152: Mind Map Mastery by Tony Buzan

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1. 00:00:00 Mike, I don't know that we've had a book where we've had this much color in it before.
2. 00:00:04 Can you think of one that's had more color in it than the one we have today?
3. 00:00:07 I don't think so.
4. 00:00:11 This one is definitely colorful and there are reasons for those colors, which we will get into.
5. 00:00:17 But...
6. 00:00:18 Oh, we'll get into it.
7. 00:00:19 It's true to itself. I'll say that.
8. 00:00:21 It's very meta.
9. 00:00:23 Very meta. However, before we can get there, we have to catch up on a couple things.
10. 00:00:27 And my first question is, did you listen to typology at all?
11. 00:00:31 I did.
12. 00:00:33 I've continued to listen to typology, basically.
13. 00:00:35 That's so nice.
14. 00:00:37 I listened to it before we recorded.
15. 00:00:39 Right.
16. 00:00:40 And it's I've subscribed.
17. 00:00:42 So I get the regular episodes.
18. 00:00:44 I don't listen to every single one, but some of them that sound interesting.
19. 00:00:47 I listen to.
20. 00:00:48 Nice. What any particulars that we're standing out to you, specific episodes?
21. 00:00:54 No, it's basically more of the one that I described.
22. 00:00:57 So I don't really care to...
23. 00:01:00 Sure.
24. 00:01:00 If you like the then-your-gram, it's going to be a cool podcast where they continue to
25. 00:01:06 like on-earth insights and it's kind of cool seeing people's reactions live.
26. 00:01:09 Like, hey, wow, I never really thought about that.
27. 00:01:11 You know, or totally, I can see that myself now.
28. 00:01:13 But to be honest, it's I've kind of moved on from the Enneagram.
29. 00:01:18 I was really excited about it when we recorded it last time.
30. 00:01:20 And I got some insights from it and still occasionally bring it up in conversation with my wife.
31. 00:01:26 Like occasionally, you know, Malachi will be doing his thing.
32. 00:01:29 Remember, he's a seven.
33. 00:01:31 She's like, oh, yeah.
34. 00:01:32 Here comes number seven.
35. 00:01:33 Yep.
36. 00:01:34 Yeah.
37. 00:01:35 Refer to your kids by their numbers.
38. 00:01:37 And I bought Toby a license for the Enneagram because he was curious about it
39. 00:01:40 after editing the last episode.
40. 00:01:42 And do we get to know?
41. 00:01:45 I don't think he took it yet.
42. 00:01:46 Oh.
43. 00:01:47 Hopefully he'll, hopefully he'll take it before.
44. 00:01:50 He has to take it before tomorrow.
45. 00:01:52 You have to take it before tomorrow for those for those listening.
46. 00:01:55 Mike and I are getting together tomorrow.
47. 00:01:57 Mike's you're coming to the Twin Cities for soccer tournament.
48. 00:02:00 Toby's soccer tournament, I believe is what that is.
49. 00:02:02 Yep.
50. 00:02:03 And well, you know, if we're going to be that close to each other, you got to stop by.
51. 00:02:08 Of course, obviously, right?
52. 00:02:10 So we get to see each other tomorrow.
53. 00:02:12 Super fun.
54. 00:02:13 Yeah.
55. 00:02:14 So yeah, my my fascination with the Enneagram has basically passed, but I still have the
56. 00:02:20 results and threw it in obsidian alongside the goalbie and all the other stuff.
57. 00:02:25 Of course.
58. 00:02:26 And that's it for now.
59. 00:02:29 I occasionally listen to typology and I'm good.
60. 00:02:32 I give you a service slash product idea that you should develop because you should do this.
61. 00:02:37 I couldn't do it.
62. 00:02:38 I could be your coder, but I couldn't do anything other than that.
63. 00:02:41 I think I think you should come up with some way to gather a bunch of these different types
64. 00:02:47 of tests, take the results from those tests collectively and give a test result.
65. 00:02:54 Okay.
66. 00:02:55 So this is you've already got my my wheel spinning because basically what Dan Sullivan
67. 00:03:00 did with unique ability is it's the Colby plus the Strengths Finder plus a couple of prompts.
68. 00:03:06 Yep.
69. 00:03:07 I could totally do this.
70. 00:03:08 But you should do Colby Strengths Finder Enneagram.
71. 00:03:12 Take your pick.
72. 00:03:13 If you had somewhere between five and ten of these things and you could somehow bring it
73. 00:03:18 all together, I think you would be good at that.
74. 00:03:22 I will gladly work on this if you're willing to code it.
75. 00:03:27 Yeah, I feel like it would be very interesting.
76. 00:03:32 We talk about these tests and personality test things enough.
77. 00:03:34 I feel like it would be super interesting.
78. 00:03:36 Yeah.
79. 00:03:37 It's a cool idea.
80. 00:03:38 Let's do it.
81. 00:03:39 Super fun.
82. 00:03:40 In our spare time.
83. 00:03:41 What is that?
84. 00:03:42 Do you have a definition for that?
85. 00:03:44 I've not seen it in so long.
86. 00:03:45 I forgot what it is.
87. 00:03:48 Nope.
88. 00:03:51 I did going coming back around.
89. 00:03:52 I did listen to an episode of Typology.
90. 00:03:55 It is interesting.
91. 00:03:56 Like you were saying, like it's fascinating to see people's reaction.
92. 00:03:59 I hear people's reactions to it.
93. 00:04:01 I hadn't thought of that before.
94. 00:04:03 So it's it's kind of cool.
95. 00:04:04 So I've I've left it on the subscribe list.
96. 00:04:06 It'll be it'll be good.
97. 00:04:09 So yeah, nothing more to say there.
98. 00:04:11 Did you try out daily?
99. 00:04:13 The other thing you got here.
100. 00:04:15 I did not.
101. 00:04:18 I have made more adjustments to my journaling.
102. 00:04:23 Okay.
103. 00:04:24 And to be honest, I can't even remember specifically what I changed this last time that we've done
104. 00:04:30 this because it continues to to modify.
105. 00:04:33 But one of the just one of the things that I was talking to my wife about today is we
106. 00:04:38 are trying a new budgeting software that every dollar that Dave Ramsey has.
107. 00:04:44 Oh, yeah.
108. 00:04:45 Yeah.
109. 00:04:46 Because it includes financial piece and all the other like subscription stuff that they
110. 00:04:53 they do now, financial piece, you can't buy it standalone.
111. 00:04:56 And when you could, it was like 150 bucks.
112. 00:04:58 So right.
113. 00:04:59 They've got a whole bunch of stuff now is like subscription content built into every dollar
114. 00:05:04 plus and then the software itself, which YNAB had gone up again and it was pretty similar.
115. 00:05:12 That was renewing.
116. 00:05:13 And I was like, I'll try this.
117. 00:05:15 And so as a result of going through some of that stuff and Dave Ramsey's thing, it's
118. 00:05:20 interesting because they don't believe in credit cards, right?
119. 00:05:22 So right to process an online payment, they have the field named debit card.
120. 00:05:26 And then below that, they say, we can't really tell if you're using a credit card here.
121. 00:05:31 So this is totally the honor system, but follow the plan and use your debit card.
122. 00:05:36 Uh huh.
123. 00:05:38 Yep.
124. 00:05:39 Yeah.
125. 00:05:40 So anyways, like just I've heard of that stuff before, but using the software, they have
126. 00:05:45 all these little touches, which I think are kind of cool to kind of nudge you in the direction
127. 00:05:48 that they're trying to teach you to the way to manage your money.
128. 00:05:52 And realize that one of the things that I want to start tracking my journal is basically,
129. 00:05:57 did I succeed in not spending anything today?
130. 00:06:01 Nice.
131. 00:06:02 Nice.
132. 00:06:03 Just so I have an opportunity to celebrate that if I did, you know, and bring awareness
133. 00:06:07 if I actually did have to buy something or whatever.
134. 00:06:10 So we should ignore Blake's comment about going fountain pin shopping together?
135. 00:06:16 Probably, but we'll see.
136. 00:06:19 All right.
137. 00:06:20 Fair enough.
138. 00:06:21 Yeah.
139. 00:06:22 Outside of all the other follow-ups that we've got, I had one other one, which you wrote
140. 00:06:27 down is focus more on my creativity, kind of leaning into that type four that I learned
141. 00:06:33 about myself with the Enneagram.
142. 00:06:35 And I spent quite a bit of time on this and I actually have a number of notes I made about
143. 00:06:43 this and trying to figure out what that might look like.
144. 00:06:46 And that actually led me down a pretty big rabbit trail of just realizing how much time
145. 00:06:51 I spent on making things and have spent on making things in the past.
146. 00:06:57 So it maybe got somewhere.
147. 00:06:59 I'm not really sure what to say as a result of that other than it's generated a lot of
148. 00:07:04 the insight about my history and the way my brain works.
149. 00:07:07 But I haven't really nailed down if that's going to lead to anything action oriented quite
150. 00:07:12 yet, but I don't know.
151. 00:07:14 I'm still down that process.
152. 00:07:16 It still comes up in the notes process.
153. 00:07:18 I go through occasionally, but that's how that stuff works right.
154. 00:07:21 So super fun.
155. 00:07:23 Exactly.
156. 00:07:24 Cool.
157. 00:07:25 So we should jump into today's book because...
158. 00:07:29 Speaking of creativity.
159. 00:07:30 I know, right?
160. 00:07:32 This will be fun.
161. 00:07:33 Yes.
162. 00:07:35 So this book is Mind Map Mastery by Tony Buzan.
163. 00:07:40 And I learned a lot about Mind Maps.
164. 00:07:42 I learned that he is the self-proclaimed inventor of Mind Maps, which I kind of knew
165. 00:07:49 prior to picking this book up.
166. 00:07:50 I had seen some things on Mind Maps, watched some YouTube videos of him way back in the
167. 00:07:56 day now, and where he was talking about how he invented it.
168. 00:08:01 And it's always seemed a bit hokey to me.
169. 00:08:04 Really?
170. 00:08:05 I feel like this has been around a very long time.
171. 00:08:07 How can you say that you invented this?
172. 00:08:09 And I think I have the answer to that question.
173. 00:08:12 But we're not going to answer it quite yet.
174. 00:08:13 So my big question at this very beginning, well, before I get there, the tagline on this
175. 00:08:19 is the complete guide to learning and using the most powerful thinking tool in the universe.
176. 00:08:24 That tagline by itself will probably tell you Tony's personality in itself.
177. 00:08:30 But it is an interesting read.
178. 00:08:33 But I'm curious, Mike, you have been quote unquote "mind mapping" for quite some time.
179. 00:08:41 Were you anxious to read this, scared to read this, skeptical to read this before you started
180. 00:08:48 reading it?
181. 00:08:49 What was your perception on it?
182. 00:08:51 Oh, that's a good question.
183. 00:08:54 Because I didn't count up the documents in my Mind Node folder in iCloud, but there
184. 00:09:01 are hundreds of them going back to 2013.
185. 00:09:06 So and I was mind mapping before Mind Node.
186. 00:09:10 So yes, I've been doing this for at least 10 years, probably more like 15.
187. 00:09:17 Moving into it, I was expecting to learn a few things that I did not already know about
188. 00:09:24 Mind Mapping, but I expected the majority of it would be kind of, yeah, I understand
189. 00:09:28 that already.
190. 00:09:30 I think I was pleasantly surprised and found more nuggets here than I thought.
191. 00:09:35 But that is very different than somebody who is coming to this with the intention of learning
192. 00:09:41 how to mind map from scratch today.
193. 00:09:46 Not person, I don't think I would recommend this book for.
194. 00:09:49 Okay, sure.
195. 00:09:51 What was your perspective going into it?
196. 00:09:54 It kind of sounds like you have not mind mapped as much as I have, but I'm assuming you were
197. 00:09:58 familiar with the concept, so you're not coming into it cold.
198. 00:10:01 Correct.
199. 00:10:02 Yeah, I had a period of time when I was working corporate where I did some very lightweight
200. 00:10:10 mind mapping as I called it, and I did get into the brain.
201. 00:10:17 Remember the software, the brain, I think it's still around.
202. 00:10:21 I got into that as a result of that experiment.
203. 00:10:24 It did not last long.
204. 00:10:25 I think I was into that for maybe a couple months.
205. 00:10:28 And I know that I've had maybe a couple periods where I did some mind maps about online courses,
206. 00:10:38 like trying to figure out what all should be in a course.
207. 00:10:41 And so that's really been my only real experience with it firsthand.
208. 00:10:47 I have not done mind mapping extensively at any stretch in my life, and I have not really
209. 00:10:55 done any form of study of what it would mean to do that.
210. 00:10:59 I've merely seen them and thought, huh, that's kind of cool.
211. 00:11:03 I heard a piece of paper and went for it, or grabbed my node and went for it.
212. 00:11:09 And I think I did play with Xmind at one point.
213. 00:11:12 What's the other one that's on set app?
214. 00:11:13 I thoughts, I think is in there as well.
215. 00:11:17 Yep, Xmind and I thoughts I think are both on set app, or they were at one point.
216. 00:11:23 Maybe they're not anymore, because like I said, I use my node.
217. 00:11:30 For several reasons, primarily it was the best looking one that synced seamlessly across
218. 00:11:36 all my Apple devices.
219. 00:11:38 However, it would be interesting to see which one Tony Bizan would say this is the closest
220. 00:11:45 thing to what I describe as mind mapping.
221. 00:11:49 Since his app is no longer being developed and supported.
222. 00:11:53 Correct.
223. 00:11:54 Is now defunct, yes.
224. 00:11:57 So I guess going into it, my expectation was, and what I was hoping to achieve was kind
225. 00:12:07 of an understanding of how I could use more around, like more visual thinking tools, not
226. 00:12:13 just text thinking tools.
227. 00:12:16 And that comes from me wanting to expand maybe some of my creative methods.
228. 00:12:23 I guess I would say that.
