What I find difficult about mindmapping - at least in a traditional program that binds you to a strictly hierarchical structure - is the things that need to go in two places.
A simple example: mindmapping Christmas preparations. There are branches for food, gifts, accommodation, things for people to do, and decorations. Suppose at the end of the 'to do' menu I have 'TV' and 'buy license' and 'buy TV guide'; at the end of the 'decorations' menu there's 'find things in loft' and 'buy new tinsel'. Or whatever.
So how do I turn this into a shopping list? 'TV guide' belongs at the end of the 'entertainment' branch *and* at the end of the 'buy' branch. As it is, things to buy are scattered all over the map. To put everything on one map, I need to copy a lot of items to a new location. I could spend my time better finding the Christmas cake recipe.
This is a super-simple example of one child item that has two logical parents. Once you get into genuinely complex ideas, there are interconnections all over the place.
And there are many different kinds of connection, too (causes, parallels, metaphors...). And so on. I just can't see how a 2D map can represent the complexity of thought; there's a reason why we don't talk in a string of nouns and arrows, isn't there?
I know this works for a lot of people and I must be missing something. What is it?  |