This is a transcript of one of the videos in the plain language training course Writing well at work. There are references to slides and visual material that are only available by viewing the video.
You can access the full web based course at writertraining.online.
Information about face to face courses is at thinkwrite.com.au
Well, you should have already done some serious thinking about your document. You should have had some clarity about your purpose, your audience, and your message.
Mind mapping – a powerful way to capture thinking
The next step is to think about how I can generate content, what are some of the ideas that I’m going to put into my document?
Let me say at this stage, I think one of the most powerful tools, one of the most useful tools is a thing called a mind map. You’ve likely seen mind maps before, but what they are is a way of capturing all your ideas really quickly, really efficiently on a single piece of paper or whiteboard or whatever you’re use.
Mind maps capture our natural way of thinking, and one of the beauties of a mind map is that it doesn’t enforce any hierarchy or structure right at the very beginning of our thinking processes.
Sure, mind maps have some lines and branches and that sort of thing, but they’re easily changed if we want to do that later on.
So mind maps are a really powerful way of capturing our thinking about a document and exploring all the content that we might put in. Now. Have a listen to what this fella says about the way we think.
From Tony Buzan video:
We do not think in lists and lines. We do not think linearly. We can think linearly. That’s a sub sub subset. And it’s sometimes useful, but it’s not the way your brain, any brain thinks. The way we think is with central little nex which radiate out like stars, radiating thought, beams of light if you like, which are thought. So, for example, when you think of your favorite person, the person you love the most, respect the most, you don’t have a little computer print out that has their name and their age and what they look like and so on. You immediately, don’t you? You get almost a surreal image. You get a central image of the person and then you radiate out the time you spent together, why you love them so much, etc., etc. It’s a radiation and that’s the way all of us think fundamentally about everything.
Access the complete course at writertraining.online