Taking a horizontal look at lesson modules (photo by Sheila Scarborough)

Taking a horizontal look at lesson modules (photo by Sheila Scarborough)

I kept getting stuck.

I would review, poke around in and scroll through while updating and grooming the different modules, but I couldn’t see what I was looking for…missing parts, parts that needed to be moved, parts that didn’t fit anymore. It was OK as it was, even pretty good, but “OK” and “pretty good” are not good enough.

Maybe if my brain could process it differently by seeing it differently, I’d find the needed changes and connections.

So, I made up a document with the outline of our Tourism Currents online course, put each lesson module on one sheet of paper, blew up the font and printed it.

Then I taped them all in a row on the edge of my kitchen’s pass-through bar, so that I could see what I was looking at.

Simple, cheap, easy.

Now, things are much clearer.

The next step is to take some of that same information and write it out in a mind-mapping format on the big pad of paper that I bought this past weekend (yes, you can use mind-mapping software but for me, a big sheet of paper and a pen are better for the scribbles, notes, arrows, stars and dot-dot-dots that accompany creative thought.)

How do YOU organize information and data so that your brain can do more with it?

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