Today we continue in the Helpful Hint series by tackling the issue of linear thinking. You could be restricting yourself while creating maps — without realizing it. Let’s say you have your central topic drawn in the middle of your page. As you begin to add ideas to your map, there is a tendancy to get caught in one of 3 traps. They are:

  • Taking a chronological approach to generating ideas. This is more common if you are developing a presentation or documenting a sequential process.
  • Completing all of your main branches before adding any detail branches.
  • Completing one entire branch before moving on to other branches.

If you are forcing your ideas to be captured in any of these ways (rather than following your natural associations), this may cause you to lose ideas that come sequentially later in the presentation or process. The solution is to document ideas as they come to you and worry about re-ordering them later.

Email info@ideamappingsuccess.com if you have any struggles with Idea Mapping, and we’ll post a hint!

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