Focused - 89: The Magic of Mind Mapping, with Harald Eckmüller

Episode Date: December 24, 2019

MindNode designer Harald Eckmüller joins us to talk about using mind mapping as a focus tool.

Welcome to Focus, the productivity podcast about more than just cranking widgets. I'm Mike Schmitz, and I'm joined by my fellow co-host, Mr. David Sparks. Hey, David. Hey, Mike Schmitz. How are you today? I'm doing well, and I'm excited because we've got a special guest on the show today. Welcome, Harold Eckmuller. Hi, David. Hi, Mike. Hi, Harold.

I'm excited to have you on the show today, Harold, because you are the designer over at MindNode, which David and I are big fans of. And so we reached out to the MindNode team and asked, is there anybody over there who would want to come on focused and talk about the topic of mind mapping? And we talked a little bit yesterday during our discovery call. You've got an interesting journey as it pertains to mind mapping. And I'm excited to hear some of the ways that you're using this. But why don't we start here at the very beginning? And Harold, maybe you can chime in here and talk a little bit about how you view mind mapping as a focus tool. So first off, let me say thanks for inviting me to the podcast.

Because although I'm working for a company that's doing a mind mapping app, it's a rare opportunity to kind of nerd out about the topic. So I'm very much looking forward to talking with you guys about your ideas and my ideas and so on. I think focus and mind mapping go together so well. I think it's one of my favorite and most often used tools, mind mapping, in order to kind of stay on target. And we thought that it deserved its own show. So we're really happy that you could take the time to come and join us. Totally. And I agree. I think mind mapping and focus are very much aligned topics because, at least for me personally, mind mapping is all about focus. It really is about getting that chaos in your head into a shape where it actually makes sense.

And that is all about focusing on what's there, understanding it, seeing it from different perspectives and so on. So a lot of just looking at your thoughts and figuring out how they actually connect together. That's the crazy thing about mind mapping for me is that you sit down with something that you want to make or a problem that you want to solve. And my approach anyways, you basically just say, I'm going to think about this and it's going to allow me to see all the different angles that I

typically would miss. And there's something about that just seems magical. Like it shouldn't be that easy, but it's kind of, it's kind of cool in my experience, how, when you give your brain the ability to, uh, the ability to, to think, uh, uninhibited without a specific direction, without parameters, like I got to get this thing done, how it can make all of those connections. What's the name of that thing that Dumbledore has in Harry Potter where he puts his thoughts into a pensive? So he would put his memories into this bowl and then he could look at them and see how they related together and find connections. This isn't exactly that, but it kind of works the same way. You know, a mind map is not an outline. It's just,

it starts out just a big clump of ideas and thoughts out of your head. And then there is something magical about putting them on a piece of paper or putting them on the screen. And then just looking at the ways you can draw lines between them. When's the first time you ever saw a mind map, Mike? Oh, man, you know, it might have been the original cooking ideas episode that you did on MPU back in the day. That's kind of, I think, the thing that got me interested in the topic. I maybe had seen them before that, but I never really paid attention to them. So that's kind of the moment that I started looking for them. And after that, I basically was on board immediately and just started figuring out ways that I could start making them myself. Yeah, that's one of my favorite episodes of MPU. We'll put the link in the show notes,

but I kind of talked about my relationship to mind maps at that point. That was several years ago. But to me, I vividly remember I was in the LA Superior Court hallway and I was, you know, they have these things where the lawyers sit out in the hallway and they wait for their turn to go talk to the judge. And there's a lawyer sitting next to me with a laptop and he had a mind map on the screen. I didn't know what it was at the time, but you just see it out of peripheral vision. And I'm like, what is that? Because up until that time, I had always been working with outlines to do this kind of work. And once he explained it to me, I'm like, yes, I immediately got it. Although it took me some time to figure out the right tools to do it. How about you, Harold? When did you first stumble into mind mapping?

For me, it happened in school, and it was a really peculiar experience I still remember clearly because I always kind of like, since I'm a very visual guy, writing down notes for me isn't like just writing from top to bottom, but it's like scribbling down something and then putting something else on the page, wherever I think it makes sense. So it was halfway there to mind mapping,

but mostly just looked like confused notes. And then one day, a guy leaned over and was like, you know what mind mapping is? I'm like, no, what? And he's just drawing lines between the ideas and connecting stuff and making it more visual. And I was like, oh my God, suddenly it's not just a jumble. Suddenly it makes sense.

You know, if you ever ask a friend for directions, there's two ways they'll give you directions. Either they'll write down a list of how to get there or they'll make you a map. I feel like if you're the kind of person who makes a map when someone asks for directions and you're not trying mind mapping, you're probably missing out very good summary well um it is awesome we kind of just jumped into it but you

know mind mapping is exactly as harold just explained it it's it's a piece of paper or a digital screen where you just empty your mind of thoughts on a subject a project or something you're working on. And you don't necessarily have to put them in order. In fact, the whole idea is to kind of, I don't know, for lack of a better term, barf all these ideas out of your brain onto this piece of paper. And then once you have them down, then you start looking for the ways they fit together and connect. And I did a series of videos for my node. My node isn't sponsoring this episode, by the way,

but both Mike and I are fans of the way the app works and Harold has so much knowledge on it, we wanted to bring him in. But I did a series of videos for them. We'll put links in the show notes. If you've never seen MindMaps before, you can kind of watch those to get an idea for it. But it is a very, I guess, for lack of a better word,

creative way to brainstorm. I agree. I think the thing that makes it work for me, because I typically was the outline kind of guy prior to discovering mind mapping. And the real value for me in mind mapping is like with an outline, you go down the page and if you've got a pretty long outline, you've got things at the top that you can't necessarily reference when you're down near the bottom or you're on multiple pages and there's no connection between those things. But with a mind map, you're able to make the connections between the different parts because everything is kind of in front of you. And in my experience, that allows for more creative connections and really connections that wouldn't be possible without just the dots available in front of you.

