Mind maps for business

/ 01 July 2010

Improving your self confidence

Yet again Tony Buzan has provided his readers with a really interesting and simplistic book. He manages to enthuse you about his subject matter and encourages the use of mind maps, giving the reader a number of ideas and examples for their usefulness within everyday life.

The book is written to help you understand the purpose of mind maps in your business world. It simplifies the concept of mind maps, how they work and how you can use them in your everyday life. Each chapter is summarised at the beginning in a mind map, which provides a simple way of ensuring it’s the part you want.

The book explains how mind maps reflect the way that we all think, as “the human brain does not think in toolbars and menu lists; it thinks organically like all natural forms, like the human body’s circulatory and nervous system.”

A good summation of the way mind maps are regarded in the business world is in the comment about Bill Gates, “When the world’s best known entrepreneur and co-creator of the personal computer revolution starts talking about mind maps and the knowledge revolution, you have to sit up and take notice.”

The book flows well and is easy to use, with step by step guides throughout which make it interesting and exciting. The text is broken up by the use of different typefaces, pictures and mind maps to summarise the chapters and ensure you remember the important parts, which helps to explain things easily.

If, like me, you have lots of to do lists everywhere, this provides you with a simple way of mind mapping all your tasks, giving you everything you need on one page.

It challenged me to use the mind maps to carry out a number of day to day functions, including note taking, which I would never have done before.

The book gives lots of examples of how organisations have used mind maps to deal with their problems or issues, from large to small, including companies such as Microsoft and De Beers. As the sub title of the book states, it really does change the way you think about business. I recommend this book to all of you out there with a pile of endless lists which you often lose.

Reviewed by Sarah Incher

BBC Active