Create a mind map: all advantages and disadvantages of the mind map method

A mindmap can be used to structure complex content:

What is a mindmap?

A mindmap (or. "Mind map") is a form to make notes more creatively. It is likewise a brainstorming method that helps discover connections, structure facts, and get a topic overview. For my learning guide " Bestnote " I have tested this learning method extensively and now show you how to create a Create Mind Map can.

Learn everything you need to know about mindmaps here:

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Create a mind map – Everything you need to know:

1. Explore your thoughts

Creating a mindmap is simple: it’s all about, Links Establish links between learning material, content, and concepts. A mindmap is like a sawed through tree trunk that we look at from above. In the middle is your topic and from there go off as many branches as you like, in which the sub-items are completed with colors and key images:

How do I create a mindmap?

Creating a mind map is easy and follows clear rules:

1. Divide the topic into important subpoints.
2. Add details to it – expressed in Keywords.
3. Find at least three small pictures. They help to remember.
4. Work with at least two different colors.
5. Frame blocks of information, to clearly delineate them.
6. Exercise: Take a current topic. Break it down and visualize it according to these five steps.

Create mind maps: The Advantages

2. Advantages of mindmaps

• They are good for a first Draft your own thoughts. You write on it and structure ideas, topics, aspects or arguments at the same time. It is a structured brain-storming. In doing so, you discover some connections, organize the facts into clusters. How to get a good overview.
• Mindmaps are also suitable for Link and storing known content. It is a very active and engaging form of review.
• Last but not least, the mind-map method is helpful for Overview to provide. You can use this learning technique to work out the "big picture" (global picture) – just when you are in danger of getting lost in details. It can also be used to Exam reduce the complexity and difficulty of the learning material once again on a sheet of paper.

mindmaps are only a learning method, not a strategy!

Mindmaps: The disadvantages

3. Beware, mindmaps have clear limitations:

Praised in many books as the ultimate in learning, mindmaps are only a Method heavily promoted by its creator and now numerous "freeware" and "software" vendors. In our school the method was adopted unquestioningly. Dangerous! I have tested mindmaps on various exams in school and in my studies at university:

• On the positive side, thoughts Fast and flexible can be rearranged – but only if you create it on the computer with a mind map software or freeware. But this takes longer than by hand and is less creative.
• I personally cannot Mindmap software recommend. I tried this too, no matter if free or paid programs – Creating a mindmap with software takes a long time and stimulates not so good thoughts. The only positive thing was the flexible restructuring of thoughts when it came to structuring a longer text or a term paper.
• Likewise, I found the immediate Exam preparation rather confusing with mindmaps. Mostly concepts are in tension: there are contradictions, overlaps, rival ideas and approaches. These must be contrasted. Mindmaps are too simple for that. The basic idea to prepare information graphically and to use the creative potential of the brain is nevertheless correct.

Only we need a method, which is able to reduce the complexity of the material adequately and clearly at the same time.

And for this purpose, the structure maps I developed and described in the book Bestnote are suitable ..

An alternative to create better mind maps:

4. Mirror complexity with structure maps

Structural maps should show the complexity of a topic in a simple way. They clarify essential commonalities, demarcations, hierarchies and the logical sequence of key statements and arguments. They are ideal for working out the global picture of texts and lectures. The inner structure of a theme is made visible on paper. It can be traced, added to and changed more easily this way.

In the text summary above you can see well the internal relations and dependencies of the topic. Important info blocks have been summarized visually or. framed and thus clearly separated from other facts.

The individual points and arguments have been brought into a logical relationship by arrows: Some elements act on each other in only one direction, or are the consequence of another premise.

How does a structure map work?

1. Start in the middle resp. top left with a Topic. Competing theories can also be written on one side of the sheet each.
2. Which Prerequisites, Basic assumptions and premises exist?
3. Collect data, info, elements of the Global Pictures. Answer the questions of the "What?, Why?, Like?, Where?" etc.
4. Order things according to common characteristics, delimit partial aspects. Clarify Interrelationships. How do the aspects influence each other?
5. What is a prerequisite for A? What comes later in time? What follows from A? Create hierarchies or Sequences: Can you draw up a scheme? Draw a structure, test steps or the like?
6. Are there new insights from this preparation? Also record these thoughts!
7. Add Images, Colors, frame things that belong together. Mark central technical terms, bold the upper categories. The hierarchy and the essential relationships should be recognizable from one meter away (z. B. if it hangs on your pinboard).