It's kind of cool how when you just put everything in front of your brain and give it the space to process it visually, that it makes those connections kind of on its own. those connections kind of on its own. Yeah. I'd even argue that the problem with outlining at that stage is that it requires connections. You know, as you put things in an outline, they have to go somewhere, they have to go under a point or they have to be a new point to premature connections, you know, and you don't know if that's exactly where this thing fits or

not at the time that you are, are you putting out there? Now, maybe you've got a fully, you know, baked idea in your head and you're just putting it out as an outline. An example for me is exam outlines. When I'm examining a witness, I know what areas I want to ask the questions under, and I do that as an outline, not as a mind map. But a lot of things I do, I don't know when I start putting those ideas out on the digital screen. So, you know, putting an outline often kind of biases you toward however you did it the first time and you miss out. Yeah, that's a good point. There's a term for that, confirmation bias, I think, where once you create something, you just try to look for ways to support it.

And I think I agree that's a really valuable part of my mapping is not being forced into those thought processes and those connections too early. It's not even that. For me, it really is when I start with an idea, I can think through it in my head until I have enough structure to put it down in an outline. But putting it in a mind map first

offers so much more opportunity to discover different ways to look at it. And yes, sometimes you have an idea where this is all going and you just have to fill in the blanks. And then the outline works wonderfully. But if you have no idea where it should actually go, and really want to get surprised by what it could be, then mind mapping as the first step works much better for me.

I mean, later on, when you really have an idea, and it's all set, and you looked at the stuff, and you know where it should go, then the outline becomes a a much quicker tool because you don't have to make so much decisions you just know where you put the stuff and put it in and that's it yeah because it's kind of fully baked at that point yeah so it's a lot easier to structure it that's a good point and uh interestingly i found the statistic david which kind of is the productivity angle to this. And it goes along with what you were talking about, where you're not forcing connections that really shouldn't be there too early. I was digging around and I found this 2017 survey, which they interviewed a bunch of busy executives and they estimated, so it's not a very scientific study, but they estimated that the practice of mind mapping helped them to be 20 to 30% more productive in their work. 16.7% of them said that mind mapping

saved them over seven hours per week. And I was thinking about that. I'm like, well, why is that? And I think it's because when you are thinking about the work that you have to do, there's a lot of value in processing it completely and identifying what you should actually be doing. It's kind of thinking time to an exponential degree when you don't just, you know, kind of the personal retreat idea where you're giving your brain time to think, but then mind mapping kind of accelerates that process and it makes you, it makes sure that you're working on the, on the right things. Yeah. I've never really thought about mind mapping as a tool to get my work done faster. For me, it's always been about, it gets getting a better product, you know, um,

using mind mapping for me allows me to make the connections and, and put something better together. In fact, let's talk a little bit about how we use MindMaps to put some context around this. Harald, what do you use to MindMap? I mean, I guess, what types of projects and things do you MindMap? So obviously from work, there are tons of different MindMaps I'm working on to kind of like get an idea of how other people use them. But I figured out over the years that for me personally personally there are certain areas where it works really well and that's like this niche of things that are kind of complex and have a lot of moving parts that can fit together in a different way so one areas i use this on is in my spare time i'm a game designer and writing tabletop role-playing games. And these are basically very elaborate rule sets. So when a board game has like 20 pages of rules, a role-playing game has like 200 pages

of rules. And fitting these all together and doing this in your head is very complicated. And a mind map helps immensely to just like get out what your thoughts are, like what do you want to accomplish with a certain game design? What are the tools that you could use to do that? What are the advantages and disadvantages? How do they overlap or

do things with each other? And then just look at that stuff, rearrange it, play around with it, and eventually you get to the point where it all starts making sense and then you can bring it in a certain order, and what we just discussed, put it to paper, and then

just trying out if it works. I think mind mapping is the kind of thing where you can talk about it and kind of understand it, but once you see it, you'll really get it. And it can be used for things that are really simple, it can be used for things that are really complex. I've got some absolutely ginormous mind maps that I've created. In fact, I made one one time that I thought broke

MindNode because it was so big and had so many images and things in it. And I've got some that are really super simple. So I think it might be helpful. People can see this. What were you going to say, David? Well, I just, you know, I think that really helps hearing, you know, how people use mind mapping. I know for me, like after seeing that first mind map on that guy's laptop, I went and investigated software on it and found that it was all horrible. I mean, the original mind mapping software was a weird category for a long time where everything was like hundreds of dollars and the user interface was made by people that hate users.

And it was terrible. I mean, the software was, and it really, I found, didn't work at all because I think the idea of mind mapping is a flow where you're getting ideas out of your head into this tool and then kind of like reserving judgment for later and how they all fit together. And I really understood what I wanted to do with it, but I couldn't find the right tool for it. So for the longest time, I just did it on a whiteboard or a big piece of paper at my old office. We used to buy that,

those, um, it's like poster size sticky notes. And then we had some glass walls in the office. You could just stick it there and then kind of draw on it for a while. But the, um, uh, then I found my note and, and like I said, they're not a while. But the, um, uh, then I found my note. And like I said, they're not a sponsor today, but this is an app that both Mike and I truly appreciate because, uh, my note does a really good job of, um, of giving you just enough, you know, tools to make mind maps, but also getting out of the way enough to let you make mind maps. And then the other thing that it does really well is that it synchronizes. It's on the iPhone, the iPad, and the Mac, and everything syncs really well.

