https://medium.com/@kentbeck_7670/mapping-my-mind-ce17c5d88bad Get started Open in app Kent Beck 6.7K Followers About Follow Sign in Get started Follow 6.7K Followers About Get started Open in app Mapping My Mind Kent Beck Kent Beck 5 hours ago*6 min read When I mind map I use more of my brain to think: color, spatial arrangement, words, connections, pictures. The extra horsepower comes in handy when tackling tough, longstanding problems. You'll read here: * How I mind map (as taught by Francesco Cirillo). * Why mind-mapping software interferes with the process. * Bonus: an early look at the first results of my 30-year exercise in meta-cognition. The Project When I give a coaching student a surprising idea I often say, "I only have a few tricks so I have to use them all the time." A few months ago I started writing down the tricks, which I call Idea Generating Heuristics ("thinkies" for short), when I caught myself using them. As I mentioned in the intro I started thinking (well, meta-thinking) along these lines 30 years ago. I was deep into patterns and I tried to write a pattern language for thinking. It never really came together, though, so I put it in the back of my mind. Subsequent efforts also went nowhere but I'm nothing if not stubborn. Here are the raw thinkies (I'm not going to explain the content just yet, only the process): [1] [1] [1] [1] Note: * The card. Meta-cognition works best when it isn't interruptive. The index card/pen combination offers low switching costs. * The sticky. The card attached to my monitor so it was always there. * The card is full. I didn't organize the first 2 thinkies I gathered, nor did I gather 1000 thinkies before trying to organize. 27 was a good number of items -- enough to hide emergent structure but not too many to manipulate. Mind Mapping A mind map presents an idea hierarchically and graphically. [0] [0] From https://www.mindmeister.com/blog/why-mind-mapping/ I turn to mind mapping when I need to discover hidden structure. The process as taught me by Francesco Cirillo iterates between: 1. Starting with a clean sheet of paper, add items in a circle. Don't put anything in the middle just yet. 2. When the picture gets messy, highlight items that seem to go together. Plan to make these common themes the first level ideas in the next round. 3. Go to 1, making sure to copy all the relevant items (and any new items that pop their heads up). Here are the first 5 iterations of my Thinkies map. Everything on One Map [1] [1] I'm not trying to be consistent with color. I just grab a color that makes sense and change when I feel like it. Sometimes there are deep messages in the colors I choose. Sometimes I just write with one pen for a while. Letting my subconscious choose colors is one way to engage more of my brain. If I have more items than will fit at the first level I'll just add items until I can't squeeze any more on, then pause while I highlight commonality. Once the second page is well started I can continue adding raw items. First Level Structure From the highlights above, I chose "seeing", "project management", and "language" as the first level ideas for the next iteration. [1] [1] I'm trying to distribute items evenly but I resist the temptation. I so want a pretty mind map, but a map can only be as attractive as the underlying ideas are clear. The clearly subordinate ideas moved to beneath the bigger ideas. Any idea without a clear home just got copied to the top level. (Note the tick marks by the ideas in the first version. This was me making sure I didn't miss anything.) Once everything was copied I started highlighting connections again. I also made marginal notes of related thoughts. Too Late, Should Have Stopped At this point I was getting excited. I love love love figuring stuff out. It's what I live for intellectually, giving myself big messy puzzles and then understanding their hidden structure. The game was now afoot! From the previous iteration I had discovered the three big sub-ideas and managed to hang everything off them. [1] [1] After this I was tired, so I just went to bed. It was tough because I felt on the brink of a discovery, the satisfaction of 30 years of (intermittent) searching. Oh well. Only so much you can do so fast. Pre-Pretty As I said, I have the urge to jump right to "pretty" before getting to "clear". It's frustrating to feel so close to a "finished" map and then have to start over. Here's the thing I remind myself -- each blank sheet is an opportunity for new insight. Sleeping on it was a pro move. The organization that was on the edge of my understanding the previous evening was crystal clear after sleep (and coffee). The next iteration I switched to bolder pens, multiple colors, and block printing. Not sure what effect any of this had. Experiment. [1] [1] Note: * Something has appeared in the center. The first was an observation on my thought process. The second is the coining of the slightly-too-cutesy name "Thinkies". * There's a big reorganization where a second level branch moved to third level. * I prototyped layouts for the next iteration. * There are still ideas being added. Last (For Now) The next iteration came a day later. I feel satisfied that I have squeezed all the insight juice from the lemon of my experience to date. I'm ready to present the material to other people to find out whether they understand it and whether they find it useful (lots of threads of inquiry still fail at this stage). [1] [1] Recap * Mind mapping engages more of my brain when generalizing from particular experiences. * The rhythm is the familiar "spew & edit" from writing, but starting from a clean sheet each time. * I have to resist the temptation to abstract too soon, whether identifying higher-level categories, synthesizing the big idea in the middle, or laying out the branches. If I leave these topics in the oven long enough, they come out fully baked. * The result is insight ready to be communicated and validated, not a finished, standalone message. * This essay is thinking about the thinking I did about the thinking I did, so meta-meta-cognition. The recursion stops here lest I vanish up my own brainhole. Colophon All maps drawn on Canson B-sized 160 gram paper (big paper for big ideas!). The first sheet was drawn with Prismacolor brush pens but I wasn't happy with legibility. The second was a Pilot V-ball RT, which yielded insufficient texture. The remainder were drawn with Sharpie Bolds. Kent Beck Kent is a long-time programmer who also sings, plays guitar, plays poker, and makes cheese. He works at Gusto, the small business people platform. Follow 101 101 101 * Mindmap * Metacognition More from Kent Beck Follow Kent is a long-time programmer who also sings, plays guitar, plays poker, and makes cheese. He works at Gusto, the small business people platform. 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