3rd Feb – What’s in a mind map? The term mind map was coined by Popular Psychologist, Tony Buzan who explains that Mindmapping is an effective way to organise our thoughts in a non-linear approach, providing room for randomness and play in jointing down our ideas. Buzan compares mindmapping with the formal left-to-right, top-to-down reading and writing method and finds that our brain is capable of seeing the ‘larger’ picture when we scatter images and words across the paper.

Mind mapping uses not only words but also images, colours, shapes and lines to identify and problem solve. In our first class of mindmapping with RSVP (The Organisation of Senior Volunteers), we introduced the use of Colour Theory, Tonal Value and Shading to complement the system of Mindmapping technique.

What followed was the result of personalised, creative and explorative mind maps the 20 participants had enthusiastically created from the theme of their Professional Development.

We started the class with an ice-breaker session and provided lots of hands-on activities to engage the class with.

A simple guideline to creating a colour wheel mind map involves:

1. Finding your central theme.
2. Using the colour wheel theory, position your breakout categories into the following colour sequence: Yellow, Orange, Red, Purple, Blue, Green.
3. Using tonal value, position your sub-categories into the mid and light tones of each colour.
4. Using a mix of different shapes and sizes, differ your ideas from big to medium to small.
5. Continue to decorate or give importance to which ever subject or item the mind map requires an emphasis on.
6. Enjoy the process and be not afraid to make mistakes as there is no mistakes in creating mind maps!