I learned of Mind Mapping in the mid 90's when I was a senior consultant on a ERP project. During my first meeting in the boardroom with the client, I happened to sit down next to the firm's VP in charge of the project. He turned his notepad sideways and drew a big circle and wrote the client's name and date in the circle. He then drew a branch from the circle and titled it Introduction. He continued to draw branches and sub-branches with key words on each branch and sub-branch.
After the meeting, I was amazed at the artistic notes that he had made and asked what was that he had done. He told me that he always mind maps his notes. Intrigued, I asked him to explain Mind Mapping. He told me to go to the library and check out Tony Buzan's book "The Mind Map Book". After work, I hurried to the library and checked out the book. I read the book cover-to-cover and then went out to buy the book. I was hooked.
I had always been interested in different ways of organizing thoughts and brainstroming (having been raised on outlining), my friend's dad had the program "Think Tank" and I was amazed at what outlining could do for your thought generation. But when I found Mind Mapping, this opened up my mind to be more right-brained. I grew up always thinking logically and did not develop my artistic ability. Now I was going to work on that side of my head.
Since that day, I have developed my own paper templates for mindmapping my meeting notes that feed into project lists then to action lists. I am getting ready to take this methodology commercial soon.
