Visualize Insight with Mind Maps

A mind map is a kind of a diagram that shows topics and how they are connected. Creating a mind map is a widely used creativity- and productivity-enhancing technique. Invented by British author Tony Buzan in The Mind Map Book: How to Use Radiant Thinking to Maximize Your Brain’s Untapped Potential [BB96], similar styles of diagrams have been around since at least the third century.^[109]

A modern mind map is a sort of two-dimensional, organic, and holistic outline. The rules for making a mind map are loose, but they go something like this:

1. Start with a largish piece of unlined paper.

2. Write the subject title in the center of the page, and draw an enclosing circle around it.

3. For the major subject subheadings, draw lines out from this circle, and add a title to each.

4. Recurse for additional hierarchical nodes.

5. For other individual facts or ideas, draw lines out from the appropriate heading and label them as well.

Each node should be connected (no free floaters), and the figure should be hierarchical with a single root, but in general there are few restrictions. You want to be somewhat playful with the use of colors, symbols, and anything else that has meaning for you. But trying to explain this with text doesn’t really convey the result; for an example, take a look at Figure 18, ​Original Dreyfus mind map—messy, organic​. This figure shows the mind map I first created when studying the Dreyfus model. It’s greatly reduced to fit in the book, so don’t worry about trying to read the individual labels—just get a sense of the structure and flow.

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Figure 18. Original Dreyfus mind map—messy, organic

A traditional outline has some subtle and troublesome limitations. For one, regular linear outlines tend to block a creative impulse; the very nature of the outline implies a hierarchy, and hierarchies tend to reinforce their own structure. So, a great idea that doesn’t fit into the structure of the moment might get discarded.

When creating a mind map, avoid filling in the elements in a clockwise manner—that’s just an outline going in circles.^[110]

When I give lectures on this topic, I usually stop here and ask the audience whether they have ever heard of, or used, mind maps. The results are very predictable.

In the United States, I’ll maybe get three or four people out of a hundred who’ve ever even heard of them. But in Europe, I get the opposite response—virtually everyone in the audience has used mind maps. I’m told it’s a standard part of their primary education, much as making an outline or a topic sentence is here in the United States.

While mind mapping sounds like a very basic, elementary technique, it has some subtle properties. It takes advantage of the way your eye scans and reads a piece of paper. Spatial cueing conveys information to you in a way that linear words or an outline can’t; the addition of color and symbols adds to the richness of the representation. As you go to add a new piece of information, a new thought, or an insight to the mind map, you are faced with the question, where does this belong? You have to evaluate the relationships between ideas, not just the ideas themselves, and that can be a very revealing activity.

Emphasize spatial cueing and relationships.

As you start to fill in the diagram, there’s always room for more information. You can write smaller (without resorting to a font selection box), and you can squeeze things to the edge of the page and connect them with lines. You can draw large swoopy arrows across the page to connect remote notes that you now realize should be connected.

And then, once you’ve learned from this mind map, draw it again on a fresh piece of paper—perhaps fixing some of the placement issues and reflecting what you’ve learned since you started. Redrawing and retrieving the information from memory helps strengthen the connections and may expose additional insights in the process.

Try using different kinds of paper. Art papers may have more tooth than office stationery, and they offer a different tactile experience. Markers, colored pencils, and pens all offer a different feel as well. Color in particular seems to have a certain inspirational effect.

Mind Map Enhancements

Nonspecific, non-goal-oriented “playing” with information is a great way to gain insights and see hidden relationships. This sort of mental noodling is just what the R-mode needs to be effective. But it’s important to not try too hard; that’s the “non-goal-oriented” part. You want to sort of let go a bit and let the answer come to you rather than consciously trying to force it. Just play with it.

You’ll soon notice that the graphic enhancements are not random. They begin to add meaning. Instead of mere decoration, they help coax additional thinking and meaning from you. You’re basically asking yourself “What information can I add to this relationship or object?,” but you’re asking your drawing side—your R-mode—to do the enhancement.

Use non-goal-oriented “play.”

Although many fine companies make mind-mapping software,^[111] I think that a software tool is more useful for collaboration or documentation—not for brainstorming, studying, or exploratory thinking. For those activities, you want to draw the mind map by hand.

Why is hand-drawing important? Take a look at the following figure. This is a beautiful, colorful mind map I made on the Mac. It’s an early form of this very book. Each node is hyperlinked to a website, PDF research paper, fragment of a note, or other important asset. But as cool as that is (and very handy for going back and finding research material), it’s not the same.

