RadiantThought

The Brothers Grimm wrote a fairy tale about a poor cobbler and some helpful elves. Part of the story goes like this …

Then he cut his leather out, all ready to make up the next day,
meaning to rise early in the morning to his work. His conscience was
clear and his heart light amidst all his troubles; so he went
peaceably to bed, left all his cares to Heaven, and soon fell asleep.
In the morning after he had said his prayers, he sat himself down to
his work; when, to his great wonder, there stood the shoes all ready
made, upon the table. The good man knew not what to say or think at
such an odd thing happening. He looked at the workmanship; there was
not one false stitch in the whole job; all was so neat and true, that
it was quite a masterpiece.

I believe that there is a valuable lesson to be learned here. This is true of many such stories.

I have had experiences similar to the experience of the cobbler in the story many times. Our subconscious mind is capable of continuing to work on problems while we sleep, sometimes with astounding results.

Years ago, when I was learning how to program in assembly language for the Intel microprocessors I came to a point that I could not get past. I could not understand one problem, a part of how a particular program was operating. I could get it to work, but I couldn’t understand why it worked. I read and studied all of the information that I could find about the issues surrounding my problem, but I just couldn’t make it work and so needlessly beat my head against the wall for hours without getting anywhere.

When I went to sleep that night, I had a strange and vivid dream. I dreamed that I was inside the computer’s memory while the program was running, moving values in the program around by pushing them with my hands, watching the part of the program that I couldn’t understand working from the inside. When I awoke, I went to the computer and understood the program perfectly. While I was asleep, my unconscious mind figured out what my conscious mind was too nervous and frantic to understand.

Since that time I have come to appreciate this effect, especially in situations that are complicated or difficult. Here are some tips to get the elves working for you.

• Do as much as you can.  Like the cobbler in the story, cut out the leather and get it ready for the next day. Sometimes I like to create a mind map with parts that are blank or missing to help this process.
• Don’t blow out the day’s schedule for something that’s eluding you. Instead, have a normal, balanced day. Before you go to sleep, give your subconscious its orders in as much detail as possible and go to bed thinking about it. Don’t stay up half the night trying to figure it out.
• Don’t get  stressed out and drive everyone around you crazy. Spend time with family and friends. Love someone. Sometimes, distraction will allow your subconscious mind to get to work and you’ll have more success when you return to your problem.
• Be grateful when the answers come. Your mind is a fantastic invention, and the fact that it can help you when you’re sleeping is an incredible gift. Realize that you are not your problems, and that somethings seem difficult one day and easy the next. Maintain perspective.

I have been a huge fan of PigPog’s post about his nowMap templates and method for months. It’s sort of a loose-form concept mapping to help you get it together as you go about your day. I have used them when away from computers and running around, and also while sitting at computers. However, I also like to keep something similar in MindManager. It’s a little different, because MindManager doesn’t do concept mapping. I haven’t found this to be any trouble at all, since I will print these out, with the background, and write all over them while I’m running around or away from computers. Since the information is split between the computer and my written notes, it saves me some data entry time.

Here is what they tend to look like (click for a larger version). The data is falsified, but it should be obvious to anyone reading this that I need a vacation.

I have a template that I use to pop these maps out as quickly as I need them, and a style that I can use to convert any map to this look. I use styles a lot to organize my maps so that I can see at a glance when I switch to MindManager and tab through my documents what sort of thing I’m working on.

I’ve made the template, the style, and a converted image of PigPog’s template that you can try out as a background (though this isn’t a very flexible option … it’s easy to run out of space) available as a download:

NowMap.zip

You can also try printing the original template first, and then printing your map on top of it, turning off the printing of the background image. I got this idea from a similar topic at the Mindjet forum.