MIND MAPPING
The way of making problem simple
CHALLENGE
In today's time we the students of various schools, colleges and various other educational institute are in a race of getting or giving answers better than anyone of our friends or colleagues to some problems that require extensive thinking to come at a conclusion or instantaneous discussion say with in a time limit of 5 mins .For a student like myself Mind mapping provides a great help to make a problem as simple as possible and provide all the important points that should be there in the required answer.
I had once been given a task to make an estimation of poverty in my local area. Now there are many ways to estimate the poverty in the immediate society like –looking into the library for the estimation record of previous years made by the government and hence arrive at a conclusion based on those records. However, in doing so we will not be able to determine the cause and effects and any other factors of the poverty rather we will only get an estimated number. In order to completely identify the poverty from the roots and determine its cause, effects, environmental impact etc. we need a more specific way that will give us the all in one solution. The method we select should include every aspect and giveaway answers that will benefit the common mass. Mind Mapping and other visualization techniques comes handy in such situations.
SELECTION and APPLICATIONS
Now, no doubt that a problem can be approached from many different ways and methods. But not every such methods can take into account all the aspects required for the best solutions. Mind Mapping is an extensively used tool for gathering information on every aspects of the concerned problem. Mind mapping involves considering all the cases, conditions or any other relative objective around a certain idea. It branches out all the possible scenarios that are there revolving around the idea.
The questions that comes into our mind when we start dealing with the central idea – poverty, are mainly concerned with What is? , What if? , Can it? , Who are? .
It raises a lot of questions among us starting from the cause to the remedies to the problem and responsibilities of the concerned authorities. First of all, what is poverty and what is the cause of the poverty in the local area? Is it unemployment or some other monetary problems such as inability to support a large family due to less income or some other reasons? Next comes the questions like How is it that in present time, even after implementations of numerous govt. norms we still see that the average monetary growth rate of people is not increasing as per our estimations? Or, can the so-called poverty problems be lessened or completely eradicated? What about the officials or other concerned authorities? Are they taking their work seriously? Who are responsible for making sure that present policies will not bring adverse results?
Now, a survey of this scale cannot be done by oneself. So, I had help from my classmates. We were 19 students divided into 5 groups (4-4-4-4-3). Each group was tasked to approach the locals and interact with them and determine the employment and job that prevails the economy of the society. Each group was sent to different parts of the society. On such group was tasked to visit the local library and collect information about present estimations of populations, economy and living conditions of the people of the society. Now the results we got was somewhere between what we expected and not expected.
INSIGHT and APPROACH
From the reports every team submitted I came to know more about the economy conditions in my locality. First of all, nearly 52 % of the population in my area consisted of people who are either currently working in certain jobs or have their own source of income. 44% of the populations consists of those who are unable to contribute monetary help to their families that is the women who are housewives and the retired people and the teenagers. The rest 4% are the unemployed population. It is this portion that determines the whole poverty of the area. According to the previous reports collected from the library we come at a conclusion that the poverty rate has decreased from 12% to 4% over a period of 8 years. One reason that can be given for such accomplishment is that the implemented norms were carefully looked upon and several people were specifically appointed to look after the problem by the govt.
Most of the shopkeepers stated that they started from a very small shops which have now turned into a really good source of income for a large number of people. Few of the housewives and retired people have started small business from their home which have added to the family income. Even the population rise in the area as compared to earlier reports were not large or alarming. It may be because the present people are becoming more conscious toward the thought of a nuclear family.
I have learned from this exercise that whatsoever the problem be, it can be solved through the basic principle- “Divide and Conquer”. The Mind Mapping process is basically based on the same principle. It allowed to divide the questions into groups and assign helpers to carry out the questions to get the work correctly and quickly. Even those helpers have understood the essence of the problem and had done their best to get the better results.
The Mind Mapping tool is truly impressive. After learning about its ins and outs I can now try to apply the same process in other areas to get the results quickly without leaving any points. For example, the process can be applied to study the regular academic subjects more thoroughly, or to make a basic list of a repetitive event that is to act as a base list for the event happening next time.
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