229. 00:12:25 So knowing that background, knowing I wanted to try to maybe implement another tool in my
230. 00:12:32 creativity tool belt, knowing that you had the background on this pretty extensively,
231. 00:12:38 and knowing that Tony Bizan is kind of known as the inventor of mind maps, it kind of all
232. 00:12:45 just seemed to work pretty well together.
233. 00:12:47 So here we are with mind map mastery.
234. 00:12:50 So I guess that all being said, unless there's something you want to say ahead of time, I
235. 00:12:54 feel like we should jump in and figure out what a mind map is.
236. 00:12:59 Let's do it.
237. 00:13:00 Okay.
238. 00:13:01 So there's at the very beginning, there's a forward by an eight time world memory champion,
239. 00:13:08 Dominic O'Brien, which is super interesting that I mostly skimmed.
240. 00:13:13 But at the same time, he jumps into what is a mind map at the very beginning, like that's
241. 00:13:18 the first section, which is super helpful because he very quickly qualifies himself as the inventor
242. 00:13:27 of mind maps.
243. 00:13:28 Like this is one of the very first things he points out, which I have to ask.
244. 00:13:34 What was your perception on that?
245. 00:13:35 Because I knew that was going to come having done a little bit of research on Tony Bizan.
246. 00:13:41 How did you take that?
247. 00:13:42 Did you just say, Oh, sure.
248. 00:13:44 Or did you deep dive the research?
249. 00:13:47 I didn't deep dive the research.
250. 00:13:50 I have written about mind mapping.
251. 00:13:55 I don't even know how many times over the last 10 years or so.
252. 00:14:00 And so I had done some preliminary research and Tony Bizan's name comes up all the time,
253. 00:14:05 some specific quotes from him about what is a mind map.
254. 00:14:10 At this point in the book, I kind of took it as like, yeah, that seems mostly true.
255. 00:14:16 I could tell he's taking some credit here where maybe he shouldn't be, but it wasn't
256. 00:14:22 a big deal to me.
257. 00:14:24 It didn't cause me to put the book down and figure out what's really going on or feel
258. 00:14:29 like I can't trust this guy at all.
259. 00:14:32 Sure.
260. 00:14:33 Yeah.
261. 00:14:34 Well, he's got, he does get into the explanations of what is, like how to create one.
262. 00:14:39 But I did do a little bit of research on the history of mind mapping because I figured,
263. 00:14:48 and I did kind of stop when I was reading to do this research because I knew it was going
264. 00:14:53 to color the rest of my perception on the book.
265. 00:14:56 If I didn't do that.
266. 00:14:58 So just to get this out here so that it's aired out before somebody else throws a fit.
267. 00:15:07 One of the first known mind maps originates somewhere around 300 AD.
268. 00:15:14 Just saying that however, this is, this is by a guy, a philosopher, Porphyry.
269. 00:15:20 I think is how you say it.
270. 00:15:22 Basically he drew what looks like kind of like your standard family tree picture and
271. 00:15:25 then he has names and concepts around the outside of this.
272. 00:15:29 Also from the roots, that's being classified as a mind map.
273. 00:15:33 If you look at it and then you look at some of the rules and laws that Tony Bousin gives
274. 00:15:37 us, he would not call that a mind map.
275. 00:15:41 So this, this is where it starts to get messy.
276. 00:15:45 So it wasn't until when was it the early 1970s that Tony Bousin coined that term mind map.
277. 00:15:55 So that's why he's claiming the invention of that.
278. 00:16:00 Fun side note to all of this.
279. 00:16:01 He actually, the Bousin organization.
280. 00:16:03 He passed away in 2019 or in 2019 by the way.
281. 00:16:08 But he, his organization holds the trademarks to the term mind map in the UK, the United
282. 00:16:17 States and Germany.
283. 00:16:19 I did not know that that was possible, but he owns the trademarks on those, on that phrase,
284. 00:16:26 which is fascinating to me.
285. 00:16:27 Anyway, that's some of the history of it.
286. 00:16:31 That kind of bothers me, to be honest.
287. 00:16:36 But that's just my perspective on ideas and I don't know.
288. 00:16:42 I understand it and there are things that you develop, that you are intellectual property.
289. 00:16:48 My parents have trademarks on some of the software and the assessments that they've developed
290. 00:16:51 for the family business.
291. 00:16:53 Mind map doesn't seem like something trademarkable.
292. 00:16:57 Right.
293. 00:16:59 But if he's got it, kudos to him.
294. 00:17:02 Makes more sense now why he's adamantly defending it because once you have a trademark, I can
295. 00:17:07 tell you that you have to defend it.
296. 00:17:09 The minute that you don't, you basically open up yourself to, if you were to try to sue somebody
297. 00:17:16 down the road, the fact that you didn't defend it and you were aware of it, that can be used
298. 00:17:20 against you and can cause your trademark to be invalid.
299. 00:17:24 So I'm not a lawyer.
300. 00:17:26 I just understand a little bit of it from experience with the family business.
301. 00:17:29 Yeah.
302. 00:17:30 I get where he's coming from a little bit more now.
303. 00:17:33 I do think by the way, the introduction to this is interesting where he talks about the
304. 00:17:37 conventional note taking versus mind mapping and how conventional note taking is linear,
305. 00:17:42 monochrome, word based, listed logic, sequential, restrictive, disorganized.
306. 00:17:46 I agree with this.
307. 00:17:47 He has a lot of these side by side comparison things, which I think are pretty cool.
308. 00:17:51 In mind mapping, he talks about being multifaceted, colorful words being combined with pictures,
309. 00:17:55 associated logic, multidimensional, imaginative and analytical.
310. 00:17:58 This is getting to the point on why you would want to use these things, which eventually
311. 00:18:04 he's going to get to chapter two, how to mind map chapter three, what is not a mind map,
312. 00:18:10 chapter four, solution finding, chapter five, the infinite applications of mind maps and
313. 00:18:14 then chapter six is the future of mind mapping.
314. 00:18:17 It's not explicitly called anywhere else, which is why I want to bring it up here, but
315. 00:18:21 those ingredients will pop up over and over again throughout the book.
316. 00:18:25 I do think that there is something to be said about thinking this way.
317. 00:18:30 He's also got a lot of research.
318. 00:18:32 There's a lot of different stories about the success that people have with thinking this
319. 00:18:38 way.
320. 00:18:39 I think those arguments are stronger when you try not to trademark the term yourself.
321. 00:18:45 It's just something that you made as opposed to something that humanity has been using
322. 00:18:51 successfully for a very long time.
323. 00:18:54 Those pictures of the very earliest mind maps, you're right, those don't fit his definition
324. 00:18:58 of a mind map.
325. 00:19:00 But I would maybe say tone down the militant defending of what a mind map is so that you
326. 00:19:07 can say, "Hey, look, people have been doing this for a long time, even if it means that
327. 00:19:12 you didn't come up with it yourself."
328. 00:19:14 Right.
329. 00:19:15 I don't know.
330. 00:19:16 It seems like an insecure thing to do to say, "No, no, no, this is my process.
331. 00:19:20 I made this thing.
332. 00:19:22 Are you looking for some external validation from people who read this who say, "Hey, good
333. 00:19:26 job, Tony?"
334. 00:19:27 Absolutely, yes.
335. 00:19:29 But, yeah.
336. 00:19:31 Yeah, I think I'm a little looser on the definition here.
337. 00:19:37 But let's dive in here.
338. 00:19:40 He does have a three-step process for how to create a line map, which he gets into here
339. 00:19:45 in the beginning of the first chapter.
340. 00:19:48 And there's three pieces to this.
341. 00:19:51 One is a central image.
342. 00:19:53 And I assume, based on what we were just explaining about the militant definitions of
343. 00:19:57 this, it's interesting to me that it's a central image and not a central word.
344. 00:20:04 Just pointing that out.
345. 00:20:07 Thick branches radiating out is the second essential characteristic that he qualifies
346. 00:20:13 for a mind map, which also is a bit just because I know that a lot of mind maps I've
347. 00:20:19 seen are just your standard line or it could be curved, but it's a yes.
348. 00:20:28 Called out that it has to be a thick line, thick branches, sorry.
349. 00:20:31 And a single key image or word is placed on each branch.
350. 00:20:38 A single word or a single image on each branch.
351. 00:20:42 So if I put a phrase that doesn't qualify.
352. 00:20:45 Yep.
353. 00:20:46 So, and I think you get the detail that he's putting here, it's like this is very specific
354. 00:20:53 that he's calling out here.
355. 00:20:54 He follows this up with, how many steps is this?
356. 00:20:59 Seven steps?
357. 00:21:00 Yeah, seven-step process, right?
358. 00:21:01 He's got a seven-step process.
359. 00:21:03 You got it?
360. 00:21:04 I do.
361. 00:21:05 So step one is use at least three colors to draw a picture in the center of a horizontal
362. 00:21:09 page.
363. 00:21:10 Step two, pick a color and draw a thick branch coming away from the central image, like the
364. 00:21:13 bow of a tree.
365. 00:21:14 Step three, label the branch with a single word and cap the letters.
366. 00:21:17 Step four, send out secondary level shoots in the third level and third level branches
367. 00:21:21 from these right keywords or symbols on all the branches.
368. 00:21:24 Step five, pick another color, draw another main branch, repeat until you have five or
369. 00:21:27 six main branches to work with.
370. 00:21:29 Step six, leap from branch to branch, fill in the gaps.
371. 00:21:32 Step seven, add arrows, curving lines and links between branches to reinforce connections.
372. 00:21:36 Yep.
373. 00:21:37 There you go.
374. 00:21:38 When you hear that, you're like, yeah, that sounds good.
375. 00:21:41 Like I can see the value of that approach and I can see how apps like MindNote have made
376. 00:21:49 design decisions on modifications to that.
377. 00:21:52 And so it's a little bit weird when you later on is like, no, that's not a mind map because
378. 00:21:58 you didn't use three colors in the middle or the branches are a single thickness.
379. 00:22:04 Yes.
380. 00:22:05 You know, and I'm not quite sure yet.
381. 00:22:07 Maybe by the end of this episode, I'll have wrangled my thoughts on this, but I kind of
382. 00:22:12 feel like making mountains out of moles here, buddy.
383. 00:22:16 Yeah.
384. 00:22:17 And that's probably a good way to say it.
385. 00:22:19 And part of the reason I'm calling this out and you can probably sense the maybe angst
386. 00:22:25 or frustration with him and my voice on this is because like, who cares?
387. 00:22:31 Like let's let's draw a picture together.
388. 00:22:34 You know, if it helps you think through things and it has like a central point and you have
389. 00:22:39 a network that comes out from that and it's a visual that you can work your way through,
390. 00:22:44 like I would call that a mind map.
391. 00:22:46 But it seems like if it doesn't fit this very specific mold for him, he instantly qualifies
392. 00:22:52 as it is what he called a concept diagram.
393. 00:22:55 It's instantly declassified as a mind map.
394. 00:22:59 And that I think that's the trouble that I take with it or the fault I find in it is
395. 00:23:06 that if you were to open this up and not be so specific and not be so, I guess, upset
396. 00:23:15 almost like he's not upset, but you kind of get that tone from it.
397. 00:23:19 Like, you know, it's a cranky old man.
398. 00:23:21 Yeah, it's totally cranky old man.
399. 00:23:23 Totally.
400. 00:23:24 But like, you know, back off a little bit and I don't think you would have near as many
401. 00:23:28 people.
402. 00:23:29 I would not be critical of this at all.
403. 00:23:32 We're here to be quite open about that.
404. 00:23:34 But because he's so militant on it, like, no, no, no, no, no, hold on.
405. 00:23:38 Back up.
406. 00:23:39 It's okay.
407. 00:23:40 You don't have to have thick branches.
408. 00:23:41 Lines will do.
409. 00:23:42 It's okay.
410. 00:23:43 Get your concept map off my mind map lawn.
411. 00:23:44 Right.
412. 00:23:45 Totally.
413. 00:23:46 Totally is.
414. 00:23:47 Yeah.
415. 00:23:49 I do think the essential ingredients for the my maps, uh, there's value here, which is the
416. 00:23:54 radiant thinking, the nonlinear organic flow, the color images and the words.
417. 00:23:59 And he's got reasoning behind why you need to have these ingredients.
418. 00:24:03 Visual information is processed 60,000 times faster than text, for example, under images
419. 00:24:07 and single words pack more punch than a phrase.
420. 00:24:09 Like, I understand that.
421. 00:24:11 But those are great, like, guidelines.
422. 00:24:13 I'm going to, I think the best application of my maps, you should feel free to break
423. 00:24:18 those once in a while if you think it's better for whatever purpose.
424. 00:24:21 But he would obviously say no.
425. 00:24:24 Radiant thinking, I think is, is cool.
426. 00:24:26 But the one that is really interesting to me is like this nonlinear organic flow.
427. 00:24:30 He talks about how putting things in a linear sequence limits your thinking.
428. 00:24:34 I totally agree with this.
429. 00:24:36 When you have an outline, you basically go from top to bottom.
430. 00:24:40 You're not jumping back and forth between different points because there's no visual
431. 00:24:43 anchor point for your eyes to go to a lot of times.
432. 00:24:47 And he mentions that a list represents one dimensional thinking and my map represents
433. 00:24:50 two dimensional thinking.
434. 00:24:52 Do you know where I'm going to go with this?
435. 00:24:53 No, not at all.
436. 00:24:55 Well, what does three dimensional thinking look like?
437. 00:24:59 And I'm not going to say obsidian is it, but I think it's closer than anything else out
438. 00:25:05 there.
439. 00:25:06 Sure.
440. 00:25:07 And that's what's fascinating to me about these thinking tools.
441. 00:25:11 Like I've been using my maps for a really long time.
442. 00:25:13 I've seen the benefit and how they force you to think about things.
443. 00:25:16 I shouldn't say force.
444. 00:25:18 Encourage you to think about things in different ways.
