Mind Maps

The central focus for this mind map was Portsmouth Harbor in New Hampshire. I work at the Portsmouth Yacht club and every year we accommodate hundreds of transient vessels making their way up or down the coast with moorings. While providing launch service I am frequently asked about the history of the harbor, and what there is do. I have lived in the area all of my life so I sometimes forget to mention the small fun things there are to do that I take for granted on a usual day. Although I have a usual spiel about historical sites and information, but through this mind map I was hoping to achieve a more thorough sensible response to the customers questions. I am current returning home to work for the yacht club on the weekends until the end of the season in mid october, so it is important to keep a sharp mind at work sense I am usually scrambling to do homework during breaks or on a slow day.

The experience was similar to how it was explained in class. During the first twenty minutes everything I wrote down on the paper was usual familiar to me. When I started to run out of ideas it seemed like really great ones would come to me randomly, but slowly. I just kept working at it over the course of a couple days and ending up coming up with excellent ideas that really surprised me. I had problems trying to decide how to incorporate color into the map. I decided on yellow for the central focus to draw the viewers eye immediately. Red and Blue branches help signify water vs. land affiliated activities while purple is useful information. There are images associated with the various branches that unify the map and make it more easily understandable. During the second mind map I explored the necessary things involved with being a useful employee at the Portsmouth Yacht Club. The aha moment came when I started realizing some of the last things I jotted down were the things I needed to work on the most at the club.

Overall, I can certainly see the usefulness of mind mapping. I am intrigued by the fact that our brains go directly to the most used synapses. It takes a while to get to the good stuff. I have definitely been taking this phenomena into consideration in everyday life as well. I am more conscious of things that I do just out of a habit or pattern. I am excited to introduce this technique to others in the further because I feel like it is essential especially for problem solving.