Mindmapping
October 1, 2008 5:14 pmThinking tools have always been a favorite topic of mine. I love good thinking tools. Problem is, so many of them just don’t live up to the hype. One of the major tools that has become part of my life is Mind Mapping (or Mindmapping).
I learned Mindmapping originally at a Systems Thinking Conference many years ago. It was presented as one of a series of techniques for brainstorming and thinking. I found that the more I used it, the more I wanted to use it. It’s now often the way I start thinking about something.
The most basic books on Mindmapping are by Joyce Wycoff and Tony Buzan. Buzan claims to be the inventor of Mindmapping, but you can trace things that look very much like mindmaps back to the 3rd century.
Wikipedia has a good article about Mindmaps. It’s got some historical background and a pretty decent explanation plus some good links.
I have to admit that I prefer Wycoff’s way of doing them to Buzan’s, but I’ve found that everyone I know does it with their own particular twist to the process. Some people would suggest that what I do is more of a Concept Map than a mindmap, but that’s not really true either. The critical thing for me is really more about mapping ideas. I like to think about each IDEA as a unit where Buzan works in single words. I don’t find that anywhere near as useful.
Mindscapes are a derivative of mindmapping, emphasizing visual mapping even more than mindmaps do. The technique can produce amazing pictures which become wonderful visual records of sessions facilitated by someone skilled in the technique. I first saw this at a conference and was blown away by the result! Nancy Marguiles’ web site has a number of completed mindscapes on it that are well worth looking at. I can’t say I’m good at it, but the process starts with mind mapping and eventually produces a drawing that summarizes all of the key ideas and their relationships. I’m envious of the skill it took to draw the mindscapes I’ve seen.
I mindmap with colored pencils or pens. I usually do it in my journal, but sometimes I’ll take a poster pad and do it there. At one time when I was studying a particular aspect of epistemology, I drew a series of mindmaps of the knowledge area and posted them on my walls as continuous reminders. I added to them on a regular basis as I continued to study the material.
I love colors for mindmaps and often add small drawings, but what I turn out isn’t really pretty. It’s meaningful for me which is what I want, but I usually don’t share them. Sometimes, I’ll draw a basic map in one color (usually black) and then as I consult other books or talk to other people, I’ll add to the map in different colors so I can see the interlacing of ideas from different perspectives.
When I need to make a pretty mindmap, I use mindmap software. When facilitating a meeting, a mindmap is a great summary of what’s going on. Most people need a bit of help at first to understand it, but after a few minutes, everyone knows how to read it. I start by projecting my screen with the application, I enter notes, setup links between them, and organize the output from our session. I can transform the mindmap into an outline or print it out as a mindmap for everyone as a record of what we’ve talked about.
I have facilitated meetings with mindmaps where we didn’t use software to create them. Probably the best session of this sort was one where we brought together a group of people and covered a table in large white paper (I think it was white butcher paper). Everyone got a set of colored markers, and then we went to work. Everyone was able to add to anything on the paper as we talked or build little maps close to them. As we continued, eventually, everything on the page was integrated into an overall view.
The applications I’m familiar with are:
Mindmanager - Used by a lot of consultants and other professionals. This is a polished and very useful application. It’s a great choice for facilitation.
Mindmapper - I tried this one and didn’t find it as flexible as Mindmanager, but it appears to be good enough and solid enough to use. I haven’t used it enough to know how well I can rely on it. There is a free version available which doesn’t have all the capabilities of the pro version, but I haven’t tried it. It could be good for learning the basic process.
Inspiration - This was the first mindmap application I used and I’ve always loved it. It’s used by a lot of teachers, so they focus a lot of attention on the education market. A friend’s wife is a teacher in grade school and uses this all the time in class. Inspiration has announced a web-based beta called Webspiration which could be very interesting. I’ve played with it a little bit and it looks like a good place to learn. I’d recommend stopping by the Inspiration web site or going direct to Webspiration.
Freemind - I started using Freemind to see what it was like. It’s a purely text based mindmapper with a good GUI and plenty of responsiveness. I’ve been using it more and more. It’s written in Java and so portable between Windows, Mac, and Linux. Since I work in all three environments, I’ve found it convenient to use. Best of all, it’s FREE! Here is a mindmap I worked up for a project I’ve been working on about skill sets.
http://freemind.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Main_Page
Axon - I discovered this application when working with Prolog for AI applications. I was impressed enough to purchase a copy. It’s since been updated regularly and has drawn a good following. I don’t think of it as primarily a mindmapping application. It’s more for working with a wide range of graphical idea processing methods. I’d call Axon more of a Concept Mapping software package than a Mind Mapping package.
http://web.singnet.com.sg/~axon2000/index.htm
You can also build mind maps with just about any good drawing software like Visio or Omnigraffle, but part of the beauty of mindmapping software is that it allows you to quickly enter a series of ideas without worrying about links or graphics. Most of the packages have a mode you can enter where you type an idea, press a specific key that enters that idea into the map and opens for the next idea. With that, you can do 10 or 12 ideas in a minute or so, then come back and rearrange and relink them if you want.
In a facilitated session, we might zero in on a specific idea to brainstorm. I’ll enter the ideas one after another linked to a specific idea so we capture everything. Only later will we revisit what we did and consider whether they would make sense somewhere else. This rapid entry is great for brainstorming with a group of people.