445. 00:25:20 And from a creative standpoint, that opens up a lot of doors and helps you see things
446. 00:25:24 in ways you didn't see them before, which is totally the way that I'm trying to use obsidian
447. 00:25:29 and why bidirectional links is just one more dimension, right?
448. 00:25:33 It's just one more tool that you can use to think about things a little bit differently.
449. 00:25:38 And I love that.
450. 00:25:39 And whatever is next after obsidian, I'm going to love that too, just because it's encouraging
451. 00:25:44 different ways to connect these dots.
452. 00:25:47 And I think the approach we should all take, whether it's with mind maps, connected notetakers,
453. 00:25:54 whatever is next, is really just how do I level up my thinking?
454. 00:25:58 How do I add more dimensions to the ideas that I'm currently holding inside of my brain?
455. 00:26:04 Yeah, I'm totally with you.
456. 00:26:06 I think that particular piece to nonlinear organic flow like that one is probably the
457. 00:26:13 one that I resonate with the most out of these.
458. 00:26:14 I mean, yeah, the color images, words, these ingredients, they're all helpful.
459. 00:26:20 The radiant thinking, like, yeah, sure, you know, it's radiating from a central point.
460. 00:26:26 Not sure that's exactly what you would want me to say about it, but the nonlinear piece
461. 00:26:31 is the part that I think is, you know, the organic piece, I totally get it, the flow
462. 00:26:36 piece, yeah, but the nonlinear piece.
463. 00:26:38 Like, I tend to think very linearly in lines.
464. 00:26:45 The thing here is that whenever it comes to a whole bunch of disconnected thoughts or
465. 00:26:49 seemingly disconnected thoughts, trying to put them all together and make sense of them,
466. 00:26:54 I think is super helpful.
467. 00:26:56 I know, like, whenever I just did a massive rebuild on my site and have been continuing
468. 00:27:02 to do a lot of that because there's a lot of little pieces behind the scenes, I'm trying
469. 00:27:05 to get it to do, but in order to figure out how all those code pieces needed to go together,
470. 00:27:11 I had drawn, like, squares on a piece of paper and then started connecting the dots between
471. 00:27:16 the two to see how they would go together.
472. 00:27:18 Now, I'm not sure I would call that a mind map because it was more of me just diagramming
473. 00:27:22 how a product should operate.
474. 00:27:25 So it's not me trying to come up with how it's going to work.
475. 00:27:28 I just knew that there were component pieces that need to be tied together somehow, but
476. 00:27:31 it was very non-linear because certain pieces need to tie a bunch of places all at once.
477. 00:27:36 Blah, blah, blah, blah.
478. 00:27:38 And so I do think that's an important concept here in the midst of this mind mapping conversation
479. 00:27:43 because it is, it frees you up to have disconnected thoughts and you could have one that's connected
480. 00:27:49 to something way on the other side of the page and then come back to one where you were
481. 00:27:54 at the beginning, like, it doesn't force you to stay on a single train of thought, it allows
482. 00:27:59 you to bounce around.
483. 00:28:01 And that in the scheme of trying to be creative is extremely valuable and it makes it kind
484. 00:28:06 of tough to do creative thinking without it.
485. 00:28:09 Totally.
486. 00:28:10 He's got a reference to the 2014 Nobel Prize, which I jotted down in my quote unquote mind
487. 00:28:17 map.
488. 00:28:18 Yep.
489. 00:28:19 [laughter]
490. 00:28:20 Talks about this as being awarded to John O'Keefe and then the other half of it was Mabort
491. 00:28:24 Moser and Edward L. Moser, I think, I Moser.
492. 00:28:30 And what they found in this Nobel Prize project was that grid cells work with place cells
493. 00:28:36 in the brain's hippocampus to create a mental representation of a person's location in their
494. 00:28:41 environment.
495. 00:28:42 This is a great study that supports the ideas behind mind mapping, but this is also where
496. 00:28:47 his lock into his definition of mind mapping steals some of the power of this because the
497. 00:28:53 dendrites and the synapses and the brain cells, they combine up to create a form of
498. 00:28:57 an internal mind map, but they don't have different varying branch width and single
499. 00:29:04 key words, you know, labeling them.
500. 00:29:05 So it's not really an internal mind map here, Tony.
501. 00:29:09 But I get to, you know, the point he's making here, I agree with, both making sense of a
502. 00:29:12 situation, enabling information to be retained and recalled at a later date.
503. 00:29:16 That like the way that your brain naturally works and how mind mapping can help facilitate
504. 00:29:24 that is fascinating to me.
505. 00:29:27 But I also, based on what we're just talking about, believe that the mind map is not the
506. 00:29:32 be all end all of that.
507. 00:29:33 There are different levels of this.
508. 00:29:36 And I wish at this point he would have just said, this is basically what a mind map is
509. 00:29:40 and this is why these different elements and some of the research behind it, like why they
510. 00:29:45 work and left it at that.
511. 00:29:48 But that's not what he did.
512. 00:29:50 Yep.
513. 00:29:51 Well, that's that's a good spot.
514. 00:29:53 Let's move on to chapter two here, which is how to mind map because the steps for how
515. 00:29:59 to mind map are not in the chapter for how to mind map, which I thought was an interesting
516. 00:30:04 choice.
517. 00:30:05 But if you step into chapter two early on in that, this is where we get the crux of
518. 00:30:13 how he defines a mind map.
519. 00:30:16 At least what I would say is how he's saying that certain things are or aren't a mind map,
520. 00:30:23 which is seemingly weird to me because he's got the steps for how to make a mind map in
521. 00:30:27 chapter one, but then he's got the laws of what a mind map technically is in chapter
522. 00:30:31 two where he talks about how to mind map like to me, you need to switch places with
523. 00:30:34 those two.
524. 00:30:35 But I also kind of get how he got to that point.
525. 00:30:39 But there's ten laws here.
526. 00:30:42 One, always use a blank sheet of paper, at which point I ask from later on in the book,
527. 00:30:47 he talks about the software side of things.
528. 00:30:49 Wait, blank piece of paper, software, those don't line up.
529. 00:30:53 Your software isn't a true mind map.
530. 00:30:56 Yeah.
531. 00:30:57 You're probably going to be skeleton about this.
532. 00:31:00 So question for you, do you think, because you mentioned that he passed away not too
533. 00:31:04 long ago?
534. 00:31:05 Yep, three years ago.
535. 00:31:07 I don't know what the published date was of this book.
536. 00:31:09 I don't know what version this is.
537. 00:31:11 Maybe this is like the third edition or something.
538. 00:31:14 Do you feel that he wrote parts of this at different times and they just kind of added
539. 00:31:22 it on as it went?
540. 00:31:25 The copyright information says text copyright 2018.
541. 00:31:31 There's no other date.
542. 00:31:33 There's a design and typography in 2018.
543. 00:31:36 Okay.
544. 00:31:37 But I mean, he must have written like these laws of mind mapping.
545. 00:31:42 This seems to me like you're saying, start with a blank sheet of paper in the middle.
546. 00:31:47 That made sense when computers weren't a thing.
547. 00:31:50 So maybe he wrote it then as part of a different project, a different book, a different edition.
548. 00:31:55 And they included it in this one when they published it in 2018.
549. 00:32:00 And at that point, you have to address digital, just like David Allen and getting things done.
550. 00:32:05 Right.
551. 00:32:06 He could have just said, could take the David Allen approach and be like, you know, I don't
552. 00:32:10 recommend any specific software.
553. 00:32:13 Yeah, but I know he was still around and I know he has other books on mind mapping.
554. 00:32:19 Like this is not his only work on it.
555. 00:32:22 So I don't know.
556. 00:32:23 I don't know if it was put together and then he signed off on it or what it was.
557. 00:32:28 But yeah, I know that definitely well, software had to have been around.
558. 00:32:34 He talks about his software later on.
559. 00:32:36 Right.
560. 00:32:37 But that's I guess like that chapter seems to me like that was added later.
561. 00:32:42 Sure.
562. 00:32:43 The rest of the book stands on its own without any mention of software.
563. 00:32:46 And he does have a lot of like internal references in chapter three.
564. 00:32:49 I'm going to talk about this.
565. 00:32:50 In chapter two, I talked about this.
566. 00:32:52 You know, so there isn't really a section, anything in the main text of the book that's
567. 00:32:57 we'll get into the software later.
568. 00:32:59 It's just a blank piece of paper.
569. 00:33:01 Yeah.
570. 00:33:02 It could be.
571. 00:33:03 It very well could be.
572. 00:33:03 I would like to know, but I'm not sure we're going to answer that one.
573. 00:33:07 Anyway, that's fine.
574. 00:33:08 The laws of mind mapping number one, always use a blank sheet of paper or grab your computer.
575. 00:33:13 Number two, draw a picture in the center of the paper.
576. 00:33:17 Three use images, symbols, codes and dimension throughout your mind map.
577. 00:33:22 Four select keywords and write these using capital letters.
578. 00:33:24 You have to use capital letters.
579. 00:33:27 It's very important capital letters.
580. 00:33:30 Number five, place each word or image on its own branch so that it stands by itself.
581. 00:33:35 Six, radiate flowing branches out from the central image.
582. 00:33:39 Seven, keep branches the same length as the words or images on them.
583. 00:33:44 Eight, use colors throughout the mind map, developing your own color code in the branches.
584. 00:33:49 Nine, use emphasis, arrows and connecting lines to depict associations.
585. 00:33:54 And ten, aim for clarity in your mind map by positioning your branches and carefully
586. 00:33:58 thought through space.
587. 00:34:01 Number ten I have an issue with, actually.
588. 00:34:04 And because the conversation we just had about the non-linear, like the ability to
589. 00:34:09 jump around, if I'm going to position my branches and carefully thought through space,
590. 00:34:15 that won't happen.
591. 00:34:16 So, requires me to know it ahead of time.
592. 00:34:20 Yeah, this, okay, so I, this is where my mind mapping experience, I can understand
593. 00:34:27 why he is saying that.
594. 00:34:30 Because that was my biggest hurdle to mind mapping when I was doing it analog back in
595. 00:34:35 the day is the first ten mind maps you actually make.
596. 00:34:39 If they are, have any complexity whatsoever, you quickly are like, "Oh, I messed this up."
597. 00:34:47 And so me being a perfectionist, I was just like, "I'm just not going to mind map because
598. 00:34:51 I hate having to erase things or running out of space."
599. 00:34:54 But if you do it enough and you make enough mistakes, you kind of get a feel for where
600. 00:34:58 things should be.
601. 00:34:59 Right.
602. 00:35:00 This is very important if you are analog mind mapping.
603. 00:35:02 This has zero importance today.
604. 00:35:04 Yes.
605. 00:35:05 I totally get that.
606. 00:35:07 I know the mind maps that I've done, I've done a couple on paper, most of them I've
607. 00:35:11 done digitally.
608. 00:35:13 And it was a matter of who cares where I put it.
609. 00:35:16 I can always move it.
610. 00:35:18 So to me, that's important.
611. 00:35:20 This is one of those few cases where in my mind, the computer side of it is significantly
612. 00:35:26 better than the paper side of it just because it lets me have that free form and lets me
613. 00:35:31 be less restrictive.
614. 00:35:34 But if I'm going to do it on paper, I could see how that's a pain because you'd have
615. 00:35:38 to give yourself, and he does talk about white space quite a bit, but you have to give
616. 00:35:41 yourself a lot of margin in order to have things come in around it because you don't
617. 00:35:44 know what's going to come in.
618. 00:35:46 You don't know how much space you need.
619. 00:35:48 Here's the thing though.
620. 00:35:49 Mind mapping today, yes, go ahead, use analog tools.
621. 00:35:53 I guarantee you you're doing some form of this digitally.
622. 00:35:57 And if you're doing this digitally, you make a handful of mind maps and it auto arranges
623. 00:36:03 things so that you put them in the right place and you don't have to worry about things
624. 00:36:08 overlapping, you will understand what sort of spacing you need when you create a mind
625. 00:36:14 map by hand.
626. 00:36:17 So even if you are doing some analog mind mapping, but you're also doing some digital mind mapping,
627. 00:36:24 which I think that's the place anybody coming to this today is going to start.
628. 00:36:28 Even if you're a full boudgeau, whatever, you're going to download a mind map app for
629. 00:36:31 your iPad and mess around with it by dragging things around with your finger because that's
630. 00:36:35 a great way to interact with these mind maps.
631. 00:36:38 You do that a handful of times and then you're in a meeting and you're creating a mind map
632. 00:36:43 on a whiteboard.
633. 00:36:44 You don't need to know point number 10.
634. 00:36:46 It's one of those things you just kind of catch by seeing it a couple of times and then you're
635. 00:36:51 like, oh, that's what that means.
636. 00:36:54 So total, I'm going to defend my statement that this has zero relevance today.
637. 00:37:01 This you don't have to worry about at all.
638. 00:37:02 But there are some things that I actually like about these laws of mind mapping, like
639. 00:37:05 the arrows to connect things.
640. 00:37:07 This one thing that he kind of hammered on and I was like, yeah, you know what?
641. 00:37:10 I should add that to my mind mapping.
642. 00:37:12 But there are other things like the all caps that you mentioned, I'm just like, dude,
643. 00:37:17 no, no, because he also says later on here to develop your own style while my own style
644. 00:37:23 is going to break some of your laws.
645. 00:37:24 Correct.
646. 00:37:25 I'm going to be okay with that.
647. 00:37:26 Yep.
648. 00:37:27 Because like something I do all over the place is no title case, no capital letters, everything
649. 00:37:34 is lowercase.
650. 00:37:35 In some places, it's not even spaces, it's dashes.
651. 00:37:39 Maybe that's the developer in me coming out, but I don't do that.
652. 00:37:43 It's lowercase, no spaces.
653. 00:37:45 That's the way I do things everywhere.
654. 00:37:47 And it's all done with mono space fonts drives people nuts when they look at my computer.
655. 00:37:51 That's definitely the developer in you.