So to kind of summarize that episode I did on MP on cooking ideas, for me, mind mapping is like this key planning stage of any complex project. And I find that the subconscious mind solves a lot of problems for you if you let it. So whenever I have something big I'm working on, and just to give you some examples, I've got mind maps right now. I've got one of the photos field guide that I'm in the midst of working on. I'm not working in that mind map as much now because now it's moved on to the next level of production. But the field guide after that very much is an active mind map right now. I've got one for a difficult letter I need to write to an attorney for a client. I've got one

here for an IT company contract that I'm about to write. I've got one here for a legal transaction and I've got one here on a post that I want to do for Mac Sparky that I want to make sure I get right. So it's like, these are things that I know that I just can't sit down at a keyboard and just start knocking out. Historically, I also do them for all my presentations and things where I know that I want to get ideas going. But the trick to it is starting really early,

like as early as you possibly can. Like this next field guide, I'm not going to start production on that for months, but this mind map has been, I've already got two months of planning in this mind map. And you just create it. And then anytime an idea occurs to you that relates to that project,

you just open your phone slash iPad slash Mac and you drop an idea occurs to you that relates to that project, you just open your phone slash iPad slash Mac and you drop the idea in. You don't necessarily have to figure out where it fits, but you know it's an idea you want. Like if I'm giving a presentation and I think of a really cool analogy I want to use, I'll just put that in. I won't explain where it fits. And then you put it away and you go back to doing other things. And then you start touching that map more often as you get further along in

the planning process. And you find that the connections make themselves for you. It's like your subconscious mind while you're sleeping sorts out, well, how, where does that analogy fit best? And it figures it out for you. It's just like, at that point, I'm the dumb robot, the meat robot, that's just putting them together because the brain has already figured out where they fit. And it's, it is a magical experience if you've never done it in terms of planning big projects. And, you know, the first time I did it, I was just shocked at how well it worked. It evolved a little bit over time, but this is a workflow that I've used all the time, and it's something that really helps me stay focused.

You hit on two really important topics, I think. And the one is that a lot of the stuff that's happening when you're using mind maps is actually happening in the subconsciousness. using mind maps is actually happening in the subconsciousness so it really helps to free up the processor in a way and get things you are kind of certain about out of your head and into the mind map and let the rest that's still kind of like undecided simmer in your mind and the other thing is the flow part because so much about mind mapping apps and I think why they sucked in the past is that you can't really well approach a mind mapping app from a feature perspective

because all the different features in themselves are nice, but it's actually the flow that's created by the different features interacting that allows you to really capitalize on that process of thinking about stuff while you're doing other things and then getting back into the app, getting your ideas back in, looking at them from a different perspective and stuff. And that back and forth that happens with you and the app, that flow really is where

the magic of mind mapping happens. And if you only look at mind mapping software from a perspective of this has a list of features then you're really missing out on thinking about how that flow and how that magic happens. I can totally see that and I remember I don't remember the name of the app but I remember the first app that I tried to use for mind mapping and it looked like

a word processor with three different toolbars and all of these different buttons. And it was just instantly overwhelming when you opened it up. And that really got in the way. You know, something that you said yesterday when we were talking, Harold, was that the magic happens between you and the tool. And the tool should just facilitate the transfer of the ideas down onto your canvas, whether that be digital or analog. I forget who said it, but there's a saying that thoughts disentangle themselves through lips and pencil tips. But I think it's exponentially greater effect when you're using a mind map to do it. Well, I think it's that space. I mean, for me,

Well, I think it's that space. I mean, for me, the best mind maps kind of make themselves, but they need time. You cannot say, like, if you've got a big report to write, and you need to turn the report in tomorrow, you can't say, well, today I'm going to sit down from seven to eight and mind map it, and then from eight to 11, I'm going to write it. I mean, you could do that. That would help, I guess. But if instead you say, next week, I've got a big report to write, and I'm going to put in 15 minutes a day on it for the next five days, and then I'm going to write it. The actual report you write at the end is going to be better. Yeah, I agree. I also think that when it comes to I agree. I also think that when it comes to creating, there's obviously a lot of value here because you're connecting dots in different ways. I shared at MaxTalk during my talk that

reading Austin Kleon's book, Steal Like an Artist, was kind of a tipping point for me because I didn't think I was creative prior to that. And he basically gave me the license and the formula to be creative by saying that when you create something, you're really just connecting dots that you've collected in new and interesting ways. There's nothing that's truly completely original. And so for me, there's a lot of alignment with that and the whole concept of mind mapping. And so whenever I have an idea for something, or even when I just need some ideas, I'll sit down and I'll create a mind map and I'll just start jotting down things. And before long, I've got a whole bunch of ideas that I can use to write about in the future.

And then I follow kind of the process that you mentioned, David, where a little bit here, a little bit there as you fully develop it. But it kind of makes sure that I never run out of ideas. The pump is always primed when it comes to the creativity. I guess I should share a couple of ways that I use them. I use mind maps when I take book notes. I read physical books and I jot down the things I want to remember inside of a mind map. I've got little icons that I use for quotes that I want to remember or key ideas. I'm not trying to recreate the whole structure and content of the book, but it's just something I find really helpful when I want to go back and kind of reread it. I'll look at the MindNode file instead of rereading the whole book. I'm teaching a personal management class at our

local Bible college, and I have 11 class sessions that I need to fill. And so the first thing I did is I made a mind map, and I started fleshing out what I was going to teach in each of those sessions. So I kind of built a curriculum in a mind map. I use it whenever I want to write an article. I use it also when I'm going to deliver a talk or do a webinar, kind of like an outline for how the presentation is going to go. And I also use it for product development. We're working on a course at the suite setup right now where first thing i did is i made a mind map and i jotted down like the different areas first that the course was going to have and then from there all the individual topics that we want to cover and and things like that i am curious

harold if there's any other uses that you have for mind mapping and then also i'm curious if you strictly mind map in mind node or if you ever use any other tools, whether they be analog or digital. So first I would like to add one thought. Have you guys ever heard of morning pages? Yes. Julia Cameron. Yeah. I found that doing something like morning pages with mind mapping is a really interesting exercise. Because when you're doing mind mapping without a specific goal in mind,

