Focused - 164: Mind Mapping

Episode Date: November 8, 2022

David & Mike consider the focus benefits of mind mapping and discuss the tools and methods they use to think beyond the outline.

Welcome to Focus, a productivity podcast about more than just cranking widgets. I'm David Sparks, and I'm joined by my co-host, Mr. Mike Schmitz. Hi, Mike. How are you today? Hey, David. Doing good. How about yourself? I am excited about today's show. We're going to be talking about mind mapping and focus and, you know, just the whole process. And stuff like this gets me excited because I do feel like processes can help with the focus. Absolutely. But before we do, we have an announcement. Yes, we are going to be doing the

focus calendars again. I know we've had a few people who have reached out to me and probably you as well directly via Twitter asking, are we going to do the calendars again? The answer is yes. There has been some issues with the printing and it's not Jesse at New Year's fault. He's got to work through some stuff, it sounds like. But I think he's just about done with that and got the okay from him to pre-sell the calendar. So by the time this podcast is published, you probably will not be able to get a calendar shipped to you that day, but they will be available shortly after that and definitely arrive before the new year. So you'll have plenty of time to do all your planning on the calendar and it will be essentially the same thing as last year's version, all the same features, dry erase, portrait and landscape

on either side. And yeah, so I've got mine mounted on foam core behind me. I know you've got one as well, and we're going to do it again for 2023. Yeah, I love it. The upgrade this year was I did take it in and have it mounted to foam core and it's been great. And I've been using it all year. I was telling you before we started recording, you know, I hang it now in a spot that's really easy to get to. And I really like the commitment of, you know, filling out the calendar. I use it for like a point, a big events. Like if I'm out of town, if I'm doing work on a field guide, things like that is what I use it for. So I can just glance over at any hour and see it. This year, Daisy has figured out that that is something that I look at frequently

and now she adds to it too. She has taken the color orange and when she's going to be out of town or when she wants to make sure I'm at one of the kids plays or something, it gets on that calendar and that's a great way to make sure that I keep up with my family commitments too. So I just love this calendar. There's something to be said for having the whole year on your wall. And I feel like, what is this, the fourth year we've done this? It's really kind of evolved over time and I really like it. Yeah. We've added new things over the years. If you hadn't gotten this, uh, this year's calendar, there was a bunch of new things that we've added, like the habit tracker and the things like that. Uh, so there's like little circles,

so you can track your, your different habits. And I have mine. I'm using, I use them different colors for days that I'm fasting and days that I go for a run in terms of training for like the races and things that I do. So I'm really happy with the calendar. I'm thrilled that we're able to do it again this year. We've got actually one additional thing which is going to come with this new version. Jesse has been talking to me about some new products that he has been working on, and I collaborated with him back and forth on creating this daily planning sheet. It's essentially a formatted PDF, which is kind of how I would design a blank page for planning my day. We've talked about how we do the time blocking and I do it with the fancy pen and paper. Well, I've

experimented with doing it in the Remarkable and this is one of the tools that I've been using for the Remarkable. It's going to of the tools that I've been using for the Remarkable. It's going to have different sections for like you can plan every hour of your day on the left, and then you can have your up to five most important tasks. Capping that is intentional. So you have to select the things that are most important. Room for your highlight for today. Gratitude, what would make today awesome, things like that. So this will be available as a digital download with the cost of the calendar. You can throw it inside of GoodNotes or Remarkable, something like that, and use it over and over and over again. But that's going to be

no additional cost with the calendar itself. Yeah, I think we've got a really great offering this year. And I would really encourage you to take a look at this. And the reason we went with Jesse and New Year is because the calendars they make are just top quality. There's a lot of care put into the design. And that includes the one that we make for Focus. And where else are you going to get a calendar that tells you that life is more than just cranking widgets, right? I love that. But having it all there in one day, get a dry erase marker and you're off to the races. Like Mike said, it has both vertical and horizontal on opposing sides.

A good friend was over here and she said she got it last year and she's been using horizontal this year. She wants to go vertical. You don't have to buy a different calendar. You just turn it over. It's right there. So, so go check it out and we'll put the link in the show notes, but it's newyear.net slash product slash focused. And we hope you check it out. Yes. And if you're curious about the cost, it is $30 plus shipping. And I know that shipping can be a pain for people who are overseas. Apologies, there's not a whole lot we can do about that. But with the cost of printing going up, we wanted to keep the cost as close to the same as we could. And like I said, this also includes that digital download for planning your day,

which I think is a great compliment. You've got the calendar, which is showing big picture. And then on the other end, what are you going to do today i think this is a great tool that that people will get a lot of use out of and like mike said if you're on an ipad and you've got good notes you just save it as a template in there and you're off to the races i've done something similar and i've been testing this one out i can't wait to to start using it under fire all right uh today though we wanted to talk about mind mapping and what it is, how it works, why it relates to focus, and how we are succeeding and not succeeding with it. So let's just dig into the weeds on mind mapping, Mike. How did you get introduced to the concept?

