Making a Map of your mind
Ok so, I recently learned a technique from Austin Kleon. It’s kind of a journaling method. It’s called a Mind Map. And it's Great!
What you do is, you start at the middle of a page. You take your current obsession, or maybe just a thing you’re thinking about right now and write it down. Put a circle around it.
Then wonder what it reminds you of. Write it down next to that, put a circle or a box around that, and connect the two. Anything that comes to your mind, a person’s name, a topic, a subject, a thing that you worry about, anything. Continue doing this until the page is full.
What you end up with, is a snapshot of your mind. With all the little things connected to each other.
I tried it one night. The flow went like: (Thing 1) reminds me of (Thing 2) which reminds me of (Thing 3) which reminds me of (Thing 4) which also reminds me of (Thing 2) And hey, these two are related too. *Draws a line joining them*.
This is what I ended up with:
What I like about this method is:
I get a snapshot of my mind at certain moments in time. -- which is great for journaling!
I can look at my thoughts clearly on paper.
And, This is also how your brain stores and connects ideas. (Your neurons literally connect to one another, triggering other neurons.) One thought leads to the other and so on.
When you focus on one aspect of the map (a topic), new boxes (Things to know about) arrive. This is how, (cliché incoming) knowledge compounds.
And the more bubbles you have, the more hooks you have to hang new information on!
💡 The more you know, the more you realize what you don’t know.
Which makes you humble. Therefore, (cliché alert 2.0) Wise people are humble.
Further Reading recommendations:
If this idea interests you, I'd recommend reading Austin's own post (It's where I learned it from.)
Eric Barker's post on curiosity
This post has been written as an excuse to start a blog. Instead of procrastinating and trying to make it perfect. So it did it's job perfectly. As they say, the first draft is always perfect💖.