Houston, I have a problem
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Mind maps have flipped my life upside down. From summarizing notes when reading to giving workshops about mind mapping, I have adopted this tool as my way of working, both professionally and personally. What I have not told is what led me to start using this powerful thinking tool in the first place. I can remember the frustration and embarrassment I felt, when I realized something had to change.
It dates back to the summer of 2019, after graduating from IESE Business School with a master’s degree in business administration (MBA). In September, I would start a rotational program at Siemens. I had planned to exhaust my last reserves of savings on travelling and surfing during the summer months. I had travelled to Bilbao, in the north of Spain, to crash my friend Jaime’s couch and ride some waves. The ocean had other ideas for me. With very little to no waves, I substituted surfing waves for diving into a self-development book.
The book recommendation was given to me by professor of strategic management Massimo Maoret. The First 90 Days, written by Michael Watkins compiles different strategies to start adding value into an organization within the first three months after joining. The overachiever in me thought: “You are joining Siemens in a few months. You want to prove yourself faster than 90 days. This book is for you.”
I need to admit I was never a fast reader. For the record, my reading speed was back them 182 words per minute. Learning how to read a book in 50 minutes would come to me three years later, in 2022. And so the slow reading began. The book is composed of approximately 300 pages, which include graphs, tables, bullet points, and all sorts of instruments covering how to rapidly add value and shorten one’s learning curve at a new organization. As I flipped pages, I did not want to miss anything that may prove relevant or necessary for my new upcoming professional adventure at Siemens. I documented the book’s highlights by scribbling notes, notes, and more notes. I wanted to have as many tools in my toolbox. Have I mentioned that I self-declare as a nerd? If not, now would be timely to do so again. After 300 pages read and 35 pages of hand-written notes taken, I was convinced I was well-equipped for my first day at Siemens.
I prided myself for all the notes I took and felt ready for anything my new professional venture may throw at me. In September of 2019, I walked through the Siemens headquarter doors with an aura of grandiosity and know-it-all typical of recent MBA graduates. Life would put me in my place. I will pause here to ask you:
How many times do you think I went back to those impeccable 35 pages of notes? (Hint: they fit in one hand?
The answer is: I went back to my notes twice.
Of those two times, how many proved useful in finding the information I was searching for? (Hint: you need no hands for this).
The answer is: Z-E-R-O.
Let me do a time invested analysis of my process of reading, notetaking, note-searching:
Pages read = 304 - Time invested: 9.5 hours
Pages of notetaking = 35 - Time invested: 3.5 hours
Pages of notes read = 35 - Time invested 1.5 hours x 2 = 3 hours
Overall time employed - 9.5 + 3.5 + 3 = 16 hours
The grand total of time I had devoted to this book was 16 hours, resulting on a return on investment of 0% (here is the MBA graduate again). This percentage does not include the frustration and embarrassment that invaded me every time I thought how much time I had wasted in achieving Z-E-R-O.
Thirty-five pages of hand-written notes summarizing my takeaways from The First 90 Days by Michael D. Watkins
As if I were sitting in the cockpit on my head, I heard an intermittent buzzing noise and to saw the blinking light of the “master alarm” button on my conscience. “Houston, I have a problem”. A gust of questions flew across my mind: “How many more books do you want to read?” “How much time waste would I accumulate?” “What alternatives are there to get a higher return for my time?” “Where could I find those alternatives?” There had to be a more pragmatic and efficient manner of capturing notes. Something that would be more digestible than 35 pages of tiny handwriting, with z-e-r-o added value. I did not even consider the possibility of increasing my reading speed at the stage. I was so shocked by the fact that my notes had proven worthless. My mind could only register the determination to find a way to avoid that from ever happening again.
A year later, my search brought me to Jim Kwik. He is an American brain coach, founder of Kwik Learning and author of the book Limitless. Navigating through Kwik’s content and a few YouTube videos later, I found he had an online course called Kwik Reading. The tagline was “triple your reading speed and boost your comprehension in 3 weeks”. I bit into it and I felt as if a hook attached to a fishing line was pulling me into that course. My thought process flipped the course’s tagline around placing “boosting my comprehension” in my line of fire. At the end of December 2020, after doing my due diligence on the course, I enrolled into the 21-day Kwik Reading course. I was eager and impatient to get my hands onto those comprehension enhancing techniques that Jim Kwik would have for me.
Life, as well as Jim, would teach me patience. It was not until day 14 of the course that Jim’s focus would shift from speed reading techniques to enhancing reading comprehension through notetaking. After all, I had purchased a speed reading course. It made sense for reading comprehension would be secondary and take its time to make an appearance. Kwik covered three different methods for taking notes. The first two did not make it to my long-term memory. The third approach for notetaking he shared, the one that I was determined would work, was a technique called quadrant technique. It consists of drawing or writing the title of the book in the middle of the page and dividing the paper in four quadrants to capture answers to power questions in each of the quadrants. Power questions refer to the 5 W’s and 1 H (what, where, when, why, who, and how).
This method pushed me to keep my notetaking to one page. I was confined to the quadrants. On the other hand, no quadrant impeded me to write smaller, trying to cram as much as I could in a single piece of paper. The result: a lot of squinting and substantial time spent trying to decipher what I had written. I must admit though that finding the relevant information afterwards was made slightly easier by purposefully choosing what power question each quadrant would address. “Houston, I still have a problem.” Quadrants was not the solution I was searching for.
Revising my Kwik Reading course notes for this post, I could not believe my eyes. Back then, on January 23 of 2021, I had jotted down mind mapping as one of the comprehension techniques Jim Kwik shared. How did I miss that? I am bewildered to this day that I did not explore more into what would become a life-changer for me. It would not be until late May of that year, on another speed-reading course, that mind mapping would slap me in the face to wake me up. This time the course was led by Jesús Honrubia, a Spanish mentor with an incredible method for reading books at lightning speed. In a much more visual way, Jesús explained how mind maps are composed and built to be efficient cognition enhancers. Honrubia even provided his speed reading method in a colorful and, comprehensive one-page mind map. He recommended to dig more deeply into Tony Buzan, an English author and educational consultant, who popularized the idea of radiant thinking through mind maps. Although Jesús course was on speed reading, my rabbit hole became Tony Buzan’s The Mind Map Book. “Houston, I may have a solution”.
The rest is history. For a few weeks, the term “mind maps” and “how to” was in all the search engines you can imagine. I got my hands on anything containing mind maps: books, courses, YouTube videos, etc. I consumed as much information as it was available. Armed with a multicolor BIC pen, I was ready to mind map my very first victim, Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell, was my first mind map victim.
Following Buzan’s doctrine, I added color and images to what initially were quite monochrome mind map attempts. I played with the size and depth of the text. I had lines connecting different areas or ideas in the mind map. I invested time in reviving the inner child in me with no fear nor judgement to drawing. I transitioned from text-heavy mind maps to visual, colorful, and exaggerated ones.
Colorful, visual, and easily recallable information captured in one page. This are my “notes” of the book Atomic Habits by James Clear.
With this shift, I noticed I was able to recall a lot more of the content. With one glance at the mind map my thoughts or ideas on the content would populate my head. It felt like the mind map was my brain’s direction on where to find all the content and information I was trying to retrieve. The process of mind mapping, playing with colors, drawing lines and images was amusing and fun. Inevitably it drifted into by part of my every day. “Houston, I have a solution”. Traditional notetaking had been sentenced to death. Mind maps were my present and my future.
