Dear community, I consider communication to be one of the key skills in our daily work. Communication can take place in many ways. One way is visualization and that is precisely where the strength of mind maps lies.
From my experience, it works really well. So well that you should use it often. All the more surprising that I so rarely see mind maps in use in practice. That is why I have taken up the topic in this blog. Mind maps have a big impact with little effort.
What’s it about?
Mind maps are about exploring a topic in a structured way. Using a main term that is shown centrally, other terms are connected using lines.
These terms are related to the main term and help to break it down thematically. If you then use different colors or other formatting options, the viewer will get an easily understandable overall picture.
What may be difficult to understand in text can certainly be understood using the examples in the associated Wikipedia article. These examples already show very complex mind maps.
What are the possible uses?
Mind maps can be used, for example, to collect ideas or to familiarize yourself with a new topic in a structured way. This works whether you are working alone or in a team.
Since the form of representation is quite simple, it is easy to do both analogue and digital. So whether you want to create a mind map on a page with a ballpoint pen, on a whiteboard with hopefully whiteboard markers, on a Remarkable, in a drawing program or with special software, it always works.
Why don’t we use them more often?
As I wrote at the beginning, I see mind maps in practice far too rarely. My impression is not representative, but I would still like to encourage everyone to work with mind maps if necessary.
From conversations I have seen that everyone knows mind maps and knows their strengths. In practice, however, no one dares to start drawing them (we probably still have too much schooling in us, where someone always told us what to do and when).
People prefer to try to paint in other people’s heads the picture of what they have in their heads through intensive, long and ultimately tiring conversations. It is much easier.
To be fair, it must be said that we all intuitively work with another form of representation that corresponds to mind maps: lists with indentations. Everyone has been familiar with this form of representation since Microsoft PowerPoint at the latest.
Is there any software for this?
There is plenty of software for creating mind maps. Some is paid, others are free. I have now gained experience with draw.io, Mermaid, Text2MindMap and Miro.
I recently tried out mind map software with AI support. It was a great experience. With the term “vacation” the AI suggested a mind map that made sense.
With the term “ABAP” I wasn’t entirely in agreement with the AI in terms of the words and their structure, but it was still impressively good.
In my opinion, this will also be the new way of working in the future: the AI generates a suggestion that you then check yourself or as a team, correct and expand if necessary.
Summary
As I wrote at the beginning, mind maps have a big impact with little effort. That’s why I can only recommend that everyone try them out. A nice and simple use case to get started is, for example, the structured collection of thoughts on a topic.
Have fun
Michael