Take a look at this picture…
You don’t even have to look closely. If you’re familiar with what they are, it should be pretty obvious…
This is a picture of two mind maps, printed out.
They’re not mine. Well, not 100%, at least. They’re my sons’.
I did the typing, because I’m faster. And I helped them learn how mind maps work. But the ideas in the mind maps are from my two sons.
Tuesday night was their school’s annual science fair. And we’ve always participated.
And every year, it’s both fun, and a struggle.
Fun, because we do really interesting projects. When our oldest was in Kindergarten, he actually extracted the DNA from strawberries, and had it there in a jar, and because he did it he could actually explain the process.
This year was all about electricity.
The oldest (now in third grade) did a demonstration of static electricity where he was able to levitate an object using “the force.” That’s right, Star Wars!
The youngest wanted to do an experiment where he figured out if different objects would conduct electricity. We built a circuit with a battery, light bulb, and wires, and he brought a bunch of objects to test at the science fair.
Again, fun!
But the struggle bit is because the projects they choose (with our encouragement) require them to think. We help them, but we don’t do it for them. And the act of coming up with a presentation board for a science fair isn’t something grade schoolers do very often.
Enter RESISTANCE!
Steven Pressfield talks about this in The War of Art. (Highly-recommended, by the way.)
When you are doing anything creative, you want the end result. But often the end result only comes through hard work. Hard work when you don’t want to do it. Hard work when every fiber of your being says procrastinate and put it off. Hard work when you’re not sure about the next step you need to take, but you’ve gotta keep moving anyway.
That’s Resistance. Capital R.
Everybody who is doing anything creative faces it. Every freaking day.
Those who are successful get through it. They feel the Resistance, then do the work anyway.
And when you have the looming deadline of a science fair, the Resistance grows, but you’ve gotta get through it!
I’d asked my sons to take some notes on their projects. And they had. Plus we had recommended board layouts for them to follow.
Their challenge was figuring out how to organize their ideas and excitement into actual creative output.
It’s not that they didn’t know what to say or do — each could explain their project when asked questions — it’s that they hadn’t organized their thoughts…
That is, from my experience, one of the major moments in the creative process where Resistance roars loudest.
You have an idea for a new marketing campaign. You take a bunch of notes. You know you’ve got a big idea that should resonate. You do a bunch of homework. You fill an Evernote folder with a pile of research.
Maybe you even grab the relevant template from my High-Velocity Copywriting Templates program.
Then, you freeze.
You know you have everything you need. But somehow you can’t translate that into the actual creative activity of putting the campaign together.
That’s about where my sons were last Sunday.
Enter the mind map!
One-by-one, we sat down at the family computer.
Their school web portal linked to a mind map application. I asked if they’d ever used it. They said they hadn’t.
“That’s okay. I’ll teach you.”
So I opened up a blank mind map.
I asked them to grab their notes. I started by asking what the sections were that needed to be on their boards. I created a node for each.
Then, I started asking questions about what needed to be in each.
More Resistance.
So I pivoted. I created another node called “Ideas.” Then I asked if they knew about the 5Ws. That was a familiar concept. So under Ideas, I put Who, What, When, Where, Why, and added How, too.
Then, we simply started asking the basic questions.
“Who is involved? You? Okay. We’ll put your name here.”
“What did you do? What’s being demonstrated?”
And so on. We used the Ws as prompts to ask a bunch of questions, just getting ideas into the mind map.
This was an easy way to get over Resistance…
By just putting these under Ideas, I was giving them permission to have a really bad first draft. They didn’t have to say “the perfect thing” that would end up on their board. They were just creating notes.
Then, I showed them how you could drag nodes (the mind map equivalent of a bullet point) around the mind map.
So, for the static electricity demonstration, we figured out that the How questions fit under the general Information section of the presentation board, on the left side. We put those, with their answers, into the mind map there.
For the conductivity experiment, we realized that the answers to the How fit under the Procedure section, and we put those there.
(The layouts were a bit different because of the nature of each project.)
We went through all our questions and their answers, and fit the relevant ones into the sections of the board, and deleted everything that wasn’t relevant.
Then, we printed out the mind maps, and they knew exactly what to write on their boards.
By having the right thinking tool and knowing how to use it, they busted through the Resistance…
We went from struggling, whining, and fighting (and that was just MY reaction!) to them having a clear picture of exactly what to do to complete their boards.
It was a breakthrough!
I find this to be the case, over and over again.
I use mind maps in my business, almost nonstop.
I use them for taking notes. I use them for creating training. I use them just to think and brainstorm. I use them to structure my copy and marketing messages.
Even when I don’t use the tool of the mind map, I’ve internalized the process so thoroughly that I think in mind maps, and even that helps me.
I still remember when I used to think copywriting was all about writing a better headline.
YES, a better headline can increase the results of an ad by as much as 16X, as proven in testing.
And yet… That’s not really where most copy fails. Especially the longer copy with more complete selling arguments, that has the potential to bring in the big bucks.
Most copywriters fail today because of the logical structure of their arguments.
Their thinking is not clear and well-organized.
So no matter how good they are at hooking attention with a compelling headline, they lose their prospects halfway through when they start talking gibberish.
That’s why I believe mind mapping is one of the most important skills ANYBODY can master.
It’s why I’m teaching it to my kids, starting with those science fair projects.
And it’s why I asked my coach, Joseph Rodrigues, to record a special Breakthrough Mind Mapping training for BTMSinsiders members.
Joseph’s YouTube channel, which features mind map breakdowns of popular business and personal development books, has over 2 million views. He’s mastered the methodology behind effective mind mapping. Both for learning and for business creativity.
Yours for bigger breakthroughs,
Roy Furr