On this picture the hierarchy becomes clear: The framings on top seem z. B. more important than the mirror lists in the lower area.

Here prerequisites, rights and duties from a paragraph are visualized.

Your building material. Find a logical outline and appropriate subsections.

Provide these with clear headings, use different colors, clarify key words, and use small symbols:

Alternatives to mindmaps

5. Krengel’s category maps

How to understand internal connections more easily?

Without a skeleton, our body would collapse in on itself. Information also needs a skeleton into which it can be sorted. We build this framework with the help of a structure. The visualization of the inner connections brings the one-dimensional level of information into a spatial order. It shows at a glance how the various aspects of the subject matter relate to each other.

• How can I map the complexity of the material?
• How can I improve my notes?

Structure = Efficiency. Organizing info into groups and assigning them to head categories improves memory enormously. This is impressively confirmed by a study: students were asked to memorize a list of 128 minerals, and only 18 percent of the terms were remembered after the first pass.

In a second set of experiments, the minerals were sorted into groups according to their affiliation, z. B. "precious metals" (gold, silver, platinum), "industrial metals" (aluminum, copper, lead) or "gemstones" (diamonds, sapphire, ruby).

Structured in this way, 65 percent of the metals were already remembered in the first test. While the "unstructured" group remembered 63 percent of the words after four passes, in the structured presentation, students were able to remember all the minerals after only the third attempt.

Sorting compared individual vocabulary words, grouping them and distinguishing them from others. Thereby one had to think about the meaning of the words and make cross connections. The processing was intensified and complexity reduced.

Categorization is a basic principle of the brain

In another experiment, subjects were given lists of 60 words to be repeated in any order. There were 15 words each from the categories "animals", "personal names", "vegetables" and "professions" in random order.

Here, too, there was a tendency to render the terms in a classified manner, z. B. "Dog, cat, cow … apple, pear, banana … John, Bob, Monica". So our brain automatically networks similar information. We should support this categorization! There is a significant difference:

• At Mechanical learning information is simply repeated. This is initially less time-consuming. The info is not well encoded, and storage is prone to error. What we initially save in time due to convenience, revenges itself in the sum of repetitions.
• Structured learning involves an in-depth analysis of information. It is more elaborate at first, but saves a lot of time in the end. Interrelationships become clear – this reduces the complexity of the subject matter.
• The visual separation of information units and the good overview reduce the uncertainty and the knowledge becomes "firmer". The resulting knowledge can be better abstracted and applied to new situations.

6. Create mind maps: Conclusion

We do not need a map of our mind, but of the learning material. I have therefore developed mindmaps further and call my method "Structure maps". This is the method I used in the Top grade described in chapter 4.

I had the pleasure, Tony Buzan To meet live at the Petersberg Trainer Days in spring 2013. It was there u.a. for Invention of the mind map He is an excellent teacher and gave an interesting talk about his learning difficulties as a child and how he overcame them with his mind map method.

However, when I asked him about the fact that this original method is only considered helpful to a limited extent in studies and that it is difficult for other colleagues and fellow students to follow a foreign mind map, the graying MindMaster really got going and gave me a 5-minute private lecture that a mind map has to look exactly the way he says it does, and not differently.

Basta. Oops, that sounded less creative to me – doesn’t he also promote the mind map as a creativity method? Pity.

"Tony" I have found to be a very nice, cheerful and agile person for his age except for this technical quandary. And am glad about it!

On the remark that Mindmaps should rather follow another structure in the study, there were upper-teaching, unbelieving looks…&

For the mindmap in the best grade there was a "1-" from the inventor himself. Then he signed the book. Just like in school days!

Dr. Martin Krengel graduated two courses (psychology + economics) "with distinction" and founded study strategy.de. He has written 11 books, including the bestsellers Golden Rules, Best Score and Your Goal is in the Way.

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6 Comments for" Create a mind map: All the advantages and disadvantages of the mind map method"

Hi, really great info. The meeting with Mr. Buzan is of course a highlight!

Thank you. I am glad if I could help you with it.

Good morning! Thanks for the comprehensive article.I like your website!

Thanks for the compliment! Pleases me!

Thank you, dear Martin,
for this page! – And it
is also nice to "know" someone who experienced the master himself. We used mind maps sometimes in seminars – they were a good contribution, but just not enough on their own .. .
I recommend it to all who want to bring some movement, space and imagination into their thoughts – linear everything becomes very fast ..

And thanks for the newsletter – looking forward to it!
Bernd Gerken