When preparing a presentation, letter, proposal, or any other form of creative/business message, people often start by trying to research as many sources of data or information as possible. This approach often leads to confusion because there is so much out there, and your research can end up overwhelming you.

Successful communicators spend more time planning their writing using powerful tools like Mind-Maps and provocative/challenging questions using the 5Ws and H (Why, What, When, Where, Who, and How?).

To create a Mind-Map and generate ideas for your communication, you can use the following steps:

1. Draw a circle in the middle of a piece of paper or page in your book.

2. Write the topic inside the circle.

3. On the top of your page write out the purpose or objective of your message, e.g. “To persuade investors to buy these stocks.”

4. Draw lines from the circle spiking out to different parts of the page.

5. Use the question prompts to develop questions and write the questions at the tip of each of the spikes.

6. When you have finished writing the questions, try answering them by scribbling answers in between the spikes.

7. Continue doing this until you have exhausted all the questions and possible answers.

8. Collate the answers that are related to each other together.

You have now successfully generated enough ideas to write your message. You may now look to other sources of data and information to support what you have developed yourself.

If you want to learn more about presentations, please visit our eLearning platform to sign-up for the short course, Designing and Developing Presentations.