a perfectly reasonable attitude to have but it does seem somewhat narrow minded to those who practice higher order thinking skills.

The subconscious mind plays a very essential part in the process of positive thinking, it is utilized to allow thoughts to enter a person’s consciousness and grow in a beneficial method. The law of attraction is also utilized  in creative thinking, this is the theory that if a person thinks with regards to achieving something in life for long enough it will happen. Just thinking about something however is not the way in which the law of attraction works – for instance you might dream about owning a mansion but that is as far as it goes.

The law of attraction works on a various intensity, when used in connection with positive thinking it is argued that a person will take subtle steps to obtaining what they desire. They might not be fully aware that they are doing this, and this is where the subconscious mind comes into its functions. A person may think about retraining for a career change, they may begin to engage in goal setting and start to behave in a different way. All of these things are small changes and they may take time but they are all working towards the acquisition of these goals.

Individuals who contract potentially fatal diseases such as cancer, usually turn to positive thinking, as a way of strengthening themselves from within. As a matter of fact, those who have used positive thinking when facing treatments have found that they have had beneficial outcomes. They face each day with a renewed positive attitude and with higher order thinking skills, which come from positive thinking and this can have an outstanding impact on their recovery. Their subconscious mind is feeding their body with positive energy and this boosts their total being, aiding recovery and invigorating them.

Positive thinking is what you make it and if you are able to allow your subconscious mind to help you with goal setting you will be on your way to attaining whatever you want to achieve in life.