7.3 Skills in the 21st Century

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7.3.15 Improve your creativity

Mind mapping

Mind Mapping is a way to brainstorm systematically. Let’s see an example: what should I have for breakfast? You might come up with random ideas, however mind mapping can help to organise the options and generate ideas.

Of course you don’t need fancy software to create your mind map. I prefer handwritten ones on big sheets of paper. I can show you a real life example, when we used mind maps to brainstorm about building an eco-village.

The yellow highlighted items were accepted as solutions.

Why does it work? 

  1. Because one thing leads to more and more ideas, and you can see all at once. Without a mind map, we tend to think in one direction only.
  2. Because you can see all the options with connections.

In fact without drawing a mind map, most probably we would have left out some options or even areas to cover.
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