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Comment by cheez | Hacker News Reader

Does anyone's mind actually ever work like this? Mindmaps drive me insane.

I use mind maps all the time. They were instrumental in helping me pass GCSEs, A Levels, UnderGrad and parts of my PhD. Before I read the book (Tony Buzan, Use Your Head) I did OK in exams and school but nothing to write home about. With mind maps I went from a C to an A across the board.

Whats most amazing about them, for me, is that even after 7 years I can still remember good chunks of my A Level Physics and Electronics mind maps.

The key is to read the book and use them properly, most people use them as a glorified spider diagram (like this software). A good MM stays in your head for years and it's like feeling you way to the information rather than just brute forcing it from memory.

I highly recommend reading the book.

I have 2 MMs on the walls next to me. One for how we are going to get enough traffic to our site next winter and another detailing what we learnt last winter in general in the business.

Should you happen to use Mac OS, have you seen Tinderbox (Eastgate systems)? Windows (and Wine) users may want to look at Inspiration.

Both allow 'unconstrained' mind mapping/concept mapping where the spatial arrangement of objects is not enforced.

Excellent! I like to work with:

- Loose sentences/notes, which I group into 'clouds' of related topics (without a mindmap's edges). Scapple [0] on OSX is good for this (and spider diagrams), and Microsoft OneNote.

- Spider diagrams - I find mentally these much easier to create when listening to a presentation or in a meeting. The straight lines help for some reason

- Mind maps. My weakest skill, but as someone else commented they stay in the mind better than anything else does, and I can remember some from 3+ years ago.

[0] http://www.literatureandlatte.com/scapple.php

Would you go into more detail about how one "uses it properly"? Is there a good book or other resource that describes how to do this?

It's difficult to describe what I call "properly" without doing it a diservice but the original book is called "Use Your Head" by Tony Buzan and I would highly, highly recommend it. The first half doesn't really touch on mind mapping and is more on how memory works but that sets up for the mind mapping section and is just as (if not more) valuable.

It's an old book, I read my Mum's copy when I was 14 and it was hers from uni but it is great.

I find that students split two thirds to one third on this. Two thirds prefer 'linear' lists of topics and notes, the one third like the mind-map approach. This is 16 year olds and older studying basic maths. So I have both available!

Personally I don't like the 'strict' mind map format, but do like a two dimensional spatial arrangement of information. (Dia rather than freemind for the Linux desktop users out there. But preferably a pencil and paper).

I find these mind mapping programs annoying and frustrating to use. The thing is, these are not 'maps' in so much as they are a link of concepts. On a map, the placement is the most important thing. In these softwares, your three element list just became a three branch tree, or a spiderweb. Does the word on the left mean something different because it's on the left? Why not put everything on the right of the root since that's how people read anyway (if you read from left to right). Why does my eye have to jump around the whole screen just to read a list?

> Personally I don't like the 'strict' mind map format, but do like a two dimensional spatial arrangement of information.

Completely agree with you. I haven't found any software to match using pen and paper either, which is sad as when I run out of space around a topic, a force-directed algorithm to create more would be very nice :)

> when I run out of space around a topic, a force-directed algorithm to create more would be very nice

Have you tried iMindMap (www.thinkbuzan.com)? Pretty sure it does that.

I think some people actually do think like this, but I'm with you: I can't imagine how this is more helpful than a linear list.

I don't think we know how we "think" yet :)

It is more helpful in the same way as binary tree search is better than linked list traversal.

Interesting. I use org mode to manage my tasks and a simple C-/ t shows me all my todos, managed hierarchically.

Different tools for different people and if your brain works with mindmaps, that fascinates me because they make my brain stop functioning.

...for those who think in spaghetti, I suppose

As part of fiddling with a different way of displaying dependency information, I wrote a series of blog posts talking about how people don't think hierarchically.

http://iamcurt.com/many-to-many-needs-advocacy/

I never really understood the appeal - I don't see that gives anything beyond what a simple tree control based UI can deliver. Perhaps it's a matter of taste.

Actually, I'm wondering if a project can fit into a mind-map.

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