The other day I met Tony Buzan. I'm sure many of you are familiar with his name. He is the inventor Mind Maps and the world's leading authority on the brain and learning. Or so I was told. To be honest I really didn't know who he was, but prior to the meeting I was given his book to read. It's called 'Use Your Head' and it sold over a million copies round the world and contains techniques on how to use the brains to fulfil your mental potential. Naturally I was intrigued. As an owner of a head equipped with a brain (or brains, rather, as we have different parts of them), I was eager to know whether I have actually employed my grey cells correctly or whether I have squandered all my brains' potentials both through lack of knowledge about how to use them properly or just sheer lack of use.
Glancing through the book I could not help but bemoan my late discovery of his work and the use of the mind map techniques to study and retain knowledge. Not to mention unleashing my creative potentials and expanding the outer limits of my mental capabilities. If only I had come across his book during my formative and impressionable years when my life was one long jotting things down and passing tests. But things might not be beyond help yet. I'm quite optimistic that my brains are still fully functional and receptive to further learning. Especially if I have a proper manual for it. So, armed with a notebook and a dollop of childlike curiosity, I went to see the Brain Guru, a member of the Mensa Club and the President of the Brain Foundation.
In his poster Tony Buzan looks a bit like Anthony Hopkins in Silence of the Lamb, with a rather chilling stare. In real life, he's more like Frank Sinatra in his later years, dapper in his immaculate suit, gentle and avancular in manner and with a twinkle in his eyes that hints of mischievousness and a zest for life. He has written over a hundred books and in the process of writing more. All using his Mind Map technique. Even though I hadn't been privy to it, apparently many of the world's educational institutes and places of learning have been applying his learning method since the book was published in 1974. In his presence I feel smart already. Perhaps because he makes everything sounds easy.
When he was 7 years old, he told me, he had a friend called Barry, whom he thought was a genius. Barry knew a lot about nature and could identify the sounds of things in the sky instantly and other stuffs that little Tony couldn't even begin to comprehend. But when there was a test at school to name the fishes in the river, Tony came first in the class because he could remember the names and write them down. Barry came bottom of the class, even though Tony knew that his friend knew a lot more about than he was. It was then that little Tony started to question the meaning of intelligence and how school got the idea of being smart topsy turvy.
School is a place where children learn a lot of things, where their brains are crammed with uninteresting 'whats,' while studying becomes synonymous with torturous boredom and hardwork. Note-taking is tedious and trying to memorise the lessons or revise for exams are frightful affairs. If anything, when it comes to school or academic work, the brain's tendency is to shut down or to wander off into more pleasant reveries. The university library, says Buzan, is a great place for mass snoozing. On the contrary, it's rare to catch children dozing off in front of their video games or anyone finding day dreaming difficult or monotonous. We seem to be a lot more receptive to things when they are bright, colourful and have lots of images in them. Our brains feel more in tune with pictures. It really is a case of a picture is worth a thousand words.
I think back to my school and university days where I ended up with stacks of closely-written notes, piles of memory cards and books with scribbles and scrawls along the margins as I tried to make sense and put some kind of order to the knowledge I was acquiring. Studying was serious stuff and coloured pens and drawing paper were not part of the equipment. They were for my art classes. The period of learning that I truly enjoyed and remember with fondness. Actually, thinking about it, I doodled a lot during lectures to keep my eyes open and prevent my brains from slipping into the realm of biredom.
We are always taught what to learn, but we are rarely taught how to learn. We have brains but we don't really know how they work and how to use them properly. We use our brains in ways that are opposite to what stimulate the mind and make learning easy. Because, unlike our note-taking, our attempt to organise and store information, our brains don't work in a linear, monochromatic and systematic way, based on language.
The most effective way of using the brains is to create a Mind Map of colours, thought associations and images, because this is how our brains work: in images. Our memory works through associations. Our learning comes from the whole synaesthesia of sensations that spark the brains interest and stimulate the natural multiple intelligences that make up our mental potentials and capabilities.
If only I had approached my academic work with as much zeal and passion as I had into my doodlings, and put more pictures and colours on my notes, who's to say I couldn't have been another Einstein or a Leonardo da Vinci, instead of a measly TV Anchor and a writer chased by deadlines.
Desi Anwar: first published in The Jakarta Globe
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