656. 00:37:53 Totally is that part I know is.
657. 00:37:55 But it's just the way I do things and have done it on a computer that way for so long.
658. 00:38:00 It's like, don't let me change that.
659. 00:38:01 I'm not changing that.
660. 00:38:02 Like we're not using capital letters.
661. 00:38:04 That's for barbarians.
662. 00:38:09 One of the things he does talk about in this chapter, by the way, is to develop your own
663. 00:38:13 code.
664. 00:38:15 And I have definitely done this.
665. 00:38:19 I have my own emoji code that I use in the MyMap files.
666. 00:38:23 So Bookworm Club Premium members are familiar with this kind of stuff.
667. 00:38:26 I have a light bulb icon, which is like inspiration.
668. 00:38:32 I've got a quote bubble for quotes that I want to remember, keys for key ideas, going
669. 00:38:37 back to how to read a book again, understanding the author's arguments.
670. 00:38:42 I've got a talking head emoji for like the things that I want to make sure that we discuss
671. 00:38:48 in the episodes that we record.
672. 00:38:51 Got a mind-blown emoji for things that just like totally rock my world.
673. 00:38:54 Don't use that one very much.
674. 00:38:55 When I say don't use it very much, like one side of every 15, 20 books that I read, I'll
675. 00:39:01 add something like that.
676. 00:39:02 Usually around a statistic that just is shocking to me, hard to believe.
677. 00:39:08 Yeah, exactly.
678. 00:39:09 So again, there's like really great stuff in here that's diluted by his rigidity with
679. 00:39:17 his laws.
680. 00:39:19 I would say to anybody picking this up today, don't throw the baby out with the bathwater.
681. 00:39:23 Hate that phrase.
682. 00:39:27 And disregard the positioning of your branches.
683. 00:39:30 Try to implement some of the other stuff.
684. 00:39:32 But there's definitely some gains to be had here with mind mapping in general.
685. 00:39:38 Don't be put off by the cranky old man tone from this book.
686. 00:39:43 But I think these laws are unfortunately called laws.
687. 00:39:49 Yep.
688. 00:39:50 I wish it was called mind mapping guidelines.
689. 00:39:53 Yep.
690. 00:39:54 That's what I wish it was called.
691. 00:39:57 I don't think I would have quite the reaction to it that I am having were he to do that because
692. 00:40:03 he does have such a tight, tight rain on it.
693. 00:40:06 Anyway, I should probably set that aside.
694. 00:40:07 But regardless, the idea of like building this network or having like your central image,
695. 00:40:14 the branches and colors and stuff coming off of it, I mean, it's pretty.
696. 00:40:18 If you're willing to loosen up on it, there's a lot of potential here.
697. 00:40:21 Obviously, you know that.
698. 00:40:22 I don't need to explain that to you.
699. 00:40:24 So I know, do you have like a published like a blog post or something YouTube video that
700. 00:40:31 explains your emoji code that you use somewhere?
701. 00:40:34 I feel like you've done this and I just can't recall where it's at.
702. 00:40:37 Yeah, I do.
703. 00:40:39 I'll put a link in the show notes about how I take notes on books that I read.
704. 00:40:46 Probably needs to be updated.
705. 00:40:48 The basic principles of it are definitely still relevant.
706. 00:40:53 It's very evergreen.
707. 00:40:54 There's a picture of my bookshelf with all the books on it and like why I read physical
708. 00:40:58 books.
709. 00:40:59 That's part of that too.
710. 00:41:00 And seeing that picture and how bare my bookshelf looks, I realize I bought a lot of books
711. 00:41:06 in the last couple of years.
712. 00:41:08 But yeah, I'll dig that up.
713. 00:41:11 He has so as we continue in this chapter of how to mind map, which is I think it's close
714. 00:41:20 to the longest.
715. 00:41:21 Yeah, it might be the longest section in the book.
716. 00:41:23 It's fairly easy for me to tell because he has the edges of the book colored so you can
717. 00:41:27 see how long each chapter is.
718. 00:41:30 He has this section called development of a mind mapper where you have essentially three
719. 00:41:34 different stages of mind mapping.
720. 00:41:39 Did you read through this and try to pick out where you're at?
721. 00:41:42 Obviously, I'm towards the beginning of it.
722. 00:41:44 The acceptance stage.
723. 00:41:46 Let me explain these quick and then you tell me where you're at.
724. 00:41:50 The first of these is acceptance, which is where you're basically setting aside any artistic
725. 00:41:56 skill that you do or do not have and allowing all your preconceived notions of how this
726. 00:42:01 should work go away, which is interesting that he says that despite the hard lines on what
727. 00:42:07 this is and allowing yourself to move forward with it.
728. 00:42:13 The second stage is application.
729. 00:42:15 Once you understand how it works and you've accepted your ability with it, you're starting
730. 00:42:20 to apply mind maps and using them in a lot of different ways, using them to take notes,
731. 00:42:28 make decisions, acquiring skills, etc.
732. 00:42:31 And then the last stage, the third stage is called adaptation.
733. 00:42:36 He's got him all his A's.
734. 00:42:37 It's A-A-A.
735. 00:42:38 Here you go, Mike.
736. 00:42:40 With time, you'll develop a personal mind mapping style.
737. 00:42:43 Basically, you've reached the point at which you are altering it.
738. 00:42:46 You've created hundreds of these and you're adapting the mind map concept to take it to
739. 00:42:52 the next level, as he says.
740. 00:42:54 "Yourself?
741. 00:42:56 Where would you put yourself here?"
742. 00:42:57 I'm still accepting my own abilities with this.
743. 00:43:00 I'm definitely the adaptation phase and this is why I feel it's unfortunate that he takes
744. 00:43:06 such a hard stance with the laws in other places because what you just shared in isolation,
745. 00:43:14 that is great advice.
746. 00:43:16 Even the three A's that he has listed here, he obviously did that to make them easier
747. 00:43:21 to remember, but I think those are very valid definitions.
748. 00:43:28 You could use those terms and know what those mean.
749. 00:43:31 It's not like that crazy acrostic from doing the hard things.
750. 00:43:38 Who knows what it was?
751. 00:43:39 I can't remember because he's picking out letters from the middle of words that don't
752. 00:43:44 necessarily even tie to the point that he's making.
753. 00:43:48 This is great.
754. 00:43:49 This is all you got from the book, I would argue.
755. 00:43:51 This is one of those gold nuggets that makes it worth reading.
756. 00:43:55 But then it's diluted because he's like, "Well, you can adapt it, but only to a certain
757. 00:44:00 point because you have to follow the laws.
758. 00:44:02 Otherwise, you're getting into concept map territory and you're no longer a mind mapper."
759. 00:44:06 Who cares?
760. 00:44:09 Just be glad that people have gotten to that part where they're comfortable enough with
761. 00:44:11 this seed of an idea that you've presented.
762. 00:44:16 Go ahead and celebrate that fact that you've helped somebody create hundreds of mind maps.
763. 00:44:22 At that point, yeah, they should be making it their own.
764. 00:44:25 You should be able to recognize everything in there.
765. 00:44:28 Otherwise, they've got the wrong mindset.
766. 00:44:30 They're not getting the most value from it anyways because they're just trying to follow
767. 00:44:33 the process.
768. 00:44:34 It's a weird dichotomy, this concept of a mind map which is used for thinking better,
769. 00:44:41 more clearly, more creatively about things, and then putting the lid on it from the other
770. 00:44:45 side by saying, "But make sure you follow the laws."
771. 00:44:52 This is interesting.
772. 00:44:54 It makes sense that he would do this, but the next part of this chapter is talking about
773. 00:45:01 key application areas of using mind maps.
774. 00:45:06 He steps you through making a mind map of what those areas are going to be.
775. 00:45:12 I kind of appreciate this.
776. 00:45:13 At first, I thought, "Well, really, you're going to do this.
777. 00:45:15 You're going to have me make a mind map of the content that you're getting ready to
778. 00:45:19 walk me through, really."
779. 00:45:22 It's kind of genius because what he's walking you through, and if you think about the intended
780. 00:45:27 audience for this, it's for someone who's never made a mind map has no idea what it
781. 00:45:30 is and is trying to figure out how to use it.
782. 00:45:32 That's his audience here.
783. 00:45:34 We're probably the wrong people for it.
784. 00:45:36 I'm probably borderline, even with my knowledge.
785. 00:45:40 He's having you create a map so you can make your first one with him.
786. 00:45:47 Then he's got you set up such that you can then expand on it as you're reading the book.
787. 00:45:53 I think that's super interesting that he's like, "Okay, here, start here.
788. 00:45:56 Do this while you're going through this next part of the book."
789. 00:46:00 This can be your first foray into getting comfortable with making mind maps.
790. 00:46:06 Did you have an opinion on this?
791. 00:46:07 I thought it was interesting.
792. 00:46:09 That is interesting.
793. 00:46:11 I didn't care for this section, but it makes sense that you would.
794. 00:46:16 This is a little bit of, I think, the curse of knowledge for me and having done a bunch
795. 00:46:20 of mind maps.
796. 00:46:21 I glossed over at this point because I know how to do this.
797. 00:46:26 I know the different areas that mind maps really benefit me.
798. 00:46:31 Using them the plan my week is not one of those areas.
799. 00:46:35 I do think it's cool though.
800. 00:46:36 I think it's a good approach because there are lots of different ways to use mind maps.
801. 00:46:41 You got to find the ones that are going to provide you the most benefit.
802. 00:46:45 It's going to be different for every single person.
803. 00:46:47 I use them primarily for architecting course content articles, things like that.
804. 00:46:53 The book notes that I take, those are the two primary use cases for me.
805. 00:46:57 Synthesizing the ideas from the books that I read and then the things that I create.
806. 00:47:02 If I'm trying to wrap my head around what I want something to look like, I open up a
807. 00:47:06 mind map and I just start building it out.
808. 00:47:09 I've shared before that I think that when I'm creating, every hour I spend my mapping
809. 00:47:12 actually saves me two hours when I sit down to write.
810. 00:47:15 I would argue that the quality is improved as well.
811. 00:47:17 It's definitely value there, but I'm not going to use it for a lot of the different
812. 00:47:21 areas that he mentioned here.
813. 00:47:24 I think there are folks that make sense, but you don't really know until you put in some
814. 00:47:29 reps.
815. 00:47:30 This is great.
816. 00:47:31 This is like making people take action on the action items that you would list out in
817. 00:47:37 your book.
818. 00:47:39 That said, I did not do it.
819. 00:47:42 That great setup and then...
820. 00:47:44 Yep.
821. 00:47:45 No.
822. 00:47:46 It's not.
823. 00:47:47 Cool.
824. 00:47:48 Yeah.
825. 00:47:49 That's a neat idea.
826. 00:47:50 What he's walking you through is there are six application areas.
827. 00:47:54 In my mind, this is probably one of the most important parts of the book right here.
828. 00:48:00 This is going to walk you through ways to use this.
829. 00:48:04 What does it look like?
830. 00:48:07 Once you see a picture of two of these, you're pretty much locked in.
831. 00:48:11 It makes perfect sense because it's visual, right?
832. 00:48:15 Humans are visual people, so it's pretty easy to grasp what it is he's getting at.
833. 00:48:19 This particular piece, how do you actually use these things?
834. 00:48:24 What are areas that you could use?
835. 00:48:25 Obviously, you're talking about using it for book notes and course outlining of sorts,
836. 00:48:30 coming up with what's going to be in content is a pretty easy one.
837. 00:48:35 He's got some interesting ways that I would not have thought of and ways I will not think
838. 00:48:39 of using these, but it is good nonetheless to at least see some ways that you could use
839. 00:48:47 this.
840. 00:48:48 The area here is at home.
841. 00:48:50 A lot of people like to start with work with something like this, so I appreciated that
842. 00:48:54 he at least started with home to begin with.
843. 00:48:58 Areas that I'm not going to do, but he at least steps you through and shows you examples
844. 00:49:02 of what this could look like.
845. 00:49:05 A couple of them here are achieving a personal goal, which was what did he have here?
846. 00:49:09 A marathon.
847. 00:49:10 He's got all the process of training and the motivation, the equipment, nutrition revolving
848. 00:49:17 around a marathon.
849. 00:49:19 Then another one here was planning a week.
850. 00:49:21 Real quick.
851. 00:49:22 On that one, I have gone through that process of training for and running a half marathon,
852. 00:49:31 not a full marathon.
853. 00:49:32 I can tell you from personal experience, my map is the worst tool for this.
854. 00:49:42 This is a bad example.
855. 00:49:43 I'm glad that he's trying to use examples, but this is one of the things that stood out
856. 00:49:47 to me throughout this book is there are some things where he's trying to force a square
857. 00:49:53 peg through a round hole.
858. 00:49:56 This is where you don't need to have it all figured out.
859. 00:50:00 Running a marathon is not a knowledge problem.
860. 00:50:04 That's not the one you should use for this, but I digress.
861. 00:50:08 Okay.
862. 00:50:09 What if you're brand new to running marathons and you don't know what you need to do?
863. 00:50:13 Then how would a mind map help you?
864. 00:50:15 Only collecting all the stuff around it.
865. 00:50:18 Sure, but you don't even know what you need.
866. 00:50:21 I guess that's the point.
867. 00:50:22 If you're doing some research on it, I guess that's the way I took it and he doesn't explain
868. 00:50:26 it this way.
869. 00:50:27 But if you had a map that you were using to capture little bits as you're doing research
870. 00:50:35 about it and then you could go through it later, I guess I could see that.
871. 00:50:39 Maybe that's what I took it as, but maybe I'm wrong.
872. 00:50:41 Yeah.
873. 00:50:42 I think maybe you're convincing me a little bit, but still I feel like the path forward
874. 00:50:48 here is get around some other people who are doing this and do it with them and live,
875. 00:50:54 figure out the mistakes that you're making and don't do those things.
