A Goal Setting Tool From High School Revisited

While browsing in a second hand bookshop over 20 years ago, I came across Tony Buzan's 'Use Your Head' book. This was my first formal introduction to the concepts and possibilities of mind mapping. I was inspired enough by the ideas in the book to experiment with them while I was a high school science teacher.

This article highlights the goal setting lessons learned from those educational experiences.

1 - Use What Works:
Students struggling with a demanding academic workload were well used to taking lots of notes. Especially since most teachers (myself included) implicitly praised and valued the power of note taking as an essential study aid.

Naturally enough, my classes couldn't quite get what was the rationale for this mental detour! For the greenhorn mappers we were back then, mind mapping had to be introduced gradually alongside the familiar linear note taking world.

Goal Setting Lesson:
Pick a topic and explore it using mind mapping. Then add in any necessary and supporting details (on a different page) in the form of notes.

2- Spoon Feeding The Addiction:
While taking pages and pages of notes certainly requires time and attention, it can also lead to the development of lazy habits such as mindlessly copying verbatim chunks of information from a textbook or blackboard. Sadly, my classes loved to be spoon fed notes, either as a homework exercise, or directly from my writing on the board or overhead projector.

Goal Setting Lesson:
Take a popular goal setting book and read one chapter. Then put the book aside and simplify the chapter title as one word in the center of a sheet of paper. Next, let your imagination roam and add about five keyword concepts from the chapter sole word branches on your map.

3 - Patience:
Novice mind mappers often get annoyed with their limited ability to remember keywords from the pages they have just read. The main thing here really is having the 'patience'
to ride out the mistakes made when learning and applying
yourself to mind mapping.

Goal Setting Lesson:
Begin your mind mapping journey with books you really enjoy. With regular practice, more and more ideas will bubble up from your memory banks as you concentrate on the main keyword. Remember to add them as single keywords to the map using a pencil, not a pen! For my science classes this was never easy because many teachers and role models had drilled into them throughout their school years the 'fact' that pages and pages of notes were absolutely a requirement to pass exams.

4- One Word:
This is perhaps the hardest task of all! It is a lot easier to write a sentence or two than condensing the meaning into just one word. Of course there are some unique challenges when applying the keyword approach to topics such as mathematical proofs or scientific formula. These don't easily lend themselves to traditional mapping techniques - hence my advice around using what works.

Goal Setting Lesson:
Select a 'best-effort' summary keyword and begin with that,
leaving the various branches under that and the supporting notes to look after any additional details that come to mind.

5 - Review:
Could this be homework! Not really. Mind maps change in emphasis over time and will therefore have to be looked at on a regular basis. In the early 1980s, when the few available PCs had something called a 640K DOS memory limit(!!), manually erasing and updating mind map branches was a real hassle - my classes hated to do it! What a contrast with the broadband Internet world and the specialized mind mapping applications of the early 21st century!

Goal Setting Lesson:
Check out the capabilities of the commercial and open source software packages as a potential goal setting tool. The commercial packages usually have a free trial period.

Unique Goal Setting Tool Online here:

Mark McClure is a career coach with a passion for goal setting.
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