Creative ideas can come at any moment, and it’s so important to record them before they vanish into thin air. Carrying that leather journal around is necessary to capture the moment and capture the events that mean the most.
For those times when ideas don’t come bubbling to the surface, using your journal to brainstorm or to create a mind map can be the perfect way to jumpstart your creative engine and get back into the flow.
1. Brainstorming
It’s advantageous to throw out rapid-fire ideas and see what comes up. Once the ideas start to flow, one idea will lead into another and so on. The new idea might be completely different or an expansion of an earlier idea that you’ve jotted down. Having it all down on paper can serve as a reference to track your thought processes during times of great inspiration.
Brainstorming has a few underlying “rules” such as:
- Let the ideas flow. No second guessing, judging or editing as you are brainstorming. Unusual ideas may lead to new avenues you haven’t considered
- Combine ideas to come up with more
- Keep record of what you brainstorm. Even if it seems a little bit “crazy” now, doesn’t mean that it might make complete sense later on.
2. Mind Mapping
Also referred to as clustering, a mind map works similarly to a brainstorming session. The difference is that often a mind map will make use of shapes, milestones or even illustrations. These are all connected by pathways. A mind map is a powerful tool for not only generating ideas but enhancing memory. Our minds tend to work in the form of images and pictures or symbols. Whether you’re trying to remember information for an exam or are simply researching, these pictures and symbols can become like a book of matches that are ready to ignite our minds. They can also serve to ignite a creative firestorm that can burn for a long time.
How to Create a Mind Map
- Use a portrait or landscape orientation in your leather writing journal. In choosing your page’s orientation, think about what will be the most effective method to retain information.
- Draw it out! – Similarly to creating an art journal or a zibaldone book, mind maps cobble together writing and illustrations to create the message.
- Choose the most effective writing implement possible. Use color coding with pencils or markers. Use your fountain pens if you love fanciful designs. Do you love your pens? Use a single pen for writing in your journal.
- Decide on a topic – Whether you’re problem solving, studying for a test or draw out the plot for a novel, the mind map can help you get there.
- Choose your starting point on the page – Whether you start in the center of the page and work out or start at the top and work down, your starting point depends on the subject matter, the size of the journal, and your personal preference. Never forget that it is your mind map and your journal.
- Color-code your map for easy reference – Each separate branch or stream of a mind map should have a different color. Each branch can represent a new idea as part of the mind mapping or brainstorming process. Offshoots of those initial branches can be the same color or you can use different colors that designate their importance.
Brainstorming and Mind Mapping as a means for generating ideas and solving problems is used all over the world, from small classrooms to large corporations. Try using both techniques in your own journal and see what great ideas you can generate in the process.
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