Yeah, I'm pretty sure that my dad introduced me to the concept of mind mapping because I have for a long time worked with a family business. And I remember actually when I was real young, the business was in our house, so it was inescapable. But over the years, I got pulled into different projects. I helped with some of the development of some of the products and things like that. And I remember distinctly my dad when he was just kind of brainstorming what was going to be in this product. I must have been 15 or 16 years old. And he puts the name of the product in the middle and then he starts drawing all these

like spider legs out from it and writing things on the legs. And I was like, what, what is this? You know, so he was explaining to to me it was a mind map. And I got to see how it kind of grew and evolved as he was fleshing out the idea for this product. And so it instantly clicked with me once I saw him do it that this was a really cool idea and was something that I wanted to apply myself.

The methods and the tools have changed over the years, but it's kind of something that I grew up with, I guess. Yeah, I really think that the idea of visual thinking is something everybody should consider, especially if you have trouble with a traditional outlining or more linear thinking type of tools. I discovered it in the LA Superior Court one day, and I was sitting there waiting for a court appearance. And the guy sat next to me, opened up a tablet computer, and this is like not an iPad. This goes back a while. And it was when tablet computers were made by people like Gateway. And they were like an inch thick, they had big fans and, you know, just

different, different world. Right. But he was working on this app on his tablet computer that was like, you said, a bunch of circles and lines. And I'm like, what are you doing and why, you know? And of course he was a nerd because he was doing it very early in the game and shared it with me. And I, I immediately saw the benefit of something like this because i'm very much a visual thinker for me seeing things being able to move them around really helps me process stuff and um and so i i've been interested in it for a long way but back then when they when mind maps were first a thing the software was ridiculously expensive. Like it was like $500 to get a mind mapping app in early days.

And they, uh, those apps couldn't hold a candle to, you know, the apps we're going to talk about today. But it really was a high end to kind of like sold as a high end tool for very important, fancy people. I remember that. And that was a big reason why I think I first came to it via the analog tools is because I just didn't have the means to even consider doing it digitally. And to be honest, for a long time, it never even crossed my mind that that

would be the ideal platform for that sort of thing. Makes total sense now. But at the time, if you drew a branch too close to another branch and it looked kind of goofy, oh well, you just kept going. And even the perfectionist in me, you know, had no trouble just moving on from those imperfections. I don't know what it was. It was just, this is the way that this works. And you're not always going to be able to erase this and try again. And it was almost like what it looked like was secondary. It was the actual act of creating the branches and writing in the titles.

That was the real value that was being delivered as your brain going through that exercise. Yeah. I want to talk more about what a mind map is, but just to kind of finish the thread on analog. Very early, what I would do was buy those big sticky pads. They make, um, sticky pads that are like two feet wide by three feet long. And they sell them for the purpose of like, when you have a brainstorming meeting in your team and you get the big Sharpie out and you stick it on the wall and people yell things out and you write it down and you, you move them around the walls cause they're sticky. And what I would do is I would get one

of those and lay it down on top of my desk at work and just stick it to the top of my desk. And I would use a pencil instead of a big thick sharpie. And as I was preparing for trial or working on a thorny problem, I would just start writing ideas on it. And it was sitting in front of me all day and I would just keep adding to it. And that was a very efficient use of mind mapping for me because that's where I learned the lesson of going back to them frequently is really a really helpful tool. But yeah, so my start in this stuff was analog as well. And we are going to get into digital tools. But before we get there, let's talk a little bit more about what is a mind map and like, how do you develop

it? I know people, a lot of people just envision a bunch of circles and lines, but there's more to it than that, right? Yeah, right. I guess it kind of depends on who you ask, because I shared with you in preparation for this episode a mind map that I had put together from a book that I read by Tony Buzan called Mind Map Mastery. And he has very strict definitions of what a mind map is. And I think it's a little bit too too specific yeah yeah literal is a good way to to describe it but if i were to describe a mind map i think it's it's anything that has a single idea in the middle and then connecting ideas that branch out from that and it doesn't matter what shapes you use what what colors you use, just the fact that you're showing these different connections in a spiderweb sort of

