Fighting Back Against #Cognitive #Aging (#Mindmapping to Exercise the Brain and Organize Thinking)

As is said (albeit in a quite different context) “use it or lose it.”

You age and people tell you to start do crossword puzzles (I’ve never liked them) or to do simple arithmetic on an iPad (hhmmm… I prefer advanced mathematics) or to get your pictures together in a box (I prefer slide shows from a high-end photo processing app).

Use it or lose it.

Why start doing baby exercises as you get older? Why not use a better way of organizing information, planning, making decisions, and actively thinking about things around you, your life, or advancing a new intellectual hobby (mine are visual thinking research and great mandolin and ukulele players of the world)?

Use it or lose it.

Many people look at mind maps and think they are pretty pictures or formatted outlines. In fact many “mind mappers” pass off work that is not mind mapping as mind mapping.

One of the most frequently ignored or missed parts of Tony Buzan’s seminal writings on mind mapping is that mind mapping requires active thinking. It is not a passive process of formatting an outline of the same-old, same-old, same-old information.

Mind mapping is really a combination of using the pretty tools in mind mapping programs to facilitate active thinking about something and to develop actively a summary model of how all the thoughts go together.

Do you think active learning through mind mapping is a better way of thinking that for many older adults is new and novel and might be a way to “use it and  not lose it?”

I think so. Use it and don’t lose it.

An example. Click on image to expand.

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Also see, “Running Away to the Circus”

Also see “Cognitive and Behavioral Tools for Dealing with Cognitive Decline: A #MindMap”