Mind-mapping is visual thinking. It’s an information processing model that lets you represent information in a way that involves a part of your brain that helps you see connections. You can tell from recent technological and cultural trends that visualization and graphic imagery is gaining ground as an effective form of presenting information.
Think of Pinterest and infographics for instance; both are image-based models of information portrayal and their popularity keeps on increasing.
Mind-mapping skills help you process information quickly and easily and let you retrieve that information at any time. When combined, mind-mapping and speed reading can become your tools for achieving astonishing new records of information assimilation.
Why mind-mapping will help you process information faster:
Succinct
You can succinctly illustrate complex relationships (causation, correlation) by activating your mind-mapping skills. When reading you can visually represent, either mentally or on paper, incoming information in ways that are instantly understood.
In particular, if mind mapping is done in your head, you can save yourself great amounts of information processing time, boosting your reading speed even further.
Information-friendly
Another characteristic of mind-mapping is that it’s the ideal method when it comes to factual information processing and acquisition. Being efficient in mind-mapping means you are capable of easily identifying key connections, grasping complex concepts, and arriving at conclusions fast and correctly.
Think of mind-mapping as your tool for taking information and turning it into active knowledge. When speed reading you need an approach that takes information, processes it and yields back knowledge, all done at high speed. That’s what mind-mapping does, by helping you process and understand new information. With such an efficiency tool, you are more likely to read faster, thereby increasing your productivity and overall benefits.
Time-efficient
Mind-mapping helps increase your reading efficiency. It allows you to create visual images on the go; every new clue, sentence or paragraph is processed and added to the existing network of connections and relationships. In this manner, your knowledge continues to grow at an efficient speed and pace.
These three features of mind-mapping – being succinct, information-friendly and time-efficient – are what makes it a great skill to consider if you wish to read and assimilate new information faster.
While speed reading as an approach is a complete method in itself, by using this technique along with mind-mapping you can unlock more of speed reading’s power in the struggle to conquer information overload.
Advantages of Mind-mapping
One of the major advantages of mind mapping is that it’s a system that favors information retention and usage.
Mind-mapping is more than visually processing/representing information, it’s about finding ways to understand, store and use new information in an efficient, instant and productive manner.
Another advantage of mind-mapping is that it’s an integrated approach to information processing. It forces you to connect new to existing information, draw complex conclusions, see the bigger picture, revise previous and irrelevant opinions and overall, become a critical thinker who actively engages with information in order to transform it into knowledge.
In a nutshell, mind-mapping makes reading strategic and purposeful.
The relationship between mind-mapping and speed reading is a mutually reinforcing one. The better you become in one, the better the other will become. This is a process that keeps evolving the more you practice, making you a better, faster reader with an outstanding amount of knowledge and wisdom at your fingertips.
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