How To Use A Mind Map NARRATOR: How to Mind Map With Tony Buzan. Tony Buzan is a leading expert on the brain and learning, who has authored and coauthored over 100 books. Through his work in the media, Tony aims to educate the world in how to use the brain more effectively. Tony is the inventor of the revolutionary mind mapping technique, which he believes is more efficient than conventional methods of writing notes and ideas. In this film, Tony talks about how he developed mind mapping and how it can be applied in everyday life. Step one-- The problems with note-taking. TONY BUZAN: To get from where you are now to be able to mind map is an easy process. And the first step is to examine your current notes. Now, when I was at university, what I was doing was what everyone around the world is taught to do. I had my lined page. I had my black or blue ink pen. And I was making my verbal notes. So it was lines, and words, and one color. I would be skimming through my notes thinking, where is the key information? Where's the gold? And I'd be underlining and highlighting. You'll realize that the brain, as I realized, has priorities-- certain things are really important. Other things are important but not quite as important. And there are certain ideas which are the chapter heading ideas-- the big, big, big ideas. So I began to organize so that it became like a more three-dimensional structure. Things began to stand out more. NARRATOR: Step two-- Developing Mind Maps. TONY BUZAN: Even though I had the key ideas, and the chapter headings, and things were beginning to look good, I was missing connections. There was no real association. So I began to look for ways of finding associations. And quite obviously, lines worked. So I connected things with lines. Arrows worked. I could symbolize and code. So I next had in front of me-- it was the key idea, which I put in the center of the page. Because I also realized my brain didn't think from the left, of right, and then left, and right. It doesn't think like that. It thought from the center and explodes out as all brains do. So I put the main idea in the center. And then I had branches coming out from the chapter heading branches. And then had more lines connecting-- associations-- for the second-level ideas. And then the third-level ideas and so on. But then this little thing started gnawing away, and that is, I had lots of words and hardly any picture. And I thought, what would happen if I started to do images? And so instead of writing all the people on a branch, drew some little stick people. And my mind maps became image-filled. And of course, I began to add color. And I found to my amazement and surprise that not only could I do it, but the mind map became much more beautiful and much more memorable. You know, when I stopped looking at the mind map, I could close my eyes and it was still there. And it was the images that were helping me to do that with their positions in the associative network. NARRATOR: Step three-- using mind maps. TONY BUZAN: You can use mind maps for monitoring, you can use mind maps obviously for brainstorming and brain-blooming, because the mind map allows you just to explode like a supernova star. Instead of doing your list of brainstorming ideas, which inevitably comes to a stuttering halt anyway, because it's anti-brain, the mind map just-- [MIMICS EXPLOSION WITH MOUTH] --explodes with your ideas. The thing to do is to start to use them. And then all your thinking areas are enhanced. Because when you use your brain the way it's designed to be used, good things happen.