just getting your thoughts out of your head and then see what comes out of it. And doing this regularly really kind of like gets you used to using mind maps as a tool that help you later on. So as David mentioned, that you could theoretically start a mind map and two hours later write an essay based on that mind map. This is really a process that can become faster. I also think that it gains a lot if you take time with it, because then you give yourself more time to think about it subconsciously or even consciously. But you can also train this to be quicker with it because then you give yourself more time to think about it subconsciously or even

consciously. But you can also train this to be quicker with it. Interesting. So on the topic of morning pages, do you use mind mapping as a practice for morning pages then or a replacement of the freeform writing that she talks about? I did that for a while. Actually, it's something that pops up in my life ever so often, mostly when I'm thinking about really complex projects, like complex in a way that they're too big to keep in your head. And then I noticed that it just really helps to do that every day and get it out of your head and see how it progresses and

what the possible directions are. I think it's kind of funny how we can't get an episode of Focused out the door without at some point talking about meditation, journaling, or some sort of self-reflection. Right. There's a theme here, guys. And I think having experimented with it on myself, it really does help. But it's funny how so many people who are good at focus have some way of doing that. And the idea of morning pages, if you've never heard about it, it's the idea you just wake up every day and you write about whatever is on your brain, which is just another sort of meditation slash self-reflection, but you're doing it with a pencil and paper.

Yep, exactly. Julia Cameron is the person that came up with it and she wrote a book on it, uh, the artist's way where she, she mentions that. And it's really a manual for how to be more creative. And she uses it kind of like a, a jumpstart for, uh, for creating where, like you said, you just write a stream of conscious thought. And she recommends three full pages, I believe. And so it really is something that takes a bit of time. I tried to do it at one point and it just, it took too long for it to fit consistently in my morning routine.

But I really like the idea of using a mind map as a form of the morning pages. I think I'm going to have to give that a shot. I never even tried it. I get more bang for my buck with a meditation session every morning. The way I actually did it is on way to work. So while sitting in the bus, I'll just take the 20 minutes or so and type in my mind map. Not really aiming for a specific amount of ideas, lengths or anything like that,

but just using the time to do it. So in a way you're completely correct. It's more of a meditative practice. This episode of the Focused podcast is brought to you by Squarespace. Make your next move and enter offer code FOCUSED, F-O-C-U-S-E-D at checkout to get 10% off of your first purchase.

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to get 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain and to show your support for the show. Once again, that's squarespace.com slash focused and the offer code focused to get 10% off your first purchase. Thank you, Squarespace, for your support of Focused and all of RelayFM. Squarespace, make your next move, make your next website. All right, so I have one quick question on your bus mind mapping morning pages, Harold.

Do you open up a blank mind map and then just jot down whatever comes to your mind? Or do you think about things and then as you get things, you put them in the appropriate mind map? New mind map. A new one, okay, so from scratch. Yeah, from scratch. And I did this for the longest time and then just refued the mind maps from the previous days. And this is also part of one of our features came about. We have a feature called Quick Entry, which basically tries to minimize the effort and

time needed from opening your phone to getting thoughts into a mind map. And I was really motivated to get that out the door because it totally helped me in my daily life. That's a cool feature. And I always kind of thought the way I've mind mapped in the past, that not being able to save that stuff to a specific mind map was kind of weird. But when you explain it as just a way to capture the things, and then obviously you can easily put them anywhere you want after that, That makes a lot of sense. You know, something that occurred to me while you were talking about that is the, you know, we talk a lot in the show about trying to stay focused and off social media. But now that I think about it, I use mind map updates in a way that a lot of people use,

like checking in on Twitter or Facebook, where when, you know, when I do find myself with downtime, for whatever reason, I just find myself going to my node and just looking through my maps and adding ideas that have come to me in the meantime, you know, since the last time I looked in there. And maybe if you're having trouble with social media, put some mind maps together on some big projects. Put those on your home. Put MindNode or whatever on your home screen instead of Twitter and see what happens. Yeah, exactly. I had the same thought.

When Harold, you mentioned that this was something that you did on the bus, I immediately thought, well, you're not listening to a podcast or you're not surfing social media. I can do both at the same time, like listening to podcasts and writing down my thoughts. Sure. But the thing I think that stands out to me is the intentional application of the technology where the defaults, and we had John Zeratsky on the podcast. He talked about his book Make Time and how it's a whole bunch of strategies for trying to reclaim that intentionality as it pertains to your technology. I think recognizing that you have a choice at any given moment when you pull your phone out of your pocket, whether you're going to do something constructive and creative like jot

down some ideas in a mind map or just drown out everything else with a bunch of noise from an endless feed or an infinity pool, that's an important realization. And once you have that realization, you can start to take steps to craft the type of experience that you want on your devices. Absolutely. And I think this is such an important way of handling technology because it is extremely alluring and there's so many opportunities to just waste time.

And I mean, your whole podcast is about that stuff. You really have to figure out how to design your environment so it does what you want to do as opposed to yanking you around and you're doing what it wants and that's that takes effort but it really pays off now being at at my node one of the advantages you have harold is you get to interact with a lot of mind map users and um you were talking about some of the interesting uses you've seen from some of your users of MindMap.

Do you want to share some of those ideas? Yes, I would love to. I mean, you guys already mentioned a lot of common uses for MindMaps, from preparing courses to writing outlines for webinars or a curriculum and stuff like that, book notes and so on. Two things I found very interesting I would like to mention is one, we did a user story with Thomas Dory, a freelance digital marketing strategist who is actively using mind maps

as a tool to guide his clients through the process of marketing. So he often works with people who aren't like super firm in digital marketing. And there's a lot of kind of like explanatory work going on. And instead of just presenting them slides, he basically just starts a mind map, talks with them about what's going on, where do you want to go. And it's a very organic experience where people see how that knowledge builds up. And I had the opportunity to see one of these sessions and it was really interesting. Like people stopped noticing the tool, just started focusing on the content and then really

had that aha moment where they realized something that they didn't see before. And being able to facilitate something like this is really something we strive for with MindNote because we think that's such an interesting experience that also is valuable to you, like deeply valuable. Yeah, I do something very similar with clients when they have me build like contracts for their business where I'll sit down with them and I'll put my note on a screen. And as the lawyer, I know the legal issues that they need to be concerned about with, but I don't necessarily understand their business. So we sit down and I talk about, well, what are the problems you have with clients? And what are the biggest challenges?