Writing is as important as reading.

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Figure 19. Software tool mind map—clean and hyperlinked, but useful?

Hand-writing is key, whether it’s plain notes or a mind map. For instance, I find that taking notes during lectures really helps me retain the material—even if I never read the notes again.

The most value, I find, is to take the raw notes while listening (which helps you stay focused as you extract salient points from the lecture) and then transcribe these raw notes into “official notes.” Even if I never read these notes again, the act of transcribing the raw notes is the most valuable portion of this exercise. You can do the same thing with mind maps—start with a rough messy one, and redraw it as needed. The redrawing helps form more associations in your brain.

Try It

Here’s an exercise to try:

1. Take a four-to-five-item bullet list that is of importance to you.

2. Draw a mind map for the items on the list (on paper with pen or pencil).

3. Wait a day.

4. Now spend fifteen to twenty minutes embellishing the drawing. Tart it up. Add thick lines; use color; and add little doodles, pictures, angelic cherubs from a Gothic manuscript in the corners, whatever.

5. Review the mind map a week later. Any surprises?

Using Mind Maps with SQ3R

Mind maps are most effective when you’re not exactly sure what you’ll find.

Taking notes from reading a book is a prime example. The next time you’re reading a book (trying SQ3R, perhaps), take notes as you go in the form of a mind map. You’ll have a general idea of the major topics, but as particular details emerge and as you begin to see which items are related to each other and how, the map will fill in, and a picture of your understanding will emerge.

Then, when you’re in the review phase of SQ3R, redraw and revise your mind map according to your understanding. You’ll be able to refer to the mind map to refresh your memory in a way that’s much more efficient and revealing than other notes or rescanning the book itself.

Exploratory Mind Maps

Similarly, if you’re working on a problem and aren’t sure where you’re going, mind mapping can help. Whether you are designing a new class or a system, debugging an existing one, trying to evaluate several commercial products or open source offerings, buying a new car, or writing a novel or a rock opera, try using a mind map.

Use words as titles; you don’t want any lengthy prose or even full sentences. Draw icons to represent key ideas. Make important lines large and thick; more tentative associations can be spindly. Dump everything you know for now, even if you are not sure where it fits in.

Do the first iteration really, really quickly—almost like an impressionist sketch. This will help get the L-mode out of the way and allow the R-mode unfettered access to the paper.

Start the mind map, and leave it handy—especially if you don’t have a lot of information to add to it just yet (as we’ll see a little later, just having a place to put related ideas is a great help). Fill in the facts and ideas as you get them. It doesn’t have to be in one sitting. Redraw it if needed, but don’t be in rush to do so. Let it be messy for a while. You’re exploring a topic, after all.

If you’re working in an area where you aren’t even sure what the topic is, mind maps can be very useful to help gather your far-flung thoughts together. Jared Richardson tell us, “I use mind maps to reorganize and focus myself when writing or coding. It forces me to step back and clean up my ideas and always shows me how to move forward.”

Use a mind map to help clarify.

I’ve had the same experience; if I’m stuck in a swirling mass of ideas with no clear way forward, using a mind map is a great technique to help generate clarity and show the way.

Collaborative Mind Maps

You can extend this technique to involve a small group or the whole team. Instead of drawing a picture on paper, get everyone up at a whiteboard armed with sticky notes, as shown in Figure 20, ​Affinity grouping in progress​.^[112]

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Figure 20. Affinity grouping in progress

Everyone gets a handful of sticky notes and a marker. You brainstorm, write down ideas on the sticky notes, and place the notes up on the whiteboard. After a while, you can begin to coalesce common themes and cluster related notes near each other.

Since the sticky notes let you detach and reapply, you can reposition the notes as needed.

Once things have settled out, you can draw circles around each grouping and connect them with lines. Voilà! Now you’ve got a mind map. Snap a digital photo of the whiteboard, and email everyone a copy.^[113]

Next Actions

• Make a mind map for the next book you read.

• Make a mind map for your career and lifestyle plans or perhaps for your next vacation.

• Experiment with the effect of color; get some colored pencils, and try using color to encode meaning for individual nodes.

• Experiment with graphical annotations: doodle on your mind maps and see what happens.

• Keep iterating. After you think you’re “done,” go back and add just one more thing. Now do that again.