Mind Maps
If you're wondering what this "left-brained vs. right-brained" business is all about, I've been reading Tony Buzan's book, "Use Both Sides of Your Brain", an interesting book that taught me a few lessons which I'm now trying to put in practice (this is why I love MIT; I get exposed to so many new things).
One of them is speed-reading. The basic concept is that our minds work by connecting things together. When we read something we connect the words in our minds and that's how understanding emerges. But during normal reading, we tend to read only one word at a time. This doesn't really take advantage of the brains immense power of connecting things in real-time (not to mention that it leads to more eye fatigue because our eyes have to stop on each word). Buzan's speed-reading approach is to try to capture 2 or 3 words at the same time. Our brains are capable at looking at a set of words and process them simultaneously. So I tried this techniques and it really works! I still have to get used to it, and sometimes I revert to normal reading, but at least now I know how Miss A was able to read so much faster than me.
The other thing I learned is how to do mind maps. Again, the brain doesn't work in a linear fashion, but when we typically take notes or write down our thoughts, we write them nicely one line at a time. Mind maps are spiderweb-like notes that match the way our brain thinks: by making associations between elements. So I'm now firing my neurons in all directions with mind maps that perhaps only I can read. Here's an example of a mind map I did while searching for the apartment. I wanted to write down what was imprtant to me, but instead of using traditional notes, I did a mind map using a program called Mind Mapper.
One of them is speed-reading. The basic concept is that our minds work by connecting things together. When we read something we connect the words in our minds and that's how understanding emerges. But during normal reading, we tend to read only one word at a time. This doesn't really take advantage of the brains immense power of connecting things in real-time (not to mention that it leads to more eye fatigue because our eyes have to stop on each word). Buzan's speed-reading approach is to try to capture 2 or 3 words at the same time. Our brains are capable at looking at a set of words and process them simultaneously. So I tried this techniques and it really works! I still have to get used to it, and sometimes I revert to normal reading, but at least now I know how Miss A was able to read so much faster than me.
The other thing I learned is how to do mind maps. Again, the brain doesn't work in a linear fashion, but when we typically take notes or write down our thoughts, we write them nicely one line at a time. Mind maps are spiderweb-like notes that match the way our brain thinks: by making associations between elements. So I'm now firing my neurons in all directions with mind maps that perhaps only I can read. Here's an example of a mind map I did while searching for the apartment. I wanted to write down what was imprtant to me, but instead of using traditional notes, I did a mind map using a program called Mind Mapper.
posted by sorinescu at 12:28 PM
1 Comments:
Can you please in short how this helps or how it helped you with appartment searching? One thing that I can see right away is that it kinda gives you the big picture just by looking at it. I'm wondering also what's the ratio of relevant details vs. becoming cluttered.
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