Ultimately, the whole point of mindmapping is to make it easier for you to THINK and to help ‘Make Your Ideas Clear’!
Freewriting
September 30, 2008 9:35 pmShould YOU be writing corporate materials?
September 28, 2008 7:29 pmMarsEdit
1:10 pmScrivener
September 27, 2008 10:28 pmAre you looking for help?
September 24, 2008 9:53 pmWeb Science Emerges
September 22, 2008 8:19 pmIf you’re interested in writing, then the place to go for both the good and the bad is the web. There is so much of both ends of the spectrum and everything in between that it’s an amazing place to study. Now the study of the web has been launched as a formal area of study by a collaboration between the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Southampton. In November 2006 they launched the Web Science Research Initiative to study the web and how it works.
Scientific American Oct 2008
The article in October’s Scientific American ( “Web Science Emerges”, Scientific American, October 2008, pp76-81) is an interesting overview of this new science, the insights already gained and some of the interesting questions up for study in the future. So what does this have to do with writing? A lot actually.
If you’re going to communicate something, you need to understand the medium and how it’s used. That goes for any medium. Most importantly, you need to understand the people who use it and how best to communicate with them. I expect that this new science will help us put the whole phenomenon of the web into a better perspective so we can use it better.
Web Science is a multi-disciplinary activity involving many areas of science. Insights from Biology, Brain Science, Population Dynamics, Ecology, Sociology, Psychology, Artificial Intelligence, Socio-Cultural Systems, and in fact nearly every area of knowledge will be important. If we start to understand the evolution of the web in all its complexity and how messages are best structured and delivered, it will have a major impact on how we communicate. Blogging, Audio-Blogging, Video-Blogging, Social Networking, and many other innovations on the web have introduced new ways to communicate. If we understand them better, we can use them better.
For example, I believe that poor writing style & grammar will hurt a communication, even on blogs. Many people disagree with me, believing in turn that writing without prior thought makes it somehow more real and more believable. But who is right? Maybe we’re all partly right and what truly matters is the specific audience or the topic or the intention or some other factor or combination of factors. It will be many years before we can get answers to questions like this, but as we start to learn, we’ll do better on ‘Getting Out Point Across’.
Short Written Communications
September 20, 2008 5:44 pmWhat does it mean to ‘Think Before You Write’?
September 18, 2008 2:18 pmSome people seem to believe that ‘think before you write’ means that you need to through a long process to write something. Nothing of the sort is necessary. Thinking before you write is about engaging your mind before you start moving your hands. It helps to think out the process, but the whole thing can be done in minutes.
There are some people I’ve met who are good enough to write and think at the same time, but I’m not that good. I need to put my thoughts in order or I start going off on tangents as I write. If I want to COMMUNICATE, then I want to be clear. To be clear, I need to think about WHAT I want to say and HOW I need to say it.
I can do this quickly when I’m writing something short. This morning while replying to an email, I read the original email, spent a few minutes thinking about my response, then wrote it. I re-read it to make sure I said what I’d intended, fixed a few awkward phrasings, and sent it off. My reply was a few lines and everything was done in just a few minutes, that’s all.
Once it gets important to make your point clear, or the point is more involved, or there is more than one point … you need to take more time. This is where my journal comes in.
My Journal
I keep a notebook with me all the time and use it for note taking, thinking, journaling, and more. I’ve been doing that since the 1960s, so I have quite a collection of notes. I started using notebooks for classes at university, but when I left, I kept using them for notes in meetings, notes from books, for thinking and planning, drawing, and even just to do lists. it’s my ‘rough draft’ location for most things.
When I need to really make my ideas clear, I work through aan informal process like this:
- I pull out my journal and start a mind map with the core idea in the center of the page. If I think it’s going to be a big idea, I’ll put it in the center of a two page spread.
- I fill in everything I know about the subject, expanding as I need to and linking ideas one to another
- With my knowledge dumped on the page, I use the map to determine what I still don’t know, what holes need to be filled in, and what questions other people might ask about the subject
- If there are any questions that appear important or holes that I need to understand, then I’ll do any additional research necessary to fill in the map
- Repeat steps 3 & 4 if necessary, but usually I don’t need to
- I’ll convert the map into an outline by the simple expedient of numbering the major points in the order I want to deal with them. I might actually type this outline into my Word Processor to give me a place to start my written draft. If the map is for a presentation, then this will be the outline of the presentation.
- Now I can draft what I want to say, raising and answering questions or whatever is necessary to get my point across.
- A critical step: Put the draft away for a period of time. It might be an hour, it might be a day. What I want to do is be able to come back and re-read it with a fresh perspective as if I’m reading it for the first time.
- Now I’ll edit the draft, correcting problems I found in re-reading it. These might be grammar, spelling, phrasing, or even rewriting a section to eliminate anything that isn’t clear
- Repeat 7-9 as much as necessary
- Publish it
Sounds pretty complex right? Well it’s not. For something short that I know well, Steps 1-6 take just a few minutes and everything is in the journal. Steps 7-10 may take only as long as I need to write it. For something really important, I might delay a day between draft and edit to clear my mind and be able to see what I’m writing more clearly. For something like a BLOG post, I might come back to it after getting a cup of tea or coffee.
How much time it takes to write something depends on how important it is to write it, but even something simple should get some thought before you write it.
