A friend was in chat tonight and was struggling to get some content organised. They had the basic idea but were struggling to pull it all together the way they wanted it and hit a wall or two. It is common for many people who have something to say but, just can't quite grasp the necessary words. This is a little tip I gave them.

Many years ago, I developed this very simple tool as a vocabulary and activation builder exercise for language students however, it is useful for much more than that. 

### Here is the basic model:
 
![pst steem.png](https://steemitimages.com/DQmPN5zTo6GEgnVU5psF6YZmkPmXCY95dENpJmGsfQQhmMb/pst%20steem.png)

It is just a word association exercise except it branches from one stem word (the primary) where related words are added (the secondary) and then associations are made on the associations again (the tertiary). 

- Primary - Core word / idea / image / problem
- Secondary - 5-10 associations made off the primary
- Tertiary - 3-5 associations made off the Secondary

The process will take about 5 minutes max and will create ~50 words or so that are all somewhat related to the central stem. These can be used in several ways to either get the mind working, order thoughts, combine for new thoughts, create a logical presentation flow ot many other similar types of needs. Starting with one or two of these *before* writing can make the entire process much more efficient. I have students that use this daily for their presentations.

However, there are more applications for it. for example;

### Example 1: What do you know?
 
Let's say that you are starting a new hobby and you want to learn all there is to learn about it. Make the hobby (or major components) as the stem and then let your mind go and find out what you *already know* about the topic. What this does is create a network of knowledge that will become pegs to hang new bits of information upon. It will also mean that when conflicting information is met when actually learning, the chance to catch hidden bad habits/ideas is higher so they can't fly under the radar of consciousness. This is an easy way to start a personal knowledge bank.

### Example 2: How to wing it.
 

Similarly, there are times thatsome of us might need to present information that we do not know with only very little time to prepare. Use this tool and techniques and you can not only build a knowledge bank to draw upon but, you can actually structure sentences directly from the tool. This helps to develop strong sentences to make key points within the presentation. You might be very surprised at what types of presentation you could deliver with very little knowledge on a topic. Perhaps you could become a politician. 

### Example 3: Enlightenment
 
Lastly, one of my students used it in a completely different way, a way that I have used it myself but, I didn't tell him about. What he did was explore his relationship with a few different topics but the first one was, *money.* 

What he found was that when he did the exercise with *money* as the stem, he had a lot of negative associations with it which was no surprise considering his current situation at the time. But, he noticed something else. He already knew what the problems were *and* hoe to go about correcting them but, he just wan't doing it. He created some personal activities, reminders, goals and the like based on cutting the negative actions and increasing the positive ones and , 6 months later, his financial situation had changed drastically. 

This is no surprise but, he credits his ability to activate himself because he was able to do and see what he actually had to do and see if that makes sense. The act of doing this simple task jolted his awareness quite strongly when he realised that the problem was him.

### To sum up
 
There are other ways to use this of course like as the basic vocabulary builder I designed to to be but, give it a go and you will find that there is a great deal of information and potential creativity hiding away in the recesses of your mind. Use it as an idea development tool, place a picture in the middle instead or a problem you might need to solve. This is a very, very easy way to exercise and strengthen thoughts. 

I would be interested to hear how people find it (if you actually try it) because I know that for my students, it has become a tool they can turn to and improve the efficieny and effectiveness of various tasks and it literally only takes a few minutes at most. 

Taraz
[ a Steemit original ]