12 ways to position yourself for future success while “sheltering in place”
Now that most of the world is sheltering in place to help prevent the spread of the coronavirus, you probably have much more time on your hands.
It’s a once in a lifetime opportunity for personal improvement.
Visual thinking is a perfect way to help you broaden your horizons an envision new possibilities. Here are 12 ways to use mind mapping to elevate your thinking and create a springboard for your future success.
Why mind mapping?
Mind maps are an excellent tool for thinking and planning — the kind of “deep work” that is so hard to do when our schedules are filled with meetings and projects. It provides you with an incredibly rich and flexible canvas upon which you can capture your ideas.
Not only that, you can utilize it to explore those ideas in detail, record any questions you must answer, knowledge and information you need to gather, stakeholders you need to get on board, and much more. It is a powerful tool for transmuting your ideas into tangible form, where they can be manipulated, expanded upon and evaluated.
One of the biggest advantages of mind mapping software is that you can spread your ideas out in an unlimited number of directions. It’s perfect for divergent thinking — exploring well beyond your habitual, well-rutted paths of thinking to consider new possibilities. This superpower gives you the ability to consider challenges and opportunities from multiple perspectives — a key to creative problem solving.
In other words, it’s a perfect alternative to binging on Netflix shows or counting the number of grains in a bag of rice.
It’s time to leverage your downtime as an opportunity to expand your thinking — and your life!
12 mind maps to expand your thinking— and your success
Here are 12 ways you can employ mind mapping software for personal improvement while you’re “sheltering in place.”
Personal skills inventory: Whether you’re currently out of work or working remotely, now is a perfect time to take stock of your skills and experience:
- What are you good at?
- What do you have a lot of experience doing?
- What qualities do people love about you?
- What do you seem to have a natural talent for?
Map and categorize these qualities. You may uncover new insights about yourself and new opportunities.
Plan your goals: You may have planned a number of goals to achieve in 2020. But with the coronavirus pandemic, many things have changed. It’s hard to tell what the new “normal“ will be after the crisis has passed. That makes this an ideal opportunity to revisit and update your goals. Make adjustments where necessary. Mapping them out visually can help you to decide where to focus your efforts in the short and long-term.
Dissect a complex problem: Many people, when faced with a problem, immediately start to brainstorm solutions. But this can sometimes be counterproductive, because they’re often developing solutions to a symptom — while not addressing the core problem. A more productive approach is to invest time in analyzing and dissecting the problem. Keep deconstructing it until you have a clear sense of its root causes. Another benefit of this approach: After you visually deconstruct a problem like this, being able to view all of its elements in relationship to each other often suggests an elegant solution!
Brainstorm divergent ideas: Challenging times require us to go beyond our habitual paths of thinking. We need to entertain divergent ideas that are outside of our comfort zone. A mind map, with its emphasis on associative thinking, is the perfect tool to do that. It enables you to follow multiple paths of thinking and to expand them to as far as you need to fully express your thoughts.
Take notes on a book: One of the challenges of reading a book is that our brains quickly forget what we’ve learned. One way to capture it in an easily accessible way is to mind map its key points. This enables you to return to your visual outline at any time and recall the most important knowledge the books contains.
Plan a big project: Mind mapping software is ideal for project design. It provides a powerful, flexible canvas for visually outlining all of the elements of your project, including people and resources required, implementation steps, task assignments and much more. Once you have created a complete plan for your project, you can then use topic tasks to manage its implementation.
Create a personal dashboard: One of the most powerful but little understood applications of mind mapping software is using it to create a personal dashboard.,This is a visual collection of links to all of your most important resources, including key files, software programs, web pages and more. What’s really exciting is that you can continue to modify it and improve it as your needs evolve.
Conduct a personal SWOT analysis: One key tool that is commonly used as a part of organizational strategic planning is a SWOT Analysis. This abbreviation stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. Often, it’s represented in the form of a four-quadrant diagram, but it can also be laid out as a mind map. What’s more, you can re-purpose this thinking technique to assess your personal strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. You might be surprised at the insights you uncover by doing this!
Start an idea file: A mind map is an excellent tool to capture ideas as they occur to you. You can use first and second level topics to organize your ideas and classify them. You can use colors, icons and topic shapes to further group them visually. You can even use some of these topic enhancements to indicate the potential value of each idea and to draw attention to the ones that you want to implement first.
Start a swipe file: In advertising and creative circles, a “swipe file” is a physical folder or a document in which you capture bits of content — images, headlines, meaningful phrases and other items — for future inspiration. Advertising copywriters have you swipe files for years to provide them with an on-demand source of ideas and inspiration. You can use a mind map to create a swipe file, too. What makes it especially useful is that you can link map topics to web pages, attach files and even keep notes about each inspiring nugget in topic notes.
Improve your LinkedIn profile/CV: How effective is your Linkedin profile? Is it completely filled out? Does it represent a compelling picture of your unique experience? Has it been optimized so that it appears high in Linkedin search results for the keywords that describe what you do? If the answer to any of these questions is no, perhaps you need to take a more strategic approach to crafting a kick-butt profile that will get you the results you need. Laying out the content of your profile and refining it in visual form can help you to identify themes that you may want to reinforce. It will also help you to use keywords more consistently throughout your profile, which will result in it appearing higher in Linkedin’s search results.
Expand your LinkedIn network: In today’s world your network is the key to your future success. Being connected to the right people can help you accelerate your career, uncover needed expertise and provide you with valuable industry intelligence. You can use a mind map to visually classify who you know and how they may be able to help you, as well as subject matter experts and “super-connectors” who can open doors to other ideal connections for you.
Take a lesson from the world’s smartest companies
The world’s smartest companies don’t use downturns as an excuse to pull back and do nothing until the storm passes. That could be damaging or even fatal to their future viability. Rather, they double down and make improvements and preparations for an even brighter future.
You should do the same. And mind mapping software can help you transmute your thinking into tangible form, organize it in meaningful ways and help you manage all of the bits and pieces of information and ideas — while preventing information overwhelm.
Want to learn more about mind mapping software?
I recommend The Essential Guide to Mind Mapping Software. This free 30-page report will help you understand what mind mapping software is, how it can benefit you and what to consider when selecting a program that will meet your needs.
