Mind Maps

8 Tips for Thinking & Learning #6

This advice comes from the excellent book, Pragmatic Thinking & Learning by Andy Hunt.

Have you ever made an outline about a given topic? I was taught, as I'm sure most of you were as well, that an outline is a great research tool for organizing your thoughts. According to Hunt, outlines are limiting. By imposing a rigid format, ideas that don't fit neatly into the model are often discarded. Wouldn't it be a shame if a great idea was left behind?

A Mind Map is like an outline ... but not. They show topics, and facts about those topics, and how they connect. Unlike an outline, a mind map encourages you to be creative in the act of building it. You are encouraged to use different colors, use symbols, draw pictures and to write your text in different sizes.

Creating a mind map is simple. Take a large sheet of paper and write your subject title, surrounded by a circle or an oval, in the center. For all of the sub-headings under your major subject, enter them around the main title and draw connecting lines. Continue breaking down your information this way, ending with facts and ideas connected by lines. Every item on your map should be connected. Don't worry about making it pretty. It's more important to be creative. Look for connections you wouldn't have noticed before.  Learn!

Hunt recommends that Mind Maps be hand drawn. Do not use the software available for the creation of mind maps. It is not the same thing.

Why do mind maps work? Hunt says ...

It (mind mapping) 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 ... 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 revealing activity.

It is also interesting that while this technique is not commonly taught in the United States, it is in Europe. I think we should all give mind mapping a try and see if it helps with our learning. (You can see the mind map that Hunt developed for his book at Amazon.)