876. 00:50:58 My mapping seems to me, I know that he has collaborative examples in here like in home,
877. 00:51:03 but running a marathon is not a group goal.
878. 00:51:07 This is an individual thing.
879. 00:51:09 And so you're trying to achieve an individual goal, which means you're probably making
880. 00:51:13 this my map by yourself.
881. 00:51:15 So I don't know.
882. 00:51:17 That one is not a great example.
883. 00:51:20 And I feel like there are several of those where he's trying to use examples that don't
884. 00:51:25 really fit and he's doing himself a disservice.
885. 00:51:28 Sure.
886. 00:51:29 Okay, then.
887. 00:51:30 Are you going to plan your week with it though?
888. 00:51:32 Nope.
889. 00:51:33 That was his other one, big one that he had here and he's got the week number on there
890. 00:51:37 and he's got Monday through Sunday, Sunday through Saturday.
891. 00:51:41 I think of it as Monday through Sunday, but then he's got all the different things he's
892. 00:51:44 going to do each day like that.
893. 00:51:46 No, that's what a calendar's for.
894. 00:51:50 Yeah, so I see the argument for that.
895. 00:51:55 That's kind of like weekly planning.
896. 00:51:57 And I think an argument could be made for these are all the things that I got to do this
897. 00:52:01 week and visually looking at them that way.
898. 00:52:04 If you're trying to put them all on the date that they do, whatever you could end up with
899. 00:52:08 a day that's just impossible for you to get everything done.
900. 00:52:12 Oh, this Tuesday actually earlier in the week, that doesn't have a whole lot going on.
901. 00:52:15 So I'll move this over there.
902. 00:52:18 I could see that at least.
903. 00:52:22 But yeah, anything that's time specific, you're going to need a calendar for.
904. 00:52:25 So you can use this as part of your planning process.
905. 00:52:29 But again, bad example, because it's not going to be the only thing that you can use.
906. 00:52:32 You're going to have to have a calendar to manage your appointments.
907. 00:52:35 Yeah, I think, you know, kind of going off of what they're saying in the chat, number
908. 00:52:40 one, don't use Google Docs.
909. 00:52:43 But I think there's, I don't know that he calls this out anywhere.
910. 00:52:47 I'm trying to remember, but I don't recall there being a spot where he made this differentiation.
911. 00:52:52 But there's a big difference between mind mapping, known information, like facts and logistics
912. 00:53:00 and quantities of things.
913. 00:53:03 Like he talks about, and the next one here, I'll just jump in there here as part of this.
914. 00:53:08 But the next application area is work.
915. 00:53:10 And one of the first ones he talks about is time management.
916. 00:53:13 That doesn't make any sense to me because it's a logistical, like it's a pie, you know,
917. 00:53:18 there's certain parts that you can go through.
918. 00:53:19 Like there's, you know, it's a bar, you can segment it off.
919. 00:53:22 It's not a creative map that's there.
920. 00:53:25 So whenever you have like something that's logistical like that, that's fact-based, that's
921. 00:53:31 with full knowns, that doesn't make sense to me why you would use a mind map.
922. 00:53:35 If anything, it's an outline.
923. 00:53:37 If you already know all of it, what's the point of the mind map?
924. 00:53:40 But the map, I think, gets its value in that when you're doing the ideation process and
925. 00:53:45 you're trying to figure out an answer to something, we're trying to put together a product, but
926. 00:53:50 you don't know what needs to be in it.
927. 00:53:52 If you already know all the information, it's just a matter of connecting the dots and you're
928. 00:53:55 done.
929. 00:53:56 But when you don't know all the information, I feel like that's where it gets to be important.
930. 00:53:59 But I don't feel like he makes that split anywhere.
931. 00:54:02 It doesn't call out those two different places.
932. 00:54:05 Yeah, I agree with you.
933. 00:54:07 And then the other thing here is like all these different examples that he's sharing,
934. 00:54:13 these don't need to follow the laws.
935. 00:54:17 If you're using a mind map for time management, who cares about the length of your branches?
936. 00:54:24 Or those are good things to keep in mind when using a mind map for fill in the blank.
937. 00:54:33 But the question you have to ask yourself is how does this get modified to achieve the
938. 00:54:38 goal of this use case?
939. 00:54:40 And I would argue that the bows of a tree branch, being visible in your mind map itself, that's
940. 00:54:47 going to have limited value when it comes to time management.
941. 00:54:52 Or I don't know, maybe you could argue for project management.
942. 00:54:56 But it's definitely more important for some things than it is for others.
943. 00:54:59 So to make it a law and be like, this has to apply to every single mind map that you
944. 00:55:02 ever create is weird.
945. 00:55:03 Right, right.
946. 00:55:05 Which seems to be what he's advocating for.
947. 00:55:07 Because he's got, like here in this work section, he's got one that I do think would be helpful
948. 00:55:13 is researching a topic.
949. 00:55:15 You know, if you're collecting information about a bunch of different places, I kind
950. 00:55:18 of get that.
951. 00:55:19 I don't know that I would do that one because I've slowly been developing a way of collecting
952. 00:55:25 like snippets from things, like collecting pictures, quotes, etc. with links and such.
953. 00:55:31 I've been slowly collecting a way of doing that.
954. 00:55:34 So I feel like mind mapping that would actually complicate it.
955. 00:55:36 Not going to be that one.
956. 00:55:39 Things like writing an annual report seems like an odd thing to put here.
957. 00:55:44 But I could see how that would maybe be super helpful if you don't know all of the details
958. 00:55:51 that need to be in that annual report.
959. 00:55:53 Like if you're trying to figure out what it needs to look like and what are the different
960. 00:55:56 components of it, if you don't know all of that, to me, that's the same as trying to
961. 00:56:00 put together a whole video course.
962. 00:56:02 You're just not recording videos for what you're typing or collecting charts and graphs
963. 00:56:06 and such.
964. 00:56:08 That's probably where that could land.
965. 00:56:10 So I could see how it could be used in those areas.
966. 00:56:12 He's got project management here as well.
967. 00:56:15 You kind of alluded to that.
968. 00:56:17 That could probably be one as well if you don't know what components need to be a part
969. 00:56:20 of that project.
970. 00:56:21 If it's known, that would not be helpful.
971. 00:56:23 If you're doing a commercial contractor built, like you're building a commercial building,
972. 00:56:28 you don't need a mind map.
973. 00:56:29 They have extensive software for how to put all the pieces together for that.
974. 00:56:33 It's not, you're not trying to figure out, does it need to have HVAC?
975. 00:56:36 Does it need to have electrical?
976. 00:56:37 The answer is yes, it does.
977. 00:56:39 So the question is, what and how much is it going to cost?
978. 00:56:43 You know what I mean?
979. 00:56:44 So you don't have to worry about mind mapping that one.
980. 00:56:46 So I don't think I would go there.
981. 00:56:47 It would just depend.
982. 00:56:48 I'm rambling.
983. 00:56:49 You talk.
984. 00:56:50 Well, let's crank through the rest of these categories here.
985. 00:56:55 The other ones are education, which includes revision and essay planning, creativity, well-being
986. 00:57:00 and memory.
987. 00:57:01 Those are big categories.
988. 00:57:03 So there are six total homework, education, creativity, well-being and memory.
989. 00:57:07 But yeah, I don't know.
990. 00:57:10 To call certain ones, keys is weird, especially when later on there's a giant list of 99 different
991. 00:57:18 ones.
992. 00:57:19 And yes, I captured them all.
993. 00:57:21 Really?
994. 00:57:22 Yep.
995. 00:57:23 But that's not till...
996. 00:57:24 Do you do like any picture to text stuff to do that?
997. 00:57:27 Just type them all.
998. 00:57:28 I dictated it all.
999. 00:57:30 Nice.
1000. 00:57:31 Nice work.
1001. 00:57:32 That's chapter five.
1002. 00:57:33 So put a pin in that.
1003. 00:57:35 Nice.
1004. 00:57:36 Nice.
1005. 00:57:37 Let's go on to chapter three here because this one's kind of fun.
1006. 00:57:41 What is not a mind map?
1007. 00:57:44 Super fun.
1008. 00:57:46 He has a section here, a case of mistaken identity.
1009. 00:57:49 I'm actually not sure why this section is quite so long, but it is.
1010. 00:57:53 But the very beginning of this is this...
1011. 00:57:57 What are there?
1012. 00:57:58 I'm here that he specifically calls out things that are not mind maps.
1013. 00:58:03 The first one is what he calls a spider diagram.
1014. 00:58:07 And I suspect that that's what a lot of people would also call a concept diagram.
1015. 00:58:12 I feel like those two are probably synonyms.
1016. 00:58:16 And he has a picture of this.
1017. 00:58:17 And it's what I would traditionally call a mind map because it looks exactly like a
1018. 00:58:22 mind map except that it's bubbles and lines instead of colored branches.
1019. 00:58:27 Connecting to each other.
1020. 00:58:29 I would still call that a mind map.
1021. 00:58:30 He's very specific and that is not a mind map.
1022. 00:58:33 Let's just call that a local graph.
1023. 00:58:36 Sure.
1024. 00:58:37 Whatever you want to get.
1025. 00:58:38 There you go.
1026. 00:58:39 That's probably a good way to describe that.
1027. 00:58:40 If you've seen a local graph in Obsidian or Rome, that's what he's talking about.
1028. 00:58:46 Yeah.
1029. 00:58:47 And I say local graph just because that's what the one I always use, but really it's that
1030. 00:58:50 graph view with all the different dots that are connected.
1031. 00:58:54 The difference between that and the local graph is you can just see the ones that are connected
1032. 00:58:59 to the current note that you're looking at.
1033. 00:59:03 Which again is a thinking tool that is similar to a mind map.
1034. 00:59:05 I would just love to see him include.
1035. 00:59:07 This is where you should use these things.
1036. 00:59:10 And not try to put up a fence between the, it's mind map neighbor.
1037. 00:59:19 Right.
1038. 00:59:20 But whatever.
1039. 00:59:21 The other ones that he's got here is a pyramid diagram.
1040. 00:59:25 A pyramid.
1041. 00:59:26 It's got layers.
1042. 00:59:27 You're used to seeing these.
1043. 00:59:28 He does call out concept maps here as being different than spider, spider diagrams, which
1044. 00:59:35 is essentially a spider diagram by arrows instead of lines.
1045. 00:59:38 There you go.
1046. 00:59:40 That's the difference between it.
1047. 00:59:42 Fishbone diagrams.
1048. 00:59:43 Ooh, cares.
1049. 00:59:44 I know, right?
1050. 00:59:45 Sunburst chart.
1051. 00:59:46 Like these are all, all, I mean.
1052. 00:59:51 The spider diagrams and the concept maps I would probably call mind maps.
1053. 00:59:55 The others, like they're not even close.
1054. 00:59:57 Like they're not even.
1055. 00:59:58 They're just charts and graphs.
1056. 01:00:00 But he does have a list of questions that you can ask to determine if something is a
1057. 01:00:06 mind map or not.
1058. 01:00:08 Now this is where things get weird.
1059. 01:00:11 Is there a clear central concept?
1060. 01:00:14 Is there a clear central image depicting that concept?
1061. 01:00:17 Does the diagram radiate from the center?
1062. 01:00:20 Is there always one word per branch?
1063. 01:00:22 Are there any images?
1064. 01:00:23 Is color used throughout?
1065. 01:00:24 Is the mind map clear?
1066. 01:00:26 Is the mind map natural and organic in appearance?
1067. 01:00:29 Is the mind map highly visually appealing?
1068. 01:00:32 If the answer to any of these questions is no, you are not looking at a true mind map.
1069. 01:00:37 Okay.
1070. 01:00:38 So at this point, then no one should download my mind maps from the books that I read because
1071. 01:00:45 some of those branches are chapter titles and those aren't never a single word.
1072. 01:00:51 So okay, you've just alienated me.
1073. 01:00:53 I guess I'm not going to be part of your community anymore.
1074. 01:00:55 Right.
1075. 01:00:56 Why?
1076. 01:00:57 Everything else.
1077. 01:00:58 Yes.
1078. 01:00:59 But that one criteria and he's got to meet all of these.
1079. 01:01:03 That's enough to just like close the door.
1080. 01:01:07 And that's completely unnecessary.
1081. 01:01:08 Yep.
1082. 01:01:09 And if you follow that, even his own software wouldn't qualify.
1083. 01:01:13 Like, if you want to be completely pedantic about it, it doesn't qualify.
1084. 01:01:18 This chapter by itself, I feel like epitomizes some of his insecurity because why if you
1085. 01:01:25 are the inventor of a mind map, this chapter is included to show your superiority over
1086. 01:01:33 everyone else's attempt at trying to think visually.
1087. 01:01:37 Like you know what I mean?
1088. 01:01:38 Like this is unnecessary.
1089. 01:01:41 You're trying to qualify something even though you've said we're supposed to adapt and make
1090. 01:01:46 it our own.
1091. 01:01:47 And then you turn around and say, oh, by the way, if you adapt and make it your own outside
1092. 01:01:50 of these bounds, you're no longer mind mapping.
1093. 01:01:53 What?
1094. 01:01:54 Yeah.
1095. 01:01:55 So this reminds me of a scarcity mindset.
1096. 01:02:01 And people have this in business sometimes.
1097. 01:02:04 They feel like the minute that someone buys something from your competitor, you didn't
1098. 01:02:09 do a good enough job explaining why you're better.
1099. 01:02:12 Sometimes people just make emotional decisions.
1100. 01:02:13 They like the salesperson or whoever, whatever.
1101. 01:02:17 So the abundance mindset is like, you know what?
1102. 01:02:20 That's okay.
1103. 01:02:21 There's enough potential customers out here.
1104. 01:02:23 We can all be successful.
1105. 01:02:24 The fact that this person bought from somebody else doesn't diminish the earning potential
1106. 01:02:32 that I have.
