Тони Бьюзен - Mind Map Handbook

Releasing your Mind from its ‘Non-Creativity’ Prison

You may not have known it, but you stand over a 99 per cent chance that your brain has been in a ‘non-Creativity’ prison from the time you started school to the time you are now reading these words.

How can this be true?

Check and see. Simply ask yourself in what kind of way does your brain make its thoughts visible – in other words, what kind of notes do you make?

Are they like these traditional note-taking styles?

If you belong to that 99 per cent-plus of the world’s population I mentioned earlier, then this is the way you will take notes: you will use words that are usually in sentences or phrases; you will list things; you may, in ‘advanced’ forms of note-taking, use numbers and letters to organize your thoughts; you will take notes in the linear order that the information is presented from either the book or the speaker; you will write on straight lines; and you will use a blue, black or grey pen or pencil with which to make those notes.

Could the way we have been taking notes for the last few centuries be the very reason why so many of us feel we are not as creative as we somehow know we truly are? And could this also be the reason why the world at large generally misunderstands the nature of Creativity, while complaining about the lack of it?

Let’s investigate this further. First let’s look again at the blue, black and grey colours with which we usually make our notes. The reason why we do this is because we have been taught to do so (in my school we were taught not only to use one colour – blue/black – but also only to use one particular make of ink as well! Any child caught wandering from this strict order was likely to be given 25 lines of extra homework!)

How does your brain feel about all this?

To your brain, a blue, black or grey is a single (mono) colour (chroma). This means that the lightwaves that bombard your eye from that colour are all identical. To your brain, therefore, a single blue, black or grey colour is a mono (single) tone of information.

As discussed earlier, the word we get when we combine the concept of ‘mono’ and ‘tone’ is monotone . And if something is a monotone, we describe it as … monotonous ! And what word do we commonly use to describe something that is monotonous? BORING !

What does your brain do when it is bored? Most people come up with one of the following answers:

tunes out

turns off

switches off

goes dead

daydreams

drifts

goes to sleep

Thus the current method developed for unleashing the productive power of the planet is actually boring creative minds to distraction and sending them to sleep!

Not only that: it doesn’t matter what nationality you are or what language you speak. If you use English, Italian, German, Spanish, or Russian, your boring lines go left to right. If you use Hebrew or Arabic, your boring lines simply go from right to left! If you use Mandarin Chinese, your boring lines go up and down! Your brain doesn’t mind in which 90 degree angle it goes to sleep – it can go to sleep in all of them!

Why does this happen? Think about the tools your brain normally uses for its note-taking: words; lists; lines; numbers; order; sequence; letters – the mental skills of the ‘left brain’. So far so good.

In the space below, note what skills from the ‘right brain’ are used.

You guessed it – the reason why we have left no space for your answer is that the answer is ‘none’! No images, no codes, no colours, no dimension, no ‘whole picture’, no visual rhythm and no spatial awareness.

In other words, our traditional note-taking methods only do half the job! It is time that we completed the task. Once again, it is clear that by using only half of our skills we have, like the one-legged and one-armed runner, been operating with a fantastic lack of efficiency.

The lines on which we have been writing are the prison bars behind which we have trapped our fantastically creative brains. Let’s explore what happens when we allow our brains to make their thoughts visible in a way that is compatible with the way our brains actually think – and by now you know it’s not in straight lines!

Radiant Thinking and Proof of Your Infinite Creative Potential

Your brain does not, like the computer, think linearly and sequentially: it thinks radiantly and explosively , as is shown in the following diagram:

To show how radiant thinking works, try the following Radiant and Creative Thinking Game, which will change the way you think about the way you think for ever!

Below you will find the word ‘FUN’ nestled in the centre of a face. Five branches radiate away from the face, and off each of those branches radiate, much like a tree or a river delta, five more branches.

The game is as follows: on the five central branches, print the first five words that come into your head, one on each branch, whatever they are, when you think of the concept ‘FUN’. When you have done this, go out to the next level of branches, and quickly print on each of the five lines, the five words that first come into your mind when you think of the key word on the main branch (again, one word on each branch. When you have filled in the first five key words and all the radiating branches, read on.

Were you able to do this exercise? Of course you were!

Was it simple? Of course it was!

Is it more significant than it might at first seem? You bet it is!

Think about it. What your brain has just done is something quite profound. You took a single concept, ‘FUN’, and radiated from it five key ideas. Thus you multiplied your first creative output by five – that’s a 500 per cent increase in creative output.

Next you took your five new, freshly created ideas, and from each of them you created five more new ideas. Another five-fold or 500 per cent increase! In no time at all you started from one idea, and created 30 new ones.

Now ask yourself: ‘Could I create another five words/ideas from each of the 25 words that radiate from the original key five?’ Of course you could! That’s another 125 ideas created!

Could you add another five from each of those? Again, of course you could – another 625 ideas! That’s 6,250 per cent more ideas than when you started !

Could you keep going to the next level? And the next? And the next and the next? Of course you could!

And for how long? Forever!

Generating how many ideas? An infinite number!

Congratulations! You have just demonstrated, using a basic Mind Map technique, that your creative potential is infinite.

The news gets even better!

In the Radiant and Creative Thinking Game you have just played, you were still using, predominantly, your left brain. Suppose that the magical qualities of the right brain were added to your already proven infinite Creative Thinking capacity. Suppose that you added to the basic Mind Map form, using colours, more visual rhythm, images, pictures, codes, dimension and clever spatial arrangement? If you did you would be like the whole-bodied runner again, multiplying your abilities synergetically. You would be adding extra power, colour and dimension to what we already know is an infinite creative capacity.