Picture yourself back in school.
Picture yourself cracking open your notebook before a big test. Page after page of neatly handwritten notes. Bullet point after bullet point stretches from the top to the bottom of the page. Maybe a title heading, some words are underlined or even highlighted.
But pour hours into it, and when you go to find that one idea you need, it can feel like looking for a needle in a haystack. Now ask yourself a question.
How does your brain think? In straight lines? Of course not. Our brains are incredible pattern-recognising machines. In split seconds, they are making connections, seeing relationships and trying to make sense of information. Thoughts branch off of other thoughts, creating a massive network of information that our minds use to solve problems.
It’s not linear, it’s colourful. It’s active. It’s creative. But instead of teaching our brains to think, we’ve spent generations pouring our thoughts into linear sentences and paragraphs.
We’ve become masters at taking information we learn and trying to fit it into organised piles of words that make little sense to how our brains actually work. And that’s why students struggle to recall information after they study.
Mind Maps work differently. Instead of starting on the top left of your page and working your way down, Mind Mapping allows you to start with your central idea and build outward.
Major branches work off of that central image, with smaller branches coming off of those.
You use keywords instead of long sentences, and colour and pictures allow for better recollection. What you end up with is more than just a pretty sheet of notes. You end up with a snapshot of how your brain organises information.
Did you know that your brain is constantly looking for patterns? When you Mind Map, you force your brain to look for relationships between pieces of information. Our brains remember information better when it’s linked to other information, because they recall a network of information rather than individual pieces. Students often find that they can remember more from one Mind Map than they can from several pages of notes.
Another common thing I hear from teachers is that their students pay more attention. When students Mind Map, they are thinking about what they’re learning. They have to determine what the main ideas are. How do those ideas relate to each other? What keyword will best represent that idea? By simply doing that, students go from passively copying information to actively learning what they research. Parents have told me that homework isn’t quite as scary because their kids can see the overall concept before they get lost in the details. Harder subjects begin to make more sense because, instead of hiding relationships between facts inside sentences, Mind Maps allow students to see those relationships. But what parents and students have both told me is that Mind Maps help with confidence.
There is something about being able to understand, organise, and recall information that makes learners feel like they can do it again. And when learners feel confident, they tend to succeed… not because they try harder but because they are working with their brain instead of against it.
If you’ve never made a Mind Map before, I have a challenge for you. Take out a blank piece of paper and put one picture in the centre of your page that represents something you know well. Draw five branches coming off of that main idea and put one keyword on each branch. Add smaller branches and include other related ideas. Use as much colour as you can and draw pictures (even if they are stick figures).
Take ten minutes and create a Mind Map on something you’re familiar with. Then take another ten minutes and write out all of those ideas in paragraph form on another sheet of paper. Compare your mind map to your notes, and I bet you’ll discover which one your brain likes better. The brain wasn’t meant to learn in straight lines. It was meant to make associations, find patterns and construct knowledge. When we start to learn in a way that works with our natural processes, amazing things happen.
Learning becomes less about memorising facts and more about understanding concepts. And that is when we truly begin to learn.