And what are the areas of risk? And so we start. It's an organic process. But as we talk, I build a mind map of the ultimate product I'm going to create for them. You know, we'll have, what are your obligations? What are the client's obligations? You know, what's your concern about payment? And how long should the contract be?

And all the stuff goes in as a simple mind map that gets created during the conversation. So the client is looking at the screen while we're talking, and they always come up with additional ideas. And one of the things I do at the end of that meeting is I just email them the mind map as a PDF. I don't get them the source document, but I do give them the PDF. And then I hear back from them a few days later because they're looking at the PDF. They're like, oh, yeah, something else I thought of. And, and the nice thing about it is they have a

substantial contribution to the final product. And the final product is better, because I have a better understanding of what their their concerns are. And because they were part of the creation of it, they're more invested in it, and they understand it better. So it just solves a whole lot of problems for me using that process of creating a mind map with the client. And an outline, I don't think, would work the same way. It never even really occurred to me to do it as an outline because an outline is just a pile of words on the screen,

and I think that's going to be a lot harder to convey. I also think for some strange reason outlines don't get people into the creative space if you really want them to think about stuff mind maps just work better in that way yeah which is interesting because i've heard mind map being described as like the right brain version of outlining but it's not simply just which one fits with your natural preference. There are advantages to using mind mappings that outlines won't give you no matter how logical or how logically your brain tends to work like mine does. Yeah, I used to do that when Katie was on MPU. I always talk about right brain, left brain. I don't talk about that anymore

because the more I look into it, the more I realize that's kind of nonsense. I do personally feel that people do have preferences to either use one or the other. And as you just said, there are situations where one is preferable to the other. And mixing this up gets really interesting results. And I mean, that's the reason why we have an outliner

in the mind mapping app, because sometimes it makes more sense to look at the same information from an outline perspective, and sometimes it makes more sense from a mind mapping perspective. And being able to easily switch between the two is really helpful. I can't tell you how many people I have sold on MindNode because I'm talking to them and they're like, well, I want it to be an outline.

And I said, well, just build the mind map. You'll get the outline too. Yeah, you get it for free. I used to do this thing with OPML where I'd send the file out and blah, blah, blah. But MindNode, gang, if you're unaware, you push a button and it turns everything into an outline. And you can see them both at the same time.

It's great. Yeah. Well, let's talk about tools a little bit, though, because we've been talking about MyNote. But there's also folks out there that are really happy doing this on a whiteboard, on a piece of paper. Do you see advantages or disadvantages

between analog versus digital tools for doing this? Yes, a lot. Basically, the analog version has the huge advantage that you don't have to explain a lot. People just get how paper and the pencil works. Mind mapping is one brainstorming technique that you can even use on your own without other people present. So in that way, it's very great,

even if you just do it with a pencil and a paper but it really starts to shine once you do it in a group and doing this on in the analog way on like a huge whiteboard and everybody can just put their stickies sticky notes with ideas on it and then you start drawing lines between works very very well and i think that's also one of the areas where like mind mapping tools in the digital form have huge advantages when it comes to like being able to edit your ideas or remove them again add tons of them and make the thing bigger and bigger and bigger and reconnecting them all the time. So there's a lot of opportunities in digital tools to help making the process of changing the mind map easier.

But doing it collaboratively is still kind of like a challenging thing, even if you look at the mind mapping apps that do that, that there is no really good answer at the moment. Because if everybody is just staring at their own screen and doing whatever they want to the mind map, it doesn't help a lot to get a picture that everybody's on board with. So yeah, just a lot of challenges when it comes to collaborating on mind maps.

But I think one that's really worth solving. Yeah, I agree with Harold. I think that if you've got, there's a presence to an analog mind map. If you're on a big project and you've got several people you're working with and you've got a wall in the office that just has a mind map on it

and every person that walks past it has to see it, and it's just there. It's, it's a more present form of what I was talking about earlier about letting your subconscious mind think about it every time you open the app, or in this case, every time you walk past the wall, you're reminded of it and you may make some changes or additions to it.

That's the big advantage of analog. The big advantage of digital is, and the reason why I only do a digital now is because it's everywhere. It's in my pocket, it's in my iPad, it's on my Mac. And I don't honestly collaborate with people in the way where I need it on the wall all the time. But I love the ability that like I can be standing in line somewhere and like have a eureka moment on something I'm working on and just whip open my phone, add a node to my mind map, you know, with very little effort. And then it's just there. And when I get back to my big 27 inch iMac screen or wherever, I've just got that saved now.

And that's the reason I use a digital. I guess that shouldn't surprise anybody. I'm kind of that saved now. And that's the reason I use a digital. I guess that shouldn't surprise anybody. I'm kind of digital by nature. But I really like that access. How about you, Mike? Where do you fit on that? I have used both of them. I think that the whiteboard specifically is great for a group setting,

especially if you're trying to brainstorm. Like I use the example of building out a product i've been in a lot of meetings before where we're brainstorming about a product and we're sitting together in a meeting room a bunch of us and there's somebody at the whiteboard and they're drawing out the mind map and the thing that i think makes that work as opposed to even the synchronous collaborative digital version is that there's a filter as you are all in the same place and you're talking through the ideas before they end up on the mind map. So what you end up with in that setting is usually pretty good. But if you've got people in front of their computer screens, they're all over the place.

