Career Life Mind Mapping
Mind mapping provides the opportunity to really THINK about those questions and about your life and your career.
A mind mapping technique that I find useful is what I call the Micro/Highlight/Macro approach. This three stage approach can be broken down as follows:
Micro – focused brainstorming on key areas
Highlight – examine each focused mind map and highlight the most two to three most important
Macro – Create one mind map that contains the highlighted items down in stage 2
Stage 1 – Micro – Focused Brainstorming
Identify the key high level areas that matter to you. You are going to create an individual mind map for each one.
The following suggestions may give you ideas.
Your Network
Who around you do you consider Key Players – Those who make decisions which could directly affect you
Who around you would you consider advocates – Those who would recommend you if asked
Who around you would you consider a blocker – Those who could become a roadblock for you
You could also categorize your network into personal / career / field / etc.. whatever comes to your mind – write it down.
Financial Goals
Do you have a financial goal.
Earn x $$ a year
Earn/Save x $$ amount total Napolean Hill in his book “Think and Grow Rich” suggests that you put down an EXACT amount because that will have a more definite effect on your subconscious mind.
Invest x $$ amount
Areas of Interest
Do you have hobbies
Technical Domain
Domain
Skillset
Knowledge you want / GAP in an area
Experience needed in certain areas
Communication skills
Professional Goals
Write a book
Publish a white paper
Position
Short/Long term
Anchors – The idea behind this comes from the Career Anchors Self Assessment.
Personal
Children
Home
Car
Friends
Education back to school?
Hobbies (Learn to play an instrument?)
Community Involvement
Stage 2 – Highlight
Look through each of your focused/micro mind maps. Highlight the top 2-3 from each (Use a marker/ highlighter).
Stage 3 – Macro
This is where you combine all highlighted information from the focused mind map you just created.
I find it is most useful to use a piece of paper because the affordances of paper make it easy to quickly brain dump to the paper. If you would prefer to use software, there is free software available which is useful. One such free tool is FreeMind.
You may also download this pdf template that you can print out. This has the suggestions from this short to help with the creative process.
Now What?