1107. 01:02:35 And it's evident at this point that this is the approach he is taking with the term mind
1108. 01:02:41 map in the whole thinking tool space, which is completely ridiculous because this is
1109. 01:02:48 way bigger than he could possibly fill.
1110. 01:02:52 And so this just feels very weird at this point.
1111. 01:02:57 And this is where you start to feel like, I'm not sure I want to be associated with this
1112. 01:03:01 guy.
1113. 01:03:02 Right.
1114. 01:03:03 And the person who just refuses to accept anything positive that happens from what he's doing.
1115. 01:03:10 And the fact that there is at least one other person out there somewhere who is buying mind
1116. 01:03:16 map software, quote unquote mind map software that isn't following my laws.
1117. 01:03:20 They don't understand that that's not really a mind map.
1118. 01:03:24 Right.
1119. 01:03:25 And like, okay, fine, be upset about that.
1120. 01:03:28 But you're going to be better.
1121. 01:03:29 You're going to have a miserable existence while you're trying to defend this.
1122. 01:03:36 And it's not worth it.
1123. 01:03:39 There is no reason for this chapter to exist other than that mindset being at the root of
1124. 01:03:45 his whole thinking about this concept.
1125. 01:03:47 I feel like that's a good place.
1126. 01:03:49 Let's go on to solution finding.
1127. 01:03:51 See, we find a solution of this, which I summarized in my note on this as don't stop using mind
1128. 01:03:58 maps because then you'll forget me.
1129. 01:04:01 Like that's the way I wrote it in here.
1130. 01:04:04 But basically that's it.
1131. 01:04:06 He starts it off with perseverance as the key to success.
1132. 01:04:09 Please don't stop using mind maps.
1133. 01:04:10 And he calls out that if you find yourself struggling to use mind maps, you're not using
1134. 01:04:15 mind maps at all.
1135. 01:04:16 You're probably making spider diagrams, which means you need to introduce color and keywords.
1136. 01:04:22 So don't forget color, Mike.
1137. 01:04:24 Don't forget keywords.
1138. 01:04:25 Don't use too many.
1139. 01:04:26 Make sure you use pictures.
1140. 01:04:28 Okay.
1141. 01:04:29 That's the key to making sure mind maps work perfectly for you at all times.
1142. 01:04:34 I'm of course saying these things in just, but he's saying that if you're finding yourself
1143. 01:04:40 struggling with mind maps, I can't speak to this.
1144. 01:04:42 I don't have this experience, but if you're struggling to use them, you're probably not
1145. 01:04:46 using them right and you need to keep trying and keep working at it.
1146. 01:04:50 That's his perspective.
1147. 01:04:52 At least that's the way I took it.
1148. 01:04:53 I would argue that if you're reading this book now and a mind map is not working for
1149. 01:04:59 you, it is probably because you are trying to follow all of these laws of mind mapping.
1150. 01:05:06 And none of the great applications that are available to us for this purpose meet these
1151. 01:05:12 criteria.
1152. 01:05:13 So you have written off all of the ones that we have talked about today and you are using
1153. 01:05:17 some bloated piece of junk that doesn't work anymore, like his own iMindMap software.
1154. 01:05:22 Sorry, read the chat.
1155. 01:05:24 I'm going to go get my pastels and crayons today.
1156. 01:05:27 I love it.
1157. 01:05:28 You guys are awesome.
1158. 01:05:31 I will say he does have a section in here called Ask the Right Question, which I like,
1159. 01:05:37 obviously questions, poorly formulated questions.
1160. 01:05:41 I specifically didn't bring this up because I knew you would.
1161. 01:05:44 Yeah.
1162. 01:05:45 So this is again an example of like the gold nuggets that are in this book here.
1163. 01:05:50 You just got to sort through the cranky old man stuff.
1164. 01:05:55 Trigger the an effective question or topic will trigger the powers of association imagery,
1165. 01:05:59 be open, allowing consideration assessment rather than close yes or no answers, inspire
1166. 01:06:02 critical and analytical thinking, create clarity, challenge assumptions, stimulate breakthrough
1167. 01:06:06 thinking, achieve a balance between the content and the process, inspire a positive reaction.
1168. 01:06:11 I love this.
1169. 01:06:13 And I think this is really the unspoken.
1170. 01:06:17 Maybe he says it, but I don't think it's very clear.
1171. 01:06:20 If you're creating a chapter called solution finding, really what you are saying is that
1172. 01:06:26 when you have a problem or a question that you are trying to answer, that's the thing
1173. 01:06:31 you want to use for your mind map.
1174. 01:06:33 But again, that's not going to meet the requirements of the laws that he lays out because a question
1175. 01:06:40 is not an image with three colors very often.
1176. 01:06:45 And I would argue that that is okay.
1177. 01:06:47 You can put that in the middle and that is the beginning of your mind map, but he would
1178. 01:06:51 disagree with you.
1179. 01:06:52 Right.
1180. 01:06:53 Well, I know that there's a lot of ways that you can use these.
1181. 01:06:57 Obviously we'll get into that in the next section, but the idea of telling me to just
1182. 01:07:02 try harder and keep going, that never works.
1183. 01:07:07 And he almost says that verbatim.
1184. 01:07:10 So yeah, pretty much.
1185. 01:07:12 Just don't.
1186. 01:07:13 I don't buy that.
1187. 01:07:14 The important part is in the way I think of it because I've kind of been dabbling with
1188. 01:07:20 some beginning mind maps here since reading this.
1189. 01:07:24 But I was trying to determine what is it about the process that makes it work.
1190. 01:07:31 And it's more that I can stop worrying about what I'm writing down and where it goes and
1191. 01:07:39 I can just get it into something and then I can organize it later.
1192. 01:07:43 And I can do that.
1193. 01:07:44 When you're going through a book, like with your maps, you kind of have a flow and I'm
1194. 01:07:48 assuming you have a method.
1195. 01:07:50 Well, obviously you have a method for like how those branches are going to break off
1196. 01:07:55 from each other.
1197. 01:07:57 But at the same time, like if you're trying to come up with an online course like we've
1198. 01:08:01 been talking about or if you're trying to choose a baby name as one of his examples
1199. 01:08:06 we'll get into here in a second.
1200. 01:08:08 If you're trying to come up with something like that, the free formness of it is what
1201. 01:08:13 allows the creativity.
1202. 01:08:15 But trying to lock it into some of these rules, I feel like can hinder that as much as he
1203. 01:08:20 wants to say that it's helpful.
1204. 01:08:22 So I don't think I'm going to even attempt any of these rules.
1205. 01:08:27 I think the concept of being able to just have branches and work off of those and maybe
1206. 01:08:31 use a nomenclature of my own, a syntax of my own like that, I feel like is more important
1207. 01:08:37 than pretty much anything else he's trying to dictate on me.
1208. 01:08:41 Yeah, if I were writing this book in his stead, I would simplify the rules for shortcut out
1209. 01:08:48 number 10, probably cut out a couple others.
1210. 01:08:51 And then instead of sharing 99 different examples, like in the next chapter, I would
1211. 01:08:58 share 15 or 20 and I would explain how the rules become adapted for those different scenarios
1212. 01:09:07 and basically leave it at that.
1213. 01:09:08 Yep.
1214. 01:09:09 So what Mike's getting at is the next chapter here, which is called the Infinite Applications
1215. 01:09:14 of Mind Maps, in which case he's got a list of 99 Mind Map applications.
1216. 01:09:22 And he does break this off into those six areas, the homework, education, creativity,
1217. 01:09:27 well-being and memory.
1218. 01:09:30 Some of these are just interesting, like diary keeping, business growth, getting promoted
1219. 01:09:36 archaeology for education.
1220. 01:09:38 I feel like he just started labeling like genres of subjects in school, like geology, grammar,
1221. 01:09:46 history, like what?
1222. 01:09:48 That got confused.
1223. 01:09:49 This section is useless.
1224. 01:09:51 So he obviously picked a number of 99 and then came up with 99 different examples.
1225. 01:09:56 However, you have your book in front of you?
1226. 01:09:58 I do.
1227. 01:09:59 Okay, so there's like a table on two pages, right?
1228. 01:10:01 Yep, 160 and 161.
1229. 01:10:03 Okay, 161, the top section, look in the middle column, do you see a duplicate?
1230. 01:10:10 Yes.
1231. 01:10:11 Okay, I didn't write down which one it was.
1232. 01:10:14 Math.
1233. 01:10:15 But I know, yes, that's what I was going to guess.
1234. 01:10:17 But yeah, so there are 98, not 99.
1235. 01:10:20 Wait, does he?
1236. 01:10:22 Okay, hold on.
1237. 01:10:23 So there's three columns.
1238. 01:10:25 What have I got?
1239. 01:10:28 Five, six, ten, twelve, fifteen.
1240. 01:10:31 So five by three, no, 15 by three.
1241. 01:10:35 I didn't even go into that level.
1242. 01:10:37 I just saw that.
1243. 01:10:38 I'm going to make sure.
1244. 01:10:39 I got to double check this now.
1245. 01:10:41 So there's 15 here.
1246. 01:10:42 Is there 15?
1247. 01:10:43 No, I'm second guessing this.
1248. 01:10:45 Five, five.
1249. 01:10:46 Doesn't matter because he threw extra words in there that we didn't need to read by listing
1250. 01:10:50 something twice.
1251. 01:10:51 Sure.
1252. 01:10:52 Okay.
1253. 01:10:53 So at that point, the whole section is worthless to me.
1254. 01:10:57 Like you literally were just coming up with as many things as you could think of and put
1255. 01:11:02 him in a table, which actually he probably did this in a mind map, which is why he missed
1256. 01:11:07 it.
1257. 01:11:08 If you have done it in an outline, he could have at least sorted it by alphabetical order
1258. 01:11:11 and seen the duplicates, which is why this is a great tool in some scenarios, but it
1259. 01:11:17 is only one tool and it is not the be all end all solution for everything, which is
1260. 01:11:22 kind of how he's positioning it because I trademarked this thing back in 1970, whatever.
1261. 01:11:27 Yeah, he's got 33 rows by three.
1262. 01:11:30 So he's got the 99, but he's got the duplicate of maths, but there's also, like if you look
1263. 01:11:35 underneath his creativity section, he's got creative doodling is in there.
1264. 01:11:39 I don't know why I need a mind map for creative doodling, which is right next to creating
1265. 01:11:44 mind map art.
1266. 01:11:46 What?
1267. 01:11:47 I don't understand.
1268. 01:11:49 He's reaching here just to fill the 99 quota, but then completely invalidates that number
1269. 01:11:54 by having duplicates in the table and I cannot fathom how any editor who looked at this was
1270. 01:12:01 like, yeah, let's just ship this.
1271. 01:12:03 Or they were just tuned out when they were editing at that point and just like whatever,
1272. 01:12:07 just go with it.
1273. 01:12:08 Yeah, yeah, true.
1274. 01:12:10 Anyway, there's some stuff in here like advanced, he's got advanced mind mapping at home, at
1275. 01:12:16 work, etc, etc. conflict resolution.
1276. 01:12:19 There's just a bunch of different examples here.
1277. 01:12:22 It's kind of like the next level, I guess, is the way he's trying to position this.
1278. 01:12:27 Honestly, it was hard for me to keep going at this point because I felt like it was repetitive.
1279. 01:12:31 Yeah, going over the same stuff again.
1280. 01:12:35 This part is the idea behind this section is good.
1281. 01:12:39 The execution of it is poor.
1282. 01:12:41 You're burned out after reading through the 99 different things.
1283. 01:12:45 And just reading through them, you're burned out by them because at first I read through
1284. 01:12:49 them and I was like, oh man.
1285. 01:12:50 And then I went back and I added them all the adaptation just so that I had this for
1286. 01:12:57 a historical artifact.
1287. 01:13:00 And that's when I caught the duplicate.
1288. 01:13:02 And I was like, yeah, I just wasted half hour of my life.
1289. 01:13:09 But what he's trying to do here is give examples of some high level projects, some really valuable
1290. 01:13:14 things that people could use in MindMap for.
1291. 01:13:17 So like getting published, writing a book, those are good examples, although the version
1292. 01:13:24 of that that is relevant for me.
1293. 01:13:26 And I have no trouble making this jump is like outlining an online course.
1294. 01:13:31 He's not going to talk about that because that's not his world, I don't think.
1295. 01:13:35 But that's the sort of thing that you should maybe get some people who are using this,
1296. 01:13:42 who you have an alienated by saying they're not mind mapping really to come contribute
1297. 01:13:46 this because it makes your argument stronger as opposed to picking some things that really
1298. 01:13:51 don't resonate with your readers.
1299. 01:13:53 But these are the types of projects I was talking about where, yeah, go ahead and show
1300. 01:13:56 me how to apply the laws with these different areas.
1301. 01:13:59 Other than being extraordinarily complex in some scenarios, like there's nothing of value
1302. 01:14:04 here.
1303. 01:14:05 Well, let's go into the last one here.
1304. 01:14:08 The future of mind mapping, which is really him just talking about it going digital.
1305. 01:14:14 And what is the digital form of this?
1306. 01:14:19 And it's basically a pitch for iMindMap.
1307. 01:14:22 I shouldn't say that.
1308. 01:14:24 It talks about iMindMap a lot, which is the software that he created with what's his
1309. 01:14:31 name, Chris Griffiths, to create the first effective digital mind mapping software, iMindMap,
1310. 01:14:37 which as we were talking about before we started recording, you cannot get is defunct.
1311. 01:14:42 And you can't even really get to the document that explains what happened.
1312. 01:14:49 It's a 404.
1313. 01:14:51 So let's walk through that real quick for people who weren't live before we hit the record
1314. 01:14:55 button.
1315. 01:14:57 If you search for iMindMap, the first result is app.imimap.com.
1316. 01:15:02 iMindMap.com actually just redirects to a YOA, which is I think the replacement for this.
1317. 01:15:08 But app.imimap.com, which is the result, takes you to the website login.
1318. 01:15:14 The banner at the top of that says this is no longer supported.