diagram of these different ideas. That to me is a mind map. Yeah. I mean, I was thinking about this leading today's show. And to me, a mind map is documentation of non-linear thinking. So let me break that down, right? You, it's a product, you make it something you're going to look at later. So it is kind of a documentation layer, but it's something that you do not feel obligated to make linearly, like, you know, in contrast with a traditional outline, right? You make the outline, you make the major point, then you write the points underneath it. A mind map for me is allowing you to make that a separate step. You know, with a mind map, you don't have to think about where anything fits, but they're random thoughts and ideas

related to some concept that you can just barf all over the page. And then later you can see how they connect as a separate thought process. Yeah. A wise man once said in episode 82 of Mac Power Users that a mind map is visually looking at ideas and their connections and relationships with each other. So I like that a lot. That was a long time ago. It was. Yeah. But it is, it does work that way and it's different, right? I get into this conversation with people sometimes about, do you think visually or do you think more like in terms of words on a page? And the test I always use with people, and if you've

listened to me for a while, you've probably heard me say this before, but I always ask somebody when someone asks you for directions to your house, do you draw them a map or do you write down, you know, go down main street and take a left on, you know, first street, you know, uh, for me, it's always been, I draw a map and I feel like that's like a tell where you're somebody who thinks about things about graphically or visually as opposed to more word-based thought. And if that's you, mind maps, and you're not using mind maps, you should really look into it. Although I would argue that everybody should look at mind maps because it just gives you another angle to stuff. Yeah, exactly. I think another way to describe it maybe is like a right-brained version of the standard outline that you're talking about. Like make a list or draw a map.

And you're right, you don't have to pick one or the other anymore. One of the things I love about MindNode specifically, I know we'll talk about apps in a little bit, but they've got the mind map, but they also give you the outline. And you can export it a bunch of different ways. So it's the same information. You don't have to recreate it in a different format. You get both. Yeah, MindNode is the mind mapping application, spoiler here, that both Mike and I use. And for years, I had a very complicated workflow where I would convert it to a computerized OPML format, which is fancy

terms for an open source outline format. And then I can move it between an outliner and my map. But now my node actually has an outline function built in. So like there may be certain points of something you're brainstorming that are linear and you can just literally go into the outline view in my note and fill it in and then it shows up visually on the screen and then the the magic is when you look at that you're like oh you know what that doesn't actually fit there that fits somewhere else and you just take your mouse and you drag it there or if you're on an ipad you drag it over with your finger but it really allows you to see things in a different way. An example of a mind map for me is I have a mind node document that is called Mac Sparky. And it is the entire empire, right?

I have like the people on the team. I have ideas for content. I have the Mac Sparky labs and the field guides and the podcasts and how they all fit together. And this is a, I keep this in my note and it's a full screen document that I keep on a separate space. And I go over there and look at it sometimes to kind of figure out what I'm doing and where I'm spending my time. And it's constantly evolving because looking at it gives me new ideas on the way things fit together. You know, it's a nonlinear document of nonlinear. It's a document of nonlinear thought. And there's, you know, this is for my whole like livelihood now, but I've also made things like this about

a presentation I'm going to give or a book I'm going to write or something. And it's just really quite helpful. Yeah. And it doesn't take a lot to get started with it. The process is pretty simple. You just take whatever thing you're noodling on, whether that's a problem that you're trying to solve or an article that you're going to write, or in your case with the Mac Sparky, you have the entire business emanating from Mac Sparky enterprises at the very beginning. And then you just kind of sort of add things around that as you think of them. And there's something magical about seeing those things pop up on the screen. It's not even technically what you're doing with those nodes. If you're

using MindNode, yeah, you can drag them around and you can have it create a bunch of different shapes and things like that, change it from horizontal to vertical in terms of the organization and stuff like that. But that's not necessary. It's just the fact that as you start putting these things on the canvas, it spurs other ideas. And you think of things that you would not have thought about without seeing these things from that perspective. And this is really the value, I think, from MindNote. It's a different way of thinking, or mind mapping, a different way of thinking compared to an outline. It's not necessarily better than the outline, but there are things that you will see because you see those related ideas,

those related nodes around that central topic. You'll make connections. Your brain will go places that it won't go just by scrolling down a big, long outline. Yeah, and it really does help to have the freedom to drag and connect, you know, fundamental features of a mind map is the ability to connect ideas in places where you wouldn't think they fit. With pen and paper, you just draw a line. With the software tools, I think it's a little cleaner because you can just draw or drag a concept from one idea to another and then see what that does. The better applications have the ability to also draw additional connections

between things. So you don't have to just choose one connection, but putting that all together is really quite helpful. People use them in different ways though. Like we we've been talking about what I would consider kind of like a traditional mind map, but people also use them in a more of an outline format. Like I feel the book outlines Mike does are very linear outline formatted mind maps. But I still like and prefer the look of it as a mind map, even though it's more, it would be something more akin to an outline. Sure. Basically, what you're describing is this process that I use for taking book notes. And I have an article that I wrote on my website a while back, which I'll put in the show notes. But essentially, what I do is I put the cover for the book in the middle, and then based off of

