The beauty of this is that you can see everything on one page. No time wasted sorting through pages. No need to flip through your notes to see your next point or find your conclusion--it's all right there in front of you. No need for extra notes. No energy spent on rewrites.

He didn't stop there. Buzan understood that color is a strong factor in helping us remember, so he encourages us to use different colors for each of radiant thoughts and sub-thoughts. Instead of using only words, incorporate little line drawings and images to make connections between thoughts.

This is way our brains work naturally. We don't picture word B-O-X when we picture a box. Instead, our brains conjure image. We don't always go from thought A to thought B to thought C. We're just as likely to start with A, then head over to E, skip back to A and then saunter over to R. Our neural pathways look like webs, not straight lines. In fact, more criss- crossed our connections, more we're able to synthesize complex ideas and come up with new ways to use old information.

Mind Maps give us an excuse to play. They give us a reason to keep a whole set of colored pens right on our desk for everyone to see. Mind maps allow our thuggish left brains to make friends with our timid rights. For once, there's harmony on playground!

Use a Mind Map for your next planning session, and watch reaction. Raised eyebrows give way to smirks, which dissolve into delighted grins. Linear notes become circular masterpieces. Black and white becomes a rainbow. Words become pictures. Workers become creative. Work becomes joyful collaborative experience it is meant to be.

Grab your markers and become radiant. Your brain is waiting to play!

I couldn't understand why that would happen. I had been adding content-- something Google loves. I had been doing my linking. So I was beginning to take it personally that Google just didn't like me. So after a few days of analyzing (and yes moping too). I decided that I didn't need Google! Who was Google to tell me that my site didn't have a PR? I knew I had been working hard on my site and as long as I knew that, that was ok with me.

Well, come to find out I did still have my PR I just had to go about looking for it in a different manner (without www). Was Google trying to trick me? Well, from what I have understood Google gets confused at times which is acceptable, it happens to best of us. But I still am keeping myself in recovery. I can see now that my life was being controlled by green line. I will not allow that to happen again. Besides, I think if maybe I just stop focusing so much on it, It will move up faster.

So my advice to any other Google PR Junkie....don't worry about green line. As long as you know you are doing your work and you are getting traffic to your site then you know things are ok. Focus more on things you can control, and forget uncontrollable green line.