A Mind Map is a diagram used to represent words, ideas, tasks, or other items linked to and arranged around a central key word or idea. I use Mind Map in almost every area of my personal and student life. Today, I am going to show you guys how to make Mind Maps step by step (as my teacher said, a dummy guide). In this post, I am going to show you how to make it with the software Mindjet, you can also do this with any other Mind Map software or simply papers and pens.
What do you need
What do you need
- Your brain
- A PC/Mac which has installed Mindjet(some people call it Mind Manager)
Central node (Title)
This is the purpose/core topic of your Mind Map.
If you are
- brainstorming, then name it with the question you need to overcome.
- organizing the notes of books, then name it with title of the book.
- planning a project, then name it with the project's name.
I really agree what AE said "whatever it is, the core topic of the mindmap should be immediately obvious."
For example, I need to make a plan for my AP Calculus preparation (actually, the test was just over last week ), the Central node should look like this.
First Tier Thoughts
If we call the central node as King Arthur, the "first tier thoughts" will be the "knights of the round table"(they are the biggest ideas). According to my own experience and suggestions from other mindmappers, I found the "knights of the round table" should not be more than 12, otherwise, you will feel overwhelmed.
One trick you can use here is that divide the Central node into 12 most important pieces according to time boundaries/ categaries/ team members or...
The description should be as short as possible. In order to make mindmaps readable, they should be no more than 5 word. It is always good to start with a verb and end with a noun.
If you want to know tricks, check here.
If you want to know tricks, check here.
As to my AP Preparation, they should be like this:
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Further Tiers
The second tiers and further tiers are the details about your topic and the main ideas.
Feel free to create as many second and further tiers you need. In order not to make the mindmap look like linear notes or wiki-style documents, you'd better keep four layers in total, and no more than 20 branches in every node(they are actually approximate numbers, it all depends on the real situations).
If you can, you should just write done the keywords instead of several sentence or one long paragraph. You will appreciate yourself for eliminating extra junk information later reviews.
Here is the example for my AP Preparations:
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Final Step: Reorganize
Once it's done, it is not really done. After you finish your mind map, you will find it is still kind of messy and not the way you want it be. One more step you need to do is to reorganize it in the way that make sense to you. And this is one big feature of Mind Map, it is very easy to reorganize with your software. Just use your mouse drag them around.
Profound
If you have made one Mind Map for book notes (or something like that) . You'd better come back to review your MindMap once in a while. The best way to memorize something is to understand it and review it more often. Our perceptions never stop improving/changing, something makes sense to us now, may not make sense later. When you review your old Mind Map in the future, you will feel they are still not good enough. You need further rearrange, editing and deleting in order to make it better, and infuse it in your mind.
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