Mortimer Adler's How to Read a Book, he basically has this whole process for identifying the structure of the book, because when you read a book, you're essentially engaging with the author in a conversation. So when I go to take notes on books that I read, I'm trying to wrap my head around what the author is really trying to say. So the best way to do that is to look at the table of contents and build out the main nodes, then different sections. A lot of productivity books have three different sections. So each one of those will be its own branch. And then as I go through and I read the book, I will just jot down the things that stand out to me. There'll be a couple of exceptions. The one that I shared with you for Mind Map Mastery, this was

something that we covered for Bookworm. And there's a whole section here on the top 99 mind map applications. And I jotted all of those down, which that's interesting in and of itself because he's obviously shooting for 99, but he has a duplicate in there. So it's actually only 98. Wouldn't have caught that if I wasn't trying to recreate that. But for the most part, I'm just jotting down the things that are standing out to me, the key ideas. And I've got a whole emoji system that I use to identify things. So like page 59 of Mind Map Mastery,

looking at that mind map right now, it says, your mind maps will lead to the best results when your approach is lighthearted, colorful, and interesting. So I've got quotes, I've got light bulb moments like inspiration. One of the things here is humans have a nearly photographic memory when it comes to pictures, around 98%. Key ideas, I'll have a key emoji. If there's something that I want to do from something that I read, I'll create a task out of it. So I'll actually have like an action item associated with it. And that emoji actually is really helpful when I go back to look at these mind maps again, because I don't want to reread the whole thing. I tend to just go to those colorful indications

of these are the things that are important, which gets into a whole other topic here with these mind maps, because you can have a lot of different information in here, but it's kind of created in a way that leverages the way that you are wired to get the big idea quickly. So if you're going to unfold everything and get all the text out there, it can be overwhelming, but you can fold things up and you can just kind of get the big ideas and you can do different things, different colors, different headings to kind of see how things are organized and

grouped together. So you can sort of grok the information without having to go read it all again. Yeah. I mean, it really does pay off. And, uh, you know, I sound like I'm, I'm preaching about this, but it really is something that I have found tremendously useful since that first day in the LA superior court. Um, people do these things not only with paper or big sticky pads, you can also do it with a whiteboard or software. We're going to get into those tools in a little bit. But first, let's talk about mind maps and focus. This episode of the Focus Podcast is brought to you by Indeed. Join more than 3 million businesses worldwide using Indeed to hire great talent fast.

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and our thanks to indeed for their support of the focus podcast and all of relay FM. So we were talking earlier about the idea of a mind map versus linear thinking. And I really think that there's something to that in terms of not only just trying to think about structure, but think about ideas and then add structure later. You and I were talking as we prepped for the show today about the concept of dimensional thinking. And I think this fits right in with that. Yeah. So Mind Map Mastery and Tony Buzan is typically the person who is credited with this idea of radiant thinking, which is different than linear thinking. And in that book specifically, he kind of talks about one-dimensional

versus two-dimensional thinking and how a list represents one-dimensional thinking and mind map represents two-dimensional thinking. And that analogy makes sense to me. I think it's really powerful when you add additional dimensions, you get more thoroughly developed ideas, whatever those ideas happen to be in service of as you're creating your mind map, which by the way, you can use a mind map for just about anything. We'll probably get into some of the use cases later. But as I was thinking about this, I think this is the thing that fascinates me so much about all these connected note-taking apps, because I feel like that adds a third dimension. And I totally understand why some people think this is useless and I don't need this. You don't need to think three-dimensionally in whatever part of your life that you're coming to this application to solve. I think that's the mistake a lot of people make as they go into apps like Obsidian and Roam and Tana and whatever the next one is going to be.

to do what this person does. And if I don't do that, then I don't have a use for this. Well, you do. It's just thinking about how additional context and thinking about things different ways can actually improve your life. But I think if you really want to make the most of your ideas, you should be looking for additional tools and additional perspectives that are going to allow you to develop them more fully. Yeah. And the third dimension of those apps is I feel like they make connections that you don't see, you know, the software essentially, it uses the knowledge you've already given it to make connections for you. And that's cool. Right. But, but even just at the mind map level, the idea that you that you capture ideas without trying to connect them. And to me, that is a critical part of this whole process is just get the ideas out there.

