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Re: Is "mind mapping" "right-brained"?
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Note: This message is from the outliners.com archive kindly provided by Dave Winer.
Outliners.com Message ID: 3006
Posted by sub
2005-03-21 12:53:28
[Stephen: crudely put, yes it’s a “right-brained” tool, but it’s compensatory right-brained tool, a tool most useful to “left-brained” users.]
As far as I have understood Tony Buzan’s books his premise goes something like this: _everyone_ can benefit from using visualising tools, though not everyone will benefit in the same way.
Right-brain people are usually in a disadvantage within an educational system that only provides linear input. Mind Map note_taking_ can provide the extra dimensions their mind can more easily grasp, record and remember.
Left-brain people, on the other hand, can augment their abstract thinking through a bird’s eye view of their information.
The passage below is from Barry Buzan’s (Tony’s brother) foreword to their joint “Mind Map Book” millenium edition:
“What attracted me about Mind Mapping was not the note_taking_ apllication that had captivated Tony, but the note_making_ one… Mind Maps were a more powerful tool for thinking because they enabled me to sketch out the main ideas and to see quickly and clearly how they related to each other. They provided me with an exceptionally useful intermediate stage between the thinking process and actually committing words to paper.
I soon realised that the problem of bridgng the gap between thinking and writing was a major deciding factor in success or failure for my fellow postgraduate students. Many failed to bridge the gap. They became more and more knowledgeable about their research subjects but less and less able to pull all the details together in order to write about it.
Mind Mapping gave me a tremendous competitive advantage. It enabled me to assemble and refine my ideas without going through the time-consuming process of drafting and re-drafting.”
alx