Take effective notes with mindmaps

How often have you sat in a meeting listening intently to everything that’s said, taking notes, only to find later that they make little sense to you? Many people struggle to take effective notes, partly because writing is a linear form of information whilst our brains (and, often, people’s presentations) work by forming associations between terms. Linear note-taking goes against the natural learning mechanism of your brain.

One method of note-taking that fits a little better with the brain’s function is mindmapping. This has been around for centuries, if not millennia, but it never hurts to go over old ground again… especially when this method is always going to be new to at least a few people.

Mindmaps represent the connections between
subjects and terms as seen by you, the author.

Mindmapping involves starting off with a base-premise – the subject of the mindmap – and then branching off in whatever way makes the most sense to you, the author of the map. As you progress in your thinking, or as the meeting you are taking notes in progresses, each branch can split again and again as you think up more and more relationships between the subjects being covered.

So, looking at the very simple mindmap I created (click on the image to see a larger version), you can see that the subject is “taking notes”, and then there are three branches. These are simply the three main subjects that came to mind when thinking about different methods of note-taking. Each of these branches off as we start to refine the idea and you can see that two of the branches split again. There’s no reason you can’t keep on splitting to get right down to fine-grain detail, if that’s what you want to do.

That sample was obviously produced on a computer, but trying to work that way can be very fiddly when you are trying to keep up with a meeting… and what do you do if you’re out and about without a computer? Dead simple – you do what people have been doing for donkey’s years and draw your map by hand. The rule of thumb if drawing a mindmap by hand is to make the branches closer to the centre thick, and draw them thinner the further out you go. I don’t know why that is… and if you’re in a hurry that will probably go out the window! But the underlying concept is exactly the same: subject in the middle, related thoughts branching off.

So, why use mindmaps? Let’s do a brief rundown:

1. They’re closer to the way your brain works than linear writing.
2. Drawing in a meeting can help keep your attention, and release that dormant creativity.
3. If the presenter backtracks, you can add another branch to your map – whereas trying to insert information in linear notes can be messy.
4. They’re quick! You can quickly draw up a mindmap to visualise a concept when writing a formal description would take too long or just wouldn’t be appropriate.

You’ll guess I’m a big fan of this method of note-taking, but are there any downsides?

1. Retraining yourself: most people learn to write notes in the same way as you would write a book – mindmapping is incredibly intuitive once you get into it, but you may have to “retrain” yourself to use this different method to start with.
2. Running out of paper: no, seriously, what do you do when a branch gets too long? You can curve it round to fit more of it on the paper, but eventually you’ll just run out. Start a new page, and put the branch node in the centre of the map… now you’ve got a whole new map just for that branch (which was probably turning out to be quite detailed anyway).
3. Perfectionism: I’m a visual perfectionist. I like things to look good, and the temptation is to spend ages making your map look as good as it can. While that’s not a bad thing, it can lead to you losing track of what you were taking notes on in the first place! Mind maps are there to fulfil a function… you can make it look good if you have time, but if you need to keep up just get on with it :)

On the whole, mindmaps are an intuitive, creative, and effective way to write notes. I use them extensively, and find that I can go back to them months later and they still make sense. Why not try making a mindmap of any subject you are interested in? Just pick a subject, put it in the middle of the page, and branch off with the related thoughts that come to mind. If you find that too hard, try asking someone to explain something to you… anything… and make a mindmap of what they tell you.

We are going to take a look at a few mindmap tools over the next few posts. Two pieces of software, and one website that aim to help you create mindmaps, and take effective notes in the process. Stay tuned!

Other Posts in this Series

• Creating mindmaps with Freemind
• Creating mindmaps with Mind42
• Creating mindmaps with Mindnode

Related reading (auto-generated):

• Creating mindmaps with Mindomo 6 – is it still good?
• Creating mindmaps with Mindomo
• Mindmapping – by far my favourite note-taking technique
• Creating mindmaps with Mindnode
• Creating mindmaps with Mind42.com

Tagged as: Mindmap, Notes

Join us on Facebook

Declare your geekdom for the world to see... well, the part of the world that's on Facebook anyway.

Visit our Facebook page to keep up to date with the latest Geek-Speak posts right in your Facebook stream, as well as hearing about discounts and offers before they're posted on the site.

What are you waiting for? Head on over and "like" us.