I am a list person through and through. I have notebooks filled with neatly lined pages, precise handwriting in only black or blue ink (NEVER pencil – the horror!), and nary a doodle in sight. You could say with strong confidence, just by looking at my notebooks, that I am a Type A.

So when I started preparing for the workshop I’m hosting for The Shift in several weeks, I started a list on a fresh page in my notebook. I listed three concepts, one after another, and I was done. There was no room physically on the page for brainstorming or thinking outside the proverbial box without messing up my neatly scribed lines.

Then I saw a blog post about mind mapping and decided to throw all caution to the wind, pulled out some neon paper, and started scribbling away. To my surprise, ideas kept coming. I jumped around the page, adding circle after circle, and ended up after thirty minutes with a much more robust concept of what my workshop would cover than just a few lines on a page.

Mind mapping is visual, expandable, understandable, limitless, and applicable to almost anything. For five seconds of entertainment, just Google mind mapping and see what beautiful creations people have made. Mine isn’t that pretty but it works!

My creatives out there are nodding their heads like, yeah, no kidding, I’ve been using visual, non-linear thinking since I was a kid.

But my challenge is for the Type A’s. One of the first things I ask when we get on a call together is: What are the biggest challenges of your job/business/organization right now? Ask yourself that question today and instead of writing a list, pull out a blank sheet of paper and mind map it!