1319. 01:15:20 And below the name and email or email password section is four different icons for the platforms
1320. 01:15:27 that this exists on.
1321. 01:15:29 And none of them are links.
1322. 01:15:30 It is just an image.
1323. 01:15:32 So literally it's just saying this no longer exists, click here.
1324. 01:15:37 And then when you click there, you get the, oh, this doesn't exist on a YOA's help site.
1325. 01:15:44 Super helpful, right?
1326. 01:15:46 So we were hoping, but here we are.
1327. 01:15:49 He does call out some benefits of using MindMap's on a computer doing them digitally.
1328. 01:15:58 Some of which he calls out here is like they can be edited where necessary, backed up.
1329. 01:16:02 The clearer graphics are easier to read, linked to other multimedia.
1330. 01:16:08 They can, what did he say here?
1331. 01:16:09 They facilitate post process analysis, like going back over it and moving things around,
1332. 01:16:14 simple to generate using supply drawing tools and icons.
1333. 01:16:17 You know, there's a whole lot of, you know, gets into like laws and robot rules and such,
1334. 01:16:23 which I'm not really sure how that applied.
1335. 01:16:25 But it is interesting to at least see that he's trying to bring it into the digital realm.
1336. 01:16:31 Like that part I can appreciate.
1337. 01:16:34 But I don't know that I would get on board with much here other than just like, cool,
1338. 01:16:40 awesome.
1339. 01:16:41 It's coming digitally.
1340. 01:16:43 Please be open to something other than I MindMap, especially since it's not supported.
1341. 01:16:48 So here we are.
1342. 01:16:50 So this is the most disappointing thing of the, his stance here is obviously has not stood
1343. 01:16:56 the test of time.
1344. 01:16:58 His MindMap legacy being pinned to this software invalidates a lot of what he has said in some
1345. 01:17:05 people's minds.
1346. 01:17:06 I still think there's some good stuff in here.
1347. 01:17:08 And I'm glad that we read it, but I'll get to celebrating in a little bit.
1348. 01:17:12 But it's fine to say, you know, I developed my own software because I wanted to make
1349. 01:17:15 something that followed these 10 laws.
1350. 01:17:18 That include anything about all the other software that's out there that isn't really
1351. 01:17:21 MindMapping software because it doesn't follow the laws.
1352. 01:17:23 You could just be, you know what?
1353. 01:17:24 There are some people doing some interesting things with my original ideas and turning them
1354. 01:17:28 into something new.
1355. 01:17:30 And that's great.
1356. 01:17:31 If that clicks for you, go check out those apps.
1357. 01:17:34 If you had taken that approach, you're left with a totally different feel from this book.
1358. 01:17:39 But because he's funneling down you one specific path and then you go look for that app and
1359. 01:17:43 it does not exist.
1360. 01:17:45 You're like, oh, well, this guy isn't even around anymore.
1361. 01:17:49 I guess his ideas shouldn't be valued.
1362. 01:17:54 And I think there is some value in this, but it's just it's a shame.
1363. 01:18:00 Like, you could use the success of those other applications to support your arguments instead
1364. 01:18:06 of as arguments against them.
1365. 01:18:11 And I would argue that the digital future of MindMapping where we are today is actually
1366. 01:18:18 pretty awesome.
1367. 01:18:19 My favorite way to MindMap is on my iPad because I use my Apple Pencil, but being able
1368. 01:18:24 to touch the elements of your MindMap and physically drag them around on the paper, I
1369. 01:18:30 mean, that is magical.
1370. 01:18:32 If you start with an analog MindMap, the ability to do that, you're like, whoa, what is this
1371. 01:18:37 crazy future that we live in?
1372. 01:18:40 But that's also where we're at today.
1373. 01:18:43 In terms of the robots and things, I think the argument that he's making here is that
1374. 01:18:48 AI is going to develop to the point where they can actually be used in the MindMapping
1375. 01:18:52 process, which is great.
1376. 01:18:55 And I think that's interesting.
1377. 01:18:57 AI is being used in a lot of different creative fields.
1378. 01:19:02 Now, there's a service called Jarvis that I'm familiar with that you can use to create
1379. 01:19:06 marketing copy for your product or whatever.
1380. 01:19:11 So there are people using AI in some interesting ways, but I can almost guarantee you, Tony,
1381. 01:19:15 that they're not going to follow your laws.
1382. 01:19:18 So you're not going to like them anyways.
1383. 01:19:21 And that's where I feel he's painted himself a new corner with the arguments that he's made
1384. 01:19:25 in this book.
1385. 01:19:26 And by the end of it, you're left with this negative taste in your mouth, which is really
1386. 01:19:31 unfortunate because I do think he's made some really positive contributions.
1387. 01:19:36 To this space, and there's some really great ideas in here.
1388. 01:19:40 But yeah, you're right.
1389. 01:19:41 At the end, when he's pitching iMindMap, you're just like, you've completely written
1390. 01:19:46 him off at this point.
1391. 01:19:48 At least we did.
1392. 01:19:49 Well, you have no other option.
1393. 01:19:52 I mean, even someone like me who's done hundreds of mind maps and yeah, I'm going to learn
1394. 01:19:56 a few things and I still think I learned a few things and I probably have a more positive
1395. 01:20:00 view of this book than you do.
1396. 01:20:02 But even me at this point, like I can't defend this guy.
1397. 01:20:06 Yep.
1398. 01:20:07 Yeah, I can't say that I have a very high view of the book, but that's probably because
1399. 01:20:14 again, I don't have the history with mind mapping that that all said.
1400. 01:20:18 Set iMindMap aside.
1401. 01:20:20 I think we've mentioned a few other alternatives here.
1402. 01:20:25 The obvious one being the one you're using, MindNode.
1403. 01:20:28 That one's part of setup as well, isn't it?
1404. 01:20:31 I think that is.
1405. 01:20:32 It is.
1406. 01:20:33 Yep.
1407. 01:20:34 I know that MindNode, XMind and iThoughts are all on setup, a subscription if you have
1408. 01:20:40 that.
1409. 01:20:41 There's also, let's see the other one, there's another.
1410. 01:20:44 FreeMind is out there.
1411. 01:20:47 MindManager, I believe, is like an enterprise-free one.
1412. 01:20:51 It's kind of pricey and kind of hard to use from what I remember.
1413. 01:20:56 Because I think I did the trial on that one at one point.
1414. 01:21:00 But I think there are options.
1415. 01:21:04 You don't have to pay a lot to get into these things, if anything.
1416. 01:21:07 So I think there's a lot of potential in this.
1417. 01:21:11 One of the action items I have, Mike, is to try to figure out one or two of these tools
1418. 01:21:17 that I kind of want to try to incorporate in some regular creative thinking processes.
1419. 01:21:23 Obviously, I know you're biased towards MindNode, but can you kind of, are you able to give
1420. 01:21:30 a quick overview of the differences between these things, or is that kind of outside
1421. 01:21:34 the realm of what, of the knowledge you have of these?
1422. 01:21:38 Maybe that's asking too much, knowing that I put you on the spot with that question.
1423. 01:21:42 Well, I will say that if you want to know all the specifics of that question in an extended
1424. 01:21:51 form, I've got an article on the Suite Setup for the Best Mind Mapping App.
1425. 01:21:56 And it's a little bit older, but everything in that still applies.
1426. 01:21:59 And I would say MindNode is going to be the best one for most people.
1427. 01:22:03 It's going to lack some of the really power user features that I thoughts will have, but
1428. 01:22:09 it's going to look way better.
1429. 01:22:11 And ultimately, MindMapping is an emotional exercise.
1430. 01:22:15 You think better when you are happier.
1431. 01:22:17 And MindNode provides you a simple, clean, fun-to-use user interface.
1432. 01:22:24 And if you're using it on an iPad, like I said, it is a joy to just mess around with
1433. 01:22:28 your MindMaps, and that is going to influence the content that you create in them.
1434. 01:22:33 Your ideas are going to be better because of that.
1435. 01:22:37 All of the other ones that I tried were either clunky or just meh in terms of the visual
1436. 01:22:43 aesthetic.
1437. 01:22:44 And I am not one to overly weigh how an application looks.
1438. 01:22:50 I will say that when it comes to a MindMapping tool, though, that should be weighted higher
1439. 01:22:55 than normal.
1440. 01:22:56 So if you have a tendency to look for apps that look nice, like you're going to end up
1441. 01:23:01 with MindNode anyways.
1442. 01:23:03 But even if you tend to go for the ones that have the most features and are the most highly
1443. 01:23:07 functional plain text, yada yada yada, I would still recommend you start with MindNode because
1444. 01:23:13 just by the nature of MindMaps, you will get a better output when you use something that
1445. 01:23:18 you enjoy for this exercise.
1446. 01:23:20 Sure.
1447. 01:23:21 I already have MindNode.
1448. 01:23:23 So it's an easy one to jump into.
1449. 01:23:26 I don't know.
1450. 01:23:27 I'll give it a shot.
1451. 01:23:28 That said, Action
1452. 01:23:56 Items.
1453. 01:23:57 I'm going to continue to use MindNode.
1454. 01:23:59 I have no action items.
1455. 01:24:22 I'm going to continue to use MindNode, though, and continue to make MindMaps cool.
1456. 01:24:29 I will say real quickly on the tools that are available and also what you shared at the
1457. 01:24:36 beginning, you're tending to be an outline person.
1458. 01:24:39 One of the things that is nice about MindNode is that you actually get both.
1459. 01:24:45 They have an outline view, which gives you everything in a line, but it's also color-coded
1460. 01:24:51 along with the branches in MindNode in the MindMap itself.
1461. 01:24:58 You can see the things in the outline, and they've got an orange bar next to them if
1462. 01:25:02 they're part of the orange branch.
1463. 01:25:05 I think that's kind of cool.
1464. 01:25:06 Then the other thing that's great about MindNode is that you can export it a bunch of different
1465. 01:25:09 ways.
1466. 01:25:11 What I do when I'm done with the book notes that I take is I export it as a PDF and embed
1467. 01:25:16 that in the book notes page inside of Obsidian.
1468. 01:25:19 I also export it all as Markdown, and then copy-paste that Markdown.
1469. 01:25:23 I have the visual of the MindMap and also the searchable text inside of Obsidian.
1470. 01:25:28 I'll go through that, and I'll find things that I want to turn into their own notes.
1471. 01:25:35 That's one thing to consider, I think, is what are the ways that this can be useful to me
1472. 01:25:40 once I'm done with the MindMap, because the MindMap itself is not the be-all-end-all,
1473. 01:25:46 if you're using it for creativity, you're going to want to be able to use those things
1474. 01:25:51 again in the thing that you are creating, not just reference it visually.
1475. 01:25:56 Does it export to Mermaid by chance?
1476. 01:25:59 I doubt it, but I got it open right now, so let me take a look.
1477. 01:26:03 If you don't know what I'm talking about, Mermaid is kind of a text to diagram syntax,
1478. 01:26:10 I guess, which is, is it built into Obsidian now, or is it a plugin?
1479. 01:26:16 Yes, it is built in.
1480. 01:26:18 You can export to a legacy MindNode format, you can export to PDF.
1481. 01:26:23 Bookrun Club Premium members, when I export those notes, I export both of those, so they
1482. 01:26:29 have the PDF, the high-res, visual, and the MindNode file, if they want to take what I
1483. 01:26:33 did in MindNode and then use it into MindMap application of their own.
1484. 01:26:37 There's FreeMind, you can export to OPML, which basically covers just about every other
1485. 01:26:42 MindMap app out there.
1486. 01:26:45 OPML for standard outliners, image, markdown, text, and tasks.
1487. 01:26:52 The action items from your MindMaps, you can actually import those.
1488. 01:26:59 I was doing that for a while, and to OmniFocus when I was using it, you can just grab the
1489. 01:27:05 tasks from your MindMap and put them into your task manager of choice.
1490. 01:27:09 Alrighty then, they need to implement Mermaid, that would be sweet, because then you could
1491. 01:27:13 just export it and drop it in, and it would be native.
1492. 01:27:16 Anyway, side note.
1493. 01:27:17 Okay, I guess that said, let's get to style and rating.
1494. 01:27:22 We have talked a lot about the style throughout this episode, but Tony Bizan's full of himself,
1495. 01:27:29 really likes himself, thinks he's really great, thinks he's done a great thing in inventing
1496. 01:27:34 the MindMap so we can all have better creativity in our lives.
1497. 01:27:38 But it's way over the top.
1498. 01:27:42 He's very self-conscious, wants to be the guy who has all the answers it seems, and
1499. 01:27:51 it's very off-putting.
1500. 01:27:53 I feel like it's hard to get past that in a lot of areas.
1501. 01:27:58 If I set that aside, which is kind of difficult to do, there are a lot of tidbits that I
1502. 01:28:04 have to do with the ideas and processes that he calls out here that are helpful.
1503. 01:28:09 As someone who's not big in the world of MindMabs and is trying to get my head around
1504. 01:28:15 it a little bit more, I'm glad I've gone through it, but it was a bit of a slog to do
1505. 01:28:21 that.
1506. 01:28:22 But there are a lot of little tidbits that you can pull out of this, which is always the
1507. 01:28:24 important part, right?
1508. 01:28:26 For as many books as we go through, you get it one or two really cool little nuggets from
1509. 01:28:32 it, and it was worth the time, most of the time.
1510. 01:28:38 This is no different.
1511. 01:28:39 There are some pieces that I've pulled out here.
1512. 01:28:42 Obviously, it's at least motivated me to do something about MindMapping and encourage that
1513. 01:28:48 creative mind of Mind as I've learned I have, and try to develop that a little bit more.
1514. 01:28:55 We'll see if MindMabs become a thing that I do regularly.
1515. 01:28:59 As far as a rating goes, oh boy, I know that I'm not going to tell you that.
1516. 01:29:05 I had to go first on this one.
1517. 01:29:07 I don't think I'm going to tell you to read this in any way, shape, or form.
