Page 277 - Use Your Memory

23 Notes for Remembering -
Mind Maps

Most people forget what they note because they use only a tiny
fraction of their brain in the note-taking process. Standard note-
taking systems use sentences, phrases, lists and lines, and
numbers. Such systems use only the left-brained Basic Memory
Principles of order, sequence and number, leaving out imagin-
ation, association, exaggeration, contraction, absurdity, humour,
colour, rhythm, the senses, sexuality and sensuality.
In order to make notes well, you have to break with tradition and
use both the left and right sides of your brain, as well as all the
fundamental Memory Principles. In this system of note taking,
you use blank unlined pages, using a Key Memory Image (right
brain) that summarises the central theme of the note you are
making. From this central image you have a series of connecting
lines (left brain) on which are written (left brain) or drawn (right
brain) the Key Image Words or actual images themselves of the
main sub-areas and sub-themes you wish to note. Connected to
these lines are more lines, again on which you place Key Image
Words or Key Images themselves. In this way you build up a
multidimensional, associative, imaginative and colourful Mind
Map Memory Note of everything you wish to note.
Noting in this way, you will not only remember almost
immediately and totally everything you write down because of the
application of all the Memory Principles to this new multidimen-
sionally mnemonic note-taking approach but you will also find
that the approach allows you to understand, analyse and think
critically about whatever it is you are noting, while at the same time
it gives you more time to pay attention to either the lecturer or the
book from which you are learning. This technique and its appli-
cations are more fully outlined in my books Use Your Head and
The Brain User's Guide.
As a simple example, an artist summarised on a single page the
basic outline of The Brain User's Guide in a Mind-Mapped,
Key-Worded and Key-Imaged Note (see illustration, page 83). If