Up to now, I would have said that uses of mind maps could fit under four main categories: Learning and teaching; creative idea generation and brainstorming; planning and managing tasks or projects; and organising information. Always in these, we would expect the items under a branch to be logically related to concepts or topics higher in the hierarchy.
But now, I’ve seen signs in two places of another direction. Not an attempt to replace the others, but something refreshingly new in mind maps (to me anyway): Free association.
Mikky J has a poem and mind map combined called “Frozen” where he free associates his way down each branch. Mikky asks people not to copy it, so please follow the link above to see it.
And Paul Foreman, who has appeared in the mind-mapping.org blog before, has a “flip it” mind map where, to fight off negative thinking, he suggests we reverse words, and look for free associations that reverse the starting point to become a positive thought.
My favourite branch is the one for “bored”. Paul allows copying if there’s a link back as well, so you can take a look by clicking on the thumbnail here or the link above:
Always good to see creative new ways of using mind maps.
Vic
(With apologies to the person whose famous epitaph I paraphrased in the title.)
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