1518. 01:29:12 I think I would just say go look at a bunch of other people's MindMabs, do searches, like
1519. 01:29:16 image searches for MindMabs, and then grab some software and go for it.
1520. 01:29:20 I feel like that's going to get you 99% of the direction you need to go.
1521. 01:29:25 The book's not something I'm going to tell you to go pick up, even though we get affiliate
1522. 01:29:30 money from that.
1523. 01:29:31 Don't buy this one.
1524. 01:29:33 Just going to say that up front, as far as rating.
1525. 01:29:37 Let's go 3.0.
1526. 01:29:38 I'm going to put it at 3.0.
1527. 01:29:41 I really don't care for the way he comes at this.
1528. 01:29:44 I don't care for his rigidity that he puts into this.
1529. 01:29:49 I love the concept of MindMapping and the visual side of it, but the book itself.
1530. 01:29:55 It's not an encouraging book, I find.
1531. 01:30:00 It's more of an exclusionary book as opposed to get involved with this.
1532. 01:30:07 The book itself and the concepts that are in it, some of it's really good, but I struggle
1533. 01:30:12 with it.
1534. 01:30:13 There you go.
1535. 01:30:14 Your turn.
1536. 01:30:16 All right, that's fair.
1537. 01:30:18 Well, I'm going to throw another monkey wrench in here because I have read several books on
1538. 01:30:23 my mapping.
1539. 01:30:24 I can tell you, having just gone through this one, this is the best one.
1540. 01:30:29 Okay, that's not encouraging to me, Mike.
1541. 01:30:34 Maybe that means I need to write a book about MindMaps.
1542. 01:30:38 Please do.
1543. 01:30:41 Because I've made hundreds of them and I honestly wish I would have read this before I had started
1544. 01:30:51 MindMapping instead of the books that I had read.
1545. 01:30:54 I've got another one on my bookshelf, which I know is really, really old at this point.
1546. 01:30:57 That was the one I started through when I started my mapping.
1547. 01:31:02 It was just for all the things that I complained about in this one, this is much more approachable,
1548. 01:31:09 much more actionable, much more understandable than a lot of the other books on this topic.
1549. 01:31:15 Maybe it's just because it is one of those conceptual things.
1550. 01:31:19 The people who tend to write about it are the ultra academic.
1551. 01:31:25 It's harder for the average person to understand what's really going on.
1552. 01:31:29 I do think that Tony B. Zand has done a great job in this very visual book of pulling in
1553. 01:31:36 a whole bunch of research, a whole bunch of studies, a whole bunch of case studies, a
1554. 01:31:41 whole bunch of examples.
1555. 01:31:42 Some of them didn't resonate with me.
1556. 01:31:44 However, I don't think I would have had those objections if I was coming to it new.
1557. 01:31:50 I think his approach is actually pretty good.
1558. 01:31:53 I do think he needs an editor who's going to read through everything that he says and
1559. 01:31:57 say, "You know what?
1560. 01:31:59 Maybe leave this chapter out."
1561. 01:32:03 I also am struggling with where to rate this.
1562. 01:32:06 I was very animated and complaining in this particular episode because there's lots of
1563. 01:32:11 stuff that you can complain about that and that tends to make a good podcast episode.
1564. 01:32:17 However, I do think there's a lot of great stuff in here.
1565. 01:32:21 I know I've learned several things.
1566. 01:32:23 It inspired me, actually I've learned so many new things that I have to borrow that term
1567. 01:32:29 that Blake mentioned at the very beginning, the map of content.
1568. 01:32:32 I created a separate one in Obsidian on mind mapping with a whole bunch of new things that
1569. 01:32:36 I picked up from this one that I want to wrestle through and connect with some of the
1570. 01:32:40 other things that I've discovered and doing it myself and the other things that I've read
1571. 01:32:44 and the other books that I've on the topic.
1572. 01:32:48 Figure out for myself, if I were to codify everything I know about mind mapping into the
1573. 01:32:53 essential points, what would I say?
1574. 01:32:56 I actually want to continue to explore this topic.
1575. 01:32:59 I want to continue to not just practice it, but think about what really makes a mind
1576. 01:33:06 map and what makes a successful mind map for me.
1577. 01:33:09 I don't think it's the 10 laws that he outlines here, but those things have served as a springboard
1578. 01:33:14 into additional thinking time prompts for me.
1579. 01:33:17 That's the real value of something like this.
1580. 01:33:19 I had zero action items from it.
1581. 01:33:20 However, if I was coming to it new and not attempted mind mapping before, I would definitely
1582. 01:33:27 be inspired to try mind mapping.
1583. 01:33:29 If that's the case, then ultimately mission accomplished.
1584. 01:33:35 I'm going to recommend it until I find something better and I am going to optimistically rate
1585. 01:33:43 the valuable pieces of this and say this is a 4.0 book.
1586. 01:33:49 It's easy to attach to the things that you don't like when reading.
1587. 01:33:54 I have done that a lot in the past.
1588. 01:33:59 Especially when you are trying to reinforce a belief that you currently have or defend
1589. 01:34:03 an idea that you currently have, it's easy to do that.
1590. 01:34:07 I would encourage people who are going to pick this up.
1591. 01:34:10 Number one, know what you're getting into.
1592. 01:34:13 Number two, know the tone that he's going to use through this and try to see through
1593. 01:34:18 that.
1594. 01:34:19 Then number three, be willing to say, "You know what?
1595. 01:34:22 Maybe he's right.
1596. 01:34:23 Maybe I don't like this guy at all.
1597. 01:34:24 Maybe I think he's a jerk, but maybe he's right about certain things and decide for yourself.
1598. 01:34:29 You got to take the how to read a book approach with this.
1599. 01:34:31 You got to understand the key arguments the author is making and you got to decide for
1600. 01:34:36 yourself whether you agree or disagree with them.
1601. 01:34:38 I think if you take that approach, there's a lot of good stuff to be had here.
1602. 01:34:42 I'll just caveat this last thing here.
1603. 01:34:47 If you have an easy time doing that, this is probably a 4.0 book.
1604. 01:34:50 If you have a hard time doing that, this is probably a 3 or a 3.5 book.
1605. 01:34:55 It's really hard for me to rate that.
1606. 01:34:57 But I think just based on the merits of the ideas and the benefit that this could have
1607. 01:35:03 to someone who is not currently practicing mind mapping, that overcomes some of that
1608. 01:35:08 negative stuff.
1609. 01:35:10 Totally valid.
1610. 01:35:11 I still don't like it.
1611. 01:35:14 That's fine.
1612. 01:35:15 Okay, I will gladly put this one on the shelf.
1613. 01:35:19 What's next, Mike?
1614. 01:35:21 Next is I didn't do the thing today by Madeline Dorr and this is all about productivity, shaming,
1615. 01:35:27 and I think this is an interesting topic.
1616. 01:35:32 This is the book that I've heard recommended about this.
1617. 01:35:35 I've heard it recommended multiple times.
1618. 01:35:38 First time I heard it recommended, I looked it up and I was like, "I don't know."
1619. 01:35:41 And then I heard it recommended again by somebody that I really respect.
1620. 01:35:44 I'm like, "Okay, I have to read this one."
1621. 01:35:47 And I think this is going to be an interesting topic for a bookworm episode where we tend
1622. 01:35:53 to talk about productivity a lot.
1623. 01:35:55 I feel like this is maybe going to open up conversation about some aspects of this that
1624. 01:36:02 we don't normally hit on.
1625. 01:36:05 Okay, I've not started it, so I don't know where that goes.
1626. 01:36:08 So hope you're not leading me down a weird path.
1627. 01:36:12 I don't think I am, but we'll see.
1628. 01:36:13 I don't know.
1629. 01:36:14 I do it to you all the time, so it's probably okay.
1630. 01:36:18 I wrote down two for after that because I'm not sure which one to pick and I need your
1631. 01:36:22 help.
1632. 01:36:23 The first of which, it's been a while since we've covered this topic, but the great mental
1633. 01:36:29 models, there is a volume two and a volume three on this.
1634. 01:36:34 Volume two is around physics, chemistry, and biology.
1635. 01:36:36 I don't know how well that would work here in this format, but I know that they're like
1636. 01:36:41 abstracting key concepts from those to ask some questions that you can try to answer.
1637. 01:36:45 So that would be one potential, Mike.
1638. 01:36:47 The other one that I can't help myself with is a book by Johann Yahari, Johann Hari, who
1639. 01:36:54 I know has a handful of bestsellers, has one out called Stolen Focus, why you can't pay
1640. 01:37:02 attention and how to think deeply again.
1641. 01:37:04 I know that we've covered this topic before, but he's covering it from a perspective that
1642. 01:37:10 I've not seen, which has to do with things like environmental factors and diet.
1643. 01:37:15 Like he's bringing in some of that component to it.
1644. 01:37:18 Do you have an opinion between those two?
1645. 01:37:21 They both sound awesome.
1646. 01:37:22 I know, right?
1647. 01:37:24 Super fun.
1648. 01:37:25 I couldn't pick between them, so I was hoping you had an easy like, "Oh, yeah, absolutely
1649. 01:37:28 we need to do this one."
1650. 01:37:29 Well, I can say I have the great mental models, volume two, and I've actually got the third
1651. 01:37:34 one also.
1652. 01:37:35 Yep.
1653. 01:37:36 And I've not read it cover to cover, but I have read specific sections of it.
1654. 01:37:42 And I do think this one is more generally applicable than it first seems.
1655. 01:37:49 A lot of that content that I read from those different mental models showed up in the workshop
1656. 01:37:55 that I did with Nick Milo back in the day on sense-making.
1657. 01:37:59 Sure.
1658. 01:38:00 So it's more of the great mental models.
1659. 01:38:04 If that is appealing to you, then pick that one, but Stolen Focus also sounds great.
1660. 01:38:08 That sounds to me a lot like the extended mind and the environment influencing your thinking.
1661. 01:38:13 Both topics I would love to explore further.
1662. 01:38:16 Yep.
1663. 01:38:17 Let's do this.
1664. 01:38:18 Let's do great mental models next.
1665. 01:38:19 And then I'll hold on to the Stolen Focus we may cover that one after that.
1666. 01:38:23 We'll do it that way.
1667. 01:38:25 All right.
1668. 01:38:26 So then after that, we're going to do the great mental models.
1669. 01:38:27 Volume two, physics, chemistry, and biology.
1670. 01:38:31 All right.
1671. 01:38:32 All right.
1672. 01:38:33 How about gap books we got?
1673. 01:38:34 I got The Earned Life by Marshall Goldsmith.
1674. 01:38:37 I've had this one actually for a little while, but I have not made a whole lot of progress
1675. 01:38:41 on this.
1676. 01:38:42 I still want to read it though.
1677. 01:38:44 So I'm going to use this as my get book and I've got a really long car ride tomorrow.
1678. 01:38:49 So hopefully I can make some progress.
1679. 01:38:53 The Earned Life.
1680. 01:38:54 I finished up reading the Digital Zettlecaston, which was not hard.
1681. 01:38:58 It was like 70 pages.
1682. 01:39:00 I forget how long it was.
1683. 01:39:01 David Kidavi.
1684. 01:39:03 And then I also have been reading Back of the Napkin, drawn a blank on the author name
1685. 01:39:09 right now.
1686. 01:39:10 Dan Rome.
1687. 01:39:11 There you go.
1688. 01:39:12 Dan Rome, which is kind of a runoff from our book from today Mind Map Mastery is like
1689. 01:39:16 thinking visually and sharing ideas visually.
1690. 01:39:19 So it's kind of a runoff of that.
1691. 01:39:20 I actually debated that one as a bookworm book, but Mike talked me out of it.
1692. 01:39:24 So here we are.
1693. 01:39:25 I talked to you out of it only because you told me that you were wanting a book on mind
1694. 01:39:30 mapping, which I'm not sure how far you are in Back of the Napkin.
1695. 01:39:32 There's no mind mapping content there.
1696. 01:39:34 No, none whatsoever.
1697. 01:39:35 Not at all.
1698. 01:39:36 I'm about halfway through it.
1699. 01:39:37 So yeah, not in there at all.
1700. 01:39:38 So yes, that's so I finished Digital Zettlecaston into Back of the Napkin.
1701. 01:39:44 Super fun.
1702. 01:39:45 Cool.
1703. 01:39:46 That said, big thanks to everybody who's joined us in the chat.
1704. 01:39:49 We've had quite a crew there with us today.
1705. 01:39:51 So thank you to those of you in the chat today.
1706. 01:39:54 Kind of always fun to see your thoughts and give us chuckles when we have to mute quickly,
1707. 01:39:59 at least for me.
1708. 01:40:00 And so anyway, it's great to have you there.
1709. 01:40:02 If you're ever interested in joining us on the live show, just pay attention to the Bookworm
1710. 01:40:07 FM Twitter feed.
1711. 01:40:08 And I always tweet that out with the link to that day of whenever we've got a recording
1712. 01:40:13 going on.
1713. 01:40:14 So keep your eyes open for that.
1714. 01:40:16 Big thanks to those of you who are members.
1715. 01:40:19 Can't do it without you.
1716. 01:40:20 You guys are awesome.
1717. 01:40:21 If you want to join that membership, go to Bookworm.fm/membership.
1718. 01:40:25 Make that super easy.
1719. 01:40:27 It takes you to the Discourse Forum that we have behind everything, the Club, Bookworm
1720. 01:40:30 Club, and then you can support us monthly or annually, whichever way you want to do it.
1721. 01:40:36 And it gets you access to some special perks in there as well.
1722. 01:40:38 But the biggest of all of those is our undying love and gratitude to you as a human being.
1723. 01:40:45 So thank you for helping us put on the show our Bookworm Club members.
1724. 01:40:49 All right.
1725. 01:40:50 If you are reading along with us, pick up, I didn't do the thing today by Madeline Dorr.
1726. 01:40:55 And we will talk to you in a couple of weeks.