Whether you are a student, of any academic degree, or a professional, a person with hobbies and curiosities to explore or projects to do, or you want to learn about a visual and attractive way of ordering content, mind maps are an excellent tool. Creating mind maps with a mind mapping app can help us organize and structure our thoughts, ideas, knowledge, and activities in general.

Its amazing flexibility and adaptability to any environment and age have made it one of the most widely used learning strategies in different fields that transcend education. One of the great advantages that mind maps have is that they can be made by one person, or in a team: everything is possible.

Do you want to learn to develop your creativity, to unleash your ideas, to have a study strategy that can help you save a little time trying to memorize information? This guide is the ideal one for you, here we will teach you the benefits of mind maps and how to make them.

What are the mental maps?

Mind maps are graphic representations of topics or concepts that help people organize information in a defined space. They help to establish connections between ideas and topics of various kinds. They are a concrete visual tool that can contain synthesized information in an efficient way.

Some practical uses of mind maps are:

Understand a topic, concept, idea

Analyze a problem, its parts and roots

Look for possible solutions to a specific situation

Give hierarchy or connection to different aspects to increase our understanding

Structure a project, give sequences or priorities

Stimulate creative thinking

Synthesize information

Encourage concentration and develop memory

Characteristics of mind maps

Mind maps can be viewed in different ways and there is no one “perfect” way to build them; however, there are some guidelines that characterize them:

– They have a central idea or axis topic from which all the remaining information emerges; this title is written in the center.

– Information is typically added in a clockwise direction. It is being developed in a radial way; that is, it is built around the title. Radial shapes allow our brain to understand information in a more natural way; it becomes more harmonious, creative and attractive for learning and understanding.

– It is ideal to write keywords, short phrases that synthesize information.

– It is important to connect through lines, strokes or shapes the concepts that can be related. This helps the understanding of the topics, their connection and the creation of new understandings.

– Mind maps use colors, shapes, or whatever effect you want to illustrate (shaded, decorated, stylized) to support the distinction of ideas.

– Ideally, they include images that support the concepts.

– They can be done “by hand”, or digitally; on a large scale or in a certain size.

How to make a mind map?

Step 1: Select a template and define the central theme

Continue by placing the title or topic that you are going to discuss in the center of your template; In this way, it will be easy at a glance to find the topic in question. The recommendation is that this text be large or with some distinctive feature that makes it unique.

Step 2: Add the keywords

Start with the ideas you want to add at the top right of your design. We recommend you to synthesize as much as possible; one or two words that can remind you of complete concepts or ideas.

Step 3: Include any supplemental ideas

Once you have your main categories, you can add all the ideas that connect with them; it may be that they belong to you, that they explain it, that they are derived.

Step 4: Create connections between ideas

When you have finished (or advanced enough) you can start to draw lines that connect the concepts and ideas so that you understand the relationships between them.

Step 5: Add illustrations and images

We know the famous saying “a picture is worth a thousand words”, well, in mental maps this is not the exception but the rule. The more images you can add to give your map meaning and clarity, the better. This will allow you to connect the two brain hemispheres to achieve a greater understanding and retention of the topic or ideas that are being worked on.

We hope this article has made you understand more about mind maps and their uses.