There isn't that filter. There isn't somebody in the room that you can just bounce something off of. So you put it on the mind map, and then you end up with something a whole bunch of stuff that really shouldn't be there. At least that's kind of the way I've seen it play out. But for me personally, when I'm not working with somebody, I tend to use the digital tools, I tend to use my node because it's on my phone, and it's everywhere. Most of the capturing happens on the iPhone, by the way. I'm not sure if you guys use different hardware for different use cases, but as I'm thinking about this, I recognize that I kind of do. I tend to capture things on the phone, but then when I'm fleshing them out, I'm usually doing that on my iPad. I try to purpose

my iPad as a creative tool that if I'm going to go for a thinking time session, I'm going to grab that. I'm not going to grab my Mac. I'm not going to be sitting in my office. I'm going to get into a different location in order to do that. So the iPad is great for that for me. You know, I didn't say that earlier, but that is absolutely true for me too. I, like I said, I struggled with mind mapping when I first learned about it. I tried some of the software tools and, you know, they were inevitably made for, you know, they were computers. It was even before the iPad existed. But once I started mind mapping on the iPad, it really felt like, oh yeah, this is where I need to be doing this. And sitting on the couch, going through my node and looking at my various open

maps, it's just golden. I mean, all that time always pays off. I was thinking about how Mike talked about saving time with mind mapping. I feel like the way mind mapping saves me time in a lot of ways is I have started mind maps on projects that halfway through the mind map, after subconscious consideration, I have abandoned the project. And I think that if I hadn't like gone through those planning steps, old Dave may have just started the project. Exactly. Yeah. And then you start working on it and you see the next thing that gets, that needs to get done and you get stuck on that, that train of thought. You're just knocking down the next domino without ever stopping to think about should i be doing this in the first place yeah yeah it's really interesting to listen to you guys

how you kind of use it in in different devices because we always thought at mind note that like the apple iphone revolution really was a blessing for us because before that mind mapping was something you did on a computer and the context in which you do mind mapping so if you're on the bus with your phone or if you're on the couch with an ipad or if you're in front of your huge computer screen that really makes a difference how you want to mind map and being able like to have millions of people with devices that allow us to provide exactly that functionality is really amazing for a mind mapping app. And it also is kind of like an interesting challenge

like app design wise because you don't want to build an app that's like overly specific to a certain use case. You don't want that the phone version just does thing A and not the rest. But you still want to kind of like emphasize the stuff that works best there. And that really creates an interesting tension

between the different versions of MindNode that exist. So how does the UI look on the phone where you have very limited real estate, but will interact with it a lot and very often? And like what's the reason of existence between an iPad and a 27-inch Mac? So what's different when I'm doing mind mapping on the couch with a 10-inch screen

and when I'm sitting in front of my computer for maybe an hour with a 27-inch screen? And yeah, it really lends itself to different ways of using mind mapping. And we're trying to facilitate this as well as possible. Yeah. I mean, what Mike said earlier about capture on phone is absolutely true for me too. I don't sit and fiddle with the mind maps on my phone so much as I capture ideas. Anything that occurs to me, all I have to do is reach in my pocket and I've got it saved because, um, what was it? I think, um, field notes had a, uh, a logo that said, I'm not writing it down to remember it later. I'm writing it down to remember it now,

you know? Yeah. That's, that's me in mind. I need to get that out of my brain immediately as soon as it occurs to me. So if someone's listening and they haven't done any mind mapping, how do you get started with it? I think the absolute easiest first step really is just get a piece of paper, get a pencil, and start writing down your thoughts. And then just making lines between them and see what happens. And once that is something that hooks you, once you find that interesting and helpful, then there's a wide world of stuff you can do. Easy step is download a good app and start using it.

Yeah, I'd agree. And I think you look for something that brings you delight, gets out of your way. I mean, we have, my note is a good place to try. We've talked about a lot this episode. But, you know, there are others out there too. So find whatever, you know, floats your boat. But I do think, unless you're working with a group of people, I do think inevitably the digital tools are probably superior for that idea of quick capture and the type of cooking ideas, mind mapping that I've been kind of talking about throughout this episode. How about you,

Mike? How would you get started if you were going to give advice to someone? Well, I think first thing you got to do is you got to decide on what tool you're going to use. And I think for the person who's brand new to mind mapping, maybe paper pencil is the best place to start because you really can't do it wrong. But I think also once you decide that you are going to create a mind map, you still need to have or it can be helpful to have some direction as to what you're going to put down. have some direction as to what you're going to put down. And so if I were going to tell past me what to do when I started mind mapping, it would be pick a problem that you've been having trouble

solving or pick something that you've been procrastinating on that you need to create. Just put that in the middle, whether that's the title of an article that you're going to write, or like I said, a problem that you're trying to solve. And then just once you have that central node down, then that's the thing for me anyways, that gets kind of the ball moving. And then you can, you get these ancillary ideas and you can put them on the side and make the connections wherever they're appropriate. ancillary ideas and you can put them on the side and make the connections wherever they're appropriate. Yeah, so often it's just solve a problem. I mean, you want to try to mind map, pick a problem. If there's something that you know you need to do and you're dreading it or you know that you're just not getting the work done on it that you need to, start a map.

the work done on it that you need to start a map. Yep. Anything where you are stuck, building a mind map around that particular thing can be the thing that gets you unstuck. Actually, I have one suggestion that I always give to people new to mind mapping. Try out to mind map your packing list. Because packing lists are simple enough. Everybody understands them. It's easy to write them.

