Mind Map Recipe: Mind Mapping a Book
This is going to be the first in a series of posts that will outline the basic structure of a mind map for a particular subject or topic. Each recipe will list the levels of branches in the mind map and what to put in them.
I spend a lot time reading development books, and more often than not I always end up having to go back to the book to check something. A few years ago I started mind mapping each development book I read to help gather and process the information from the book. Here's the structure of the mind map:
- The centre of the mind map will be the title of the book we are reading. I always use an image of some kind to represent the title of the book, but you could also use a keyword to describe the book or a mixture of keywords and an image.
- The 1st level of branches will contain the chapters within the book. I usually flip through the book and pick out the chapters that I want to mind map. I space out the chapter branches evenly to give myself enough room for each one.
- The 2nd level of branches below each chapter contain the sections for that chapter. Now more often than not there won't be any visible sections in the book, so I flip through each chapter on the mind map and find these sections so that I can group my notes from each chapter.
- The final level of branches is the notes on the book itself. As we have a structure of chapters and sections, I can now pick a section on the mind map and read that actual section, adding notes as branches as I go along.
Finally, if you're going to be creating a mind map to use as a long term reference map, then I suggest you do a first pass of the mind map in pencil without putting too much emphasis on presentation. Then once you have all the notes you require, you can then start a final pass of the mind map. In this final pass you can substitute keywords for images and make use of colour in your branches.
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