Thinking in Straight Lines
Just lately I’ve been confronted with a major problem that has needed a lot of very careful thought.
I don’t know about you but my thought patterns tend to go round in circles going back over the same thing time and time again. And that was certainly the case this time.
What I needed to do was think in a linear fashion and I needed to consider a number of alternates that could arise if I chose to take a certain course of action.
I was really struggling with it until I remembered a book I read years ago - it’s called Piece of Mind
In the book the author, Sandy MacGregor, talks about mind charts and how to develop them as an aid to thinking.
I adapted that idea to fit my own situation and came up with my own little maps to help me think in a linear fashion. I haven’t used them in many years but today I sat down and started drawing my mind map and it helped me focus on the possibilities that lay ahead and where I need to tread carefully as I make my plans.
You don’t have to be a great artist to draw a map like mine - just some symbols that you understand and lines and arrows that you can follow as you think through whatever you’re using the map for. Mine are certainly not as elegant as the ones in the book but they work for me and that’s all that counts.
I’ve included a rough example just to help you see what I’m talking about.
My apologies for not rotating the image into landscape but unfortunately I would have had to have reduced the size to the point where you would not have been able to read my scribble.
Sometimes something as simple as a sheet of paper and a pen can help you think through your small business decisions.
