Try mind mapping. You'll be amazed by how creative you can become after mind mapping.

Before I start mind mapping myself, I didn't believe one can learn to be creative. I thought creativity is decided by your gene.

I mean, look at Einstein. His brain was born so differently with others. How can you even compete that?

Then I came across a speech by Tony Buzan (the inventor of mind mapping) presented at TEDxSquareMile one day, which changes my perspective on becoming creative.

In his speech, he mentioned a study on how mind mapping facilitates children's creativity. At first, the little boy only came up with four ideas about a paperclip in ten minutes. After mind mapping, 22 ideas he generated.

Impressive, right?

So why are mind maps so helpful in facilitating creative thinking? The reasons are as follows:

Why radiant thinking matters? Because that's when you can think outside the box.

One of the reasons we fail to conjure up new ideas is that we tend to think linearly, in which case we leave out other possibilities. So one problem leads to only one solution.

"Creativity is just connecting things," says Steve Jobs. To be more specific, it's connecting things in a new way.

In a mind map, your ideas are presented in a structure similar to how your brain works. A mind map radiates things from a central idea, just like your brain.

Also, there is always room for new connections. So one problem can lead to multiple solutions.

We used to think creatively as a kid. By that time, we don't really care much about rules and standards as we do now. We use bold colors to paint. We do it so confidently even without a flicker of hesitation. After all, how wrong it could be to paint the sky green?

What we now believe to be correct, possible, and valid has a lot to do with our past experience. That's how we'd perceive the world so differently with kids do. We hesitate, we worry, and we fear.

A mind map helps to break such mental barriers. When creating a mind map, you can be as creative as you used to be so that even though the green sky is against your common sense, you won't eliminate that possibility.

While making mind maps, you only need to present your ideas clearly and concisely with keywords, which saves quite a lot of time and energy comparing that you have to express your ideas in full sentences.

Therefore, the time you've saved can be used to work on generating new ideas, which not only ensures the quantity but also the quality of your creative ideas.

You can start creating a mind map right now on paper or with the help of software, you'll love it!