Career Life Mind Mapping

By Brian D Lawrence

Mind mapping provides the opportunity to really THINK about those questions and about your life and your career.

A mind mapping technique that I find useful is what I call the Micro/Highlight/Macro approach. This three stage approach can be broken down as follows:

1. Micro - focused brainstorming on key areas
2. Highlight - examine each focused mind map and highlight the most two to three most important
3. Macro - Create one mind map that contains the highlighted items down in stage 2

Stage 1 - Micro - Focused Brainstorming

Identify the key high level areas that matter to you. You are going to create an individual mind map for each one.

The following suggestions may give you ideas.

Your Network

• Who around you do you consider Key Players - Those who make decisions which could directly affect you
• Who around you would you consider advocates - Those who would recommend you if asked
• Who around you would you consider a blocker - Those who could become a roadblock for you

You could also categorize your network into personal / career / field / etc.. whatever comes to your mind - write it down.

Financial Goals

Do you have a financial goal.

• Earn x $$ a year
• Earn/Save x $$ amount total Napolean Hill in his book "Think and Grow Rich" suggests that you put down an EXACT amount because that will have a more definite effect on your subconscious mind.
• Invest x $$ amount

Areas of Interest

• Do you have hobbies
• Technical Domain
• Domain

Skillset

• Knowledge you want / GAP in an area
• Experience needed in certain areas
• Communication skills

Professional Goals

• Write a book
• Publish a white paper
• Position
• Short/Long term

Anchors - The idea behind this comes from the Career Anchors Self Assessment.

• Personal
• Children
• Home
• Car
• Friends
• Education back to school?
• Hobbies (Learn to play an instrument?)
• Community Involvement

Stage 2 - Highlight

Look through each of your focused/micro mind maps. Highlight the top 2-3 from each (Use a marker/ highlighter).

Stage 3 - Macro

This is where you combine all highlighted information from the focused mind map you just created.

I find it is most useful to use a piece of paper because the affordances of paper make it easy to quickly brain dump to the paper. If you would prefer to use software, there is free software available which is useful. One such free tool is FreeMind.

You may also download this pdf template that you can print out. This has the suggestions from this short to help with the creative process.

Now What?

Now that you have your career life mind map you can use this as a guide when you make decisions. If you do not have a written career plan, that should be your next step. Use this mind map as input into the thought process when coming up with your career plan.

During this process you most likely identified gaps, put a plan into place now to address the most important ones.

Place this mind map in a place that you will see and is easily accessible. Redo this at least once a year to keep the data relevant.

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