And everybody always keeps forgetting something. So it's kind of like a problem people know. And it's small enough so you can figure out if mind mapping is something for you. Yeah, but to me, I understand. That's a good example and a good starting place. But to me, the real power of mind mapping is more complex than a packing list. It's, it's solving a problem. Like I've got,

I talked earlier, I've got this letter I've got to write. There's a, I've got a, you know, when you're a lawyer, sometimes you have people that don't like your client and they hire lawyers that don't necessarily understand a problem. and then they make all sorts of threats and things that they do. And so I've got to respond to a very serious letter. And it's not an easy problem, but if I do it right, I can probably avoid a lawsuit. You know what I mean? If I do it wrong, these people could end up spending many, many thousands of dollars fighting each other for the next three years. So this letter I need to write needs to do something special. And so that's a tough problem. And I can't just sit down and write the letter. I know myself well enough map that I've been working on. And it's almost to a point where I think by probably, you know, tomorrow I'll be able to sit down and write the letter, having used this subconscious superpower to, to build up this outline. And so I would,

I would recommend a packing list is great, but also think of something hard, you know, something that you're dealing with that needs real consideration and let all of your brain cells work on it. And that's what the mind map kind of entails for me. Something where the stakes are high. Yeah. I'd like to summarize that with the more complex the problem, the bigger the magic mind mapping can do. Yeah, that's a good way to put it. Hey freelancers, want to save 192 hours? Well, our friends at FreshBooks can help you do just that

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All right. So guys, we've got a couple mind mappers on the show. We've all been talking about it now for a while. Let's share some power tips for people that want to get better at it. Who wants to go first? Mike? All right. I would say that the very best thing you can do in terms of mind mapping is capture everything, especially when it pertains to mind maps. I've had difficulty sometimes where I'll jot something down in like a draft,

had difficulty sometimes where I'll jot something down in like a draft, just text. That seems to be easier. I recognize the value of I got to get this thing down or I'm going to forget about it later. But the same thing can happen for these bigger ideas that you need to need to unpack in a mind map. I guess when I get inspired for something that I know is going to turn into a big mind map, the tendency is for my brain to say, oh, don't worry, this is such a big deal that you'll remember it later. But you don't always remember it later. So capture those things. And what I discovered is that I can actually still capture those things into drafts. I don't even have to go to a different application because I can send those things from drafts using the share sheet on iOS directly into my node, which is where I'm going to cook them and they're going to develop.

So just make sure that you value the ideas that are coming to you enough to get them down. Yeah, I would add to that. Don't judge when you're adding. You know, the collection of ideas is not where you apply the filter, at least for me. And then, and there's really two phases to mind mapping. There's the collection or capture phase. There's also kind

of the organization phase. And that to me is where I get the iPad out and they sit on the couch and I look at all the stuff I've collected in here and I start seeing how it fits together. Now, inevitably, when I do that i have additional ideas that get added and new things get collected and a lot of times they get kind of sorted into the map at the same time but yep um when you are just kind of capturing it as the beginning phases of those mind maps uh no judgment allowed you know just get the stuff in there and and just just promise yourself you'll look at it critically later. But for now, just let your brain get ideas on the page because that's part of the process.

Yep, exactly. Another big one that I would recommend is to, if you're going to use a digital tool, and my note is great for this, take pictures of things. Specifically, I do this with the books that I read in the diagrams that a lot of them will have. I'm not going to try to recreate that using words on my mind map. I just take a picture and drop it into the my node file, which is why sometimes they get to be gigabytes in size. Yeah, particularly with digital tools, they can be more than just words. Yep, yep, exactly. Another thing I would recommend, and I started this with the book notes

because I have a ton of book notes that I've created my notes for over the years, but this is kind of transferred into the other mind maps that I create as well, is to have different symbols for different categories. So digital tools will oftentimes have different colors for different nodes, which can be helpful in kind of compartmentalizing ideas into different categories. But I created my own emoji library that I use when I add something. I'm going to put a little key icon for a key idea or a light bulb icon for a moment of inspiration that I had. If there's a statistic that I just find absolutely crazy, I'll have a mind-blown emoji, quote bubbles, all those kinds of things. Developing my own kind of key and legend for those types of things makes it a lot easier

when I go back and look at the mind map and I know I'm looking for one specific thing. I can kind of visually see those things because I have these little images or icons in front of a lot of the text that I capture. You're hitting on an extremely interesting point here. We just recently announced the next version of MindNode which will launch in the beginning of next year. And the headline feature is visual tags and visual tags came from exactly that experience that so often we use stickers

to kind of communicate different categories of ideas and stickers do work well for that but sometimes as we just said if it gets more complex, there's more magic. But it also gets bigger and less easy to handle. And tags are a fantastic way to kind of like supercharge that idea of categorizing your whole idea scape. So it's not just one flat area in front of you, but it actually becomes kind of like a bit more three-dimensional where you have different layers of the mind map where different ideas live that are connected in different ways. And that also kind of ties into the second thing I wanted to mention. Once you get into organizing a mind map, it really helps to zoom a lot.

Zoom out, look at the whole thing. Don't just try to read everything in the entry. Get a visual feeling of where do ideas cluster? How are they connected? Is there some cross-connection missing? Or zoom in. Really look just at the small part of the mind map and ignore the rest. Maybe add some additional ideas that are just popping up from that.

And this going back and forth from looking at the big picture and zooming into the more detailed area of the mind map really helps a lot to better understand your ideas. Yeah, and one of the advantages of doing it digitally over analog is you can rearrange things. And I find a power tip for me is sometimes, what if I just jumbled this thing up a little bit and I move, you know, I mean, the way it works, you've got a node and underneath it, you've got sub nodes. But like, what if I move the main nodes away just to see them in a different format and a different relationship to one another? And a lot of

times that results in me making changes. So, you know, don't be afraid to play with this stuff. Yeah. And just to reiterate what you're talking about, Harold, my node has a focus feature, which basically does that. It kind of grays out everything below a certain level. And the first time i saw it i instantly thought of the focus mode in omni focus and the value of that in a task manager being where you don't want to see all of the things that you have to do at any given moment you want to see the things that are appropriate to be considering at at this particular moment and i totally see how that can apply to managing and organizing and developing your ideas as well.

Totally. We even noticed, and that is another kind of like feature I would like to mention, we added screen support in the last external screen support in the last version of MindNode, which basically means you can take your iPad, connect it to a huge STV, and have two different views on the same mind map, one on your iPad and another one on the external screen. And that really allows you to do that magic I just mentioned before and what you're now getting into. You have your iPad where you can focus and stuff

and at the same time still have an overview on the larger screen or vice versa, which also kind of lends itself to a way of presenting mode. And having an easy way by just like looking over there or looking over here to see things in different ways is so super helpful. Yeah, I can definitely see that. One other tip I'd throw out for people who are going to consider analog tools would be make sure when you are starting off, especially not to put your nodes too close together. I've done that in the past where you start developing a mind map and then you kind of force your brain to go on to the next section before it's time just because you've run out of space. So spread things out, and then that gives you the ability to add things as you think of them. Well, even more importantly, you run out of ideas in that session.

I mean, the whole idea of this mind mapping is you go between different sessions. It actually, you find things get easier. And the really effective analog mind maps, the ones that are on the wall in the office, they always end up looking like a mess, a jumble of lines and squigglies because you can't help it. And that's part, you know,

the anal retentive part of me. That's another reason why I like digital tools. They nicely rearrange themselves for me. You know, but you can combine this. You know, we've been talking analog versus digital um i am not above sharing a mind map out as a pdf i talked about it as i did it earlier with a client issue but sometimes i'll just print one out anyway and just look at it on a piece of paper i can still have that presence of sticking it on the wall when i'm in the middle of something if i

need so you know think about all the different ways you can use this data once you have it, whether it's in analog or digital form. And the big point I would like someone to take away from the show today is that if you've got hard problems you're working on and you'd like a hand to focus on getting these problems solved, a mind map is an excellent tool to help you get there, to get your best product out. Absolutely.

That was like the perfect closing remark. Well, that's not the closing though, because I want to challenge people. I want, if you're listening to this and you haven't tried this and you've been hearing us drone on about it here now, I want you to try it. You know, pick a problem in your life.

Like Mike said, get a piece of paper, get a digital tool, and write in the middle of that paper the name of the problem, and then just start putting stuff on the page. And share your own mind maps and interesting use cases over in the Focused Forum. Yeah.

I'd love to hear how people are using them. I'm always fascinated to hear what people are doing with mind maps. You know, Teddy Sferonos, who I know works with mind map as well, or mind node as well. He's a Harvard professor. He's been on the Mac Power users a few times.

He uses it to prepare his lectures. I just, you know, there's a lot of people doing interesting stuff with these mind maps that really, I mean, people aren't doing this just for the fun of it. They're doing it because it does make a better product. Yeah, I always find looking

at other people's mind maps kind of like a meta level of looking at mind mapping because very often the actual content isn't so much relevant to you but the way they are approaching the content and what they're doing with a mind map is really interesting and inspiring well harold i know that you're doing more than making great mind mapping software you've got some other stuff uh gang if you want to follow harold he's on the Twitter as at Hechtmuller, H-E-C-K-M-U-E-L-L-E-R.

You have a podcast, Harold. Tell us about it. Yeah, I do have a podcast. It's called 3W6. It's mostly a German language podcast about storytelling and role-playing games. But we do have like 20 or 30 English episodes where we interview interesting people. So I'll put the link in the show notes. And

yeah, I also recently, because you guys asked me in the prep talk yesterday, I recently did a Kickstarter, a very successful one, thankfully. And we'll be writing a whole book of role-playing game in the next half year.

And hopefully deliver it by June. That's Aces in Space? Exactly. Yeah, so go to, we'll put a link in the show notes, Bitly Aces in Space. So just tell me really quick, it's a book-based role-playing game? Yes, exactly. It's a so-called tabletop role-playing game.

So it's something you play on like a board game with friends around the table. Yeah. And in this case, it's a science fiction inspired role-playing game that deals with the topics of toxic masculinity and how online communities and modern communities in general

deal with all that stuff that's going on. That's, that's really cool. I, you know, I used to do a tabletop role playing games when those were the only role playing games when RPGs were just that. And I have got the bug so much to play one again,

but I don't know. I've got, I'd have to find a group of people and it's like, I'd have to find time. It's like at some point I'm going to do it. But I know that it's like, you know, there's a little bit of joy out there for you. It's something you would really enjoy that you just haven't got around to. That's high on my joy list.

Mike, did you ever do RPGs? Are you too young to have ever been a tabletop guy? I never got into the tabletop stuff. I've gotten into a couple of the online rpgs but yeah well that's a whole nother story for me but the uh i i really want to uh i definitely do want to harold let me know when you get this thing out maybe that'll be my first tabletop gaming in a long time in a long time i'd also love to invite you to our con we're doing a con uh once a year in september so if you want to visit vienna that's a good opportunity yeah i i know a lady that lives

in vienna uh rose orchard who keeps you know i i guess i need to go show up on her doorstep one day the uh i i found recently i i guess i'm rambling but i i found recently when i was a kid all my maps from my old dnd days that we had in a corner of the house that was it was very delightful for me but that's all i'll say do they look like mind maps uh no they didn't but they were very carefully drawn floor plans and it was i was a messed up kid, man. That's all I'm saying. There was an apothecary, you know, at it all. Now I have to mention another use of ours,

which did something really amazing. It's Christopher, who's also doing tabletop role-playing games. And he basically did what you two just mentioned. He tried to create like an ordinary spatial map in a mind mapping format. So in a way, you can print it out and look at it like a normal map. But at the same time, it has like an information structure that kind of explains how the different entries on the map relate to each other. So it's also a mind map. And it's really amazing to look at.

That is my kind of geek. That's all I'm going to say. Sounds incredible. We've got the forums over there at talk.mpu.com and we've got a room there for focus. If you're interested in mind mapping, let us know what you're doing with it, what tools are working for you. We'd love to hear about it, how you can help that on your focus journey. We are the focus podcast and we'll see you all in a couple of weeks.