There's no time for judgment, no time for organization. It's just, I think it's like a one-man brainstorm. Just get the ideas on the page and then see what comes of it. And that to me is the big selling point for mind maps. But, but it is a type of focus as well. When I do these, I do find it very easy to get into, you know, flow state. It's really great in order to like get yourself there when you're like dealing with a problem, a presentation, great in order to like get yourself there when you're like dealing with a problem, a presentation, a work project, you know, something you're doing with the family. It can be applied to any,

any project really, but just being able to like get the idea of saying, I'm not going to do any judgment here. I'm not going to make any lines. I'm going to be totally okay connecting this stuff or deleting this stuff later and just get it on the page, that really helps. And that is a different type of thinking than what I grew up with, where you tried to lay things out linearly. Yeah, exactly. And I think there's value in doing that for just about everybody. I think that the definition of what is a knowledge worker has expanded quite a bit. And I think there are ways that you can apply this stuff that maybe are a little bit non-obvious. And that's what I want to encourage everybody to think about with this episode is how can I apply this to my own life? Where are the ideas that if I develop them are going to provide greater value for me. And it may be personally,

it may be professionally, but there is some application where your brain tends to just latch on to the first obvious answer. And mind mapping is essentially an exercise which is saying that's not good enough. I want to see what's really here. I want to dig a little bit deeper. And every single time that you do that, it's kind of amazing what your brain is able to come up with it. time concept that I heard about from Keith Cunningham in the book, The Road Less Stupid. He talks about how he doesn't need to do more smart things. He needs to do less dumb things. And when he just sets aside time to think about things, he can see things more clearly. Well, one of the ways that you can see things more clearly is by going through and creating a mind map and letting your brain unravel whatever it is that's causing it stress or anxiety. It's like, I don't really understand what this thing is. Well, put it on a mind map and letting your brain unravel whatever it is that's causing it stress or anxieties like i don't really understand what this thing is well put it on a mind map spend even 15 minutes just

kind of building that out and you're going to feel a lot better about it yeah and you mentioned earlier that old mac power users episode it was called um cooking ideas and the other kind of insight I got from doing this is just that 15 minute session idea where you just really just focus on a project problem idea for 15 minutes and just dump as much as you can the mind map and then come back to it after sitting on it, like letting your subconscious mind cook on it. And there's just some magic that happens when you come back to it in a day or two days and you come back to it and suddenly you see new connections

and you start moving things around the map. Maybe you add new elements to it. Maybe you make new connections. But this stuff really works. And the real payoff is not spending two hours in front of a mind map on one day, but spending 15 minutes on a mind map on one day, but spending 15 minutes on a mind map over, you know, eight days. And you, the payoff is so much better when you do that.

And in fact, the more time you can put between those things, the better. If you've got a big project you're working on in three months, start the mind map today. And the benefit of some of the software tools that you can go back to it anywhere. But even if you've just got a big whiteboard and you just go look at it every day, there's something the human brain does when you're away from this, that makes when you come back to it a pure joy. And the idea of focus really lands there. Like once again, getting to flow state, I find extraordinarily easy with a mind map because I just pour myself into it. And suddenly the rest of the world drops away and you don't have to do it for a long time. So 15 minutes is

something most of us can do pretty well, but you're building the focus muscle. You're you, it's probably 15 of the best minutes you're going to spend all day in terms of your own, your own production and success. And it's not that hard. I don't disagree with you that it would be better to spend 15 minutes a day over a period of time. But I do think that that is one way to leverage mind mapping. And it's not the only way. Like one of my favorite applications of mind mapping has to do with like fleshing out ideas

for articles that I want to write. And a lot of times when I'm writing an article, it is because I have a deadline. And so some of the things that you just need to spend some time noodling on, the big picture stuff that you're talking about, that's the better approach. But I would say that there are times when, let's say, you want to write that article. It might be better just to short burst spend two hours building out that mind map before you would sit down to write it. in the last five years, I'll mind map at first any significant article. If it's just a couple hundred words, maybe I'll sit down and bang that out. But if it's going to be like I have an article on the suite setup that I wrote a while back on the best mind mapping app, and there's an example in that article of the mind map that I created for this article. This article is probably 5,000-6,000 words, a bunch of pictures. But I have found that creating the mind map for a lengthy piece of content like that and just emptying my

brain and getting all the ideas down in a mind map, even if that takes me a couple of hours, that takes me a couple of hours. It provides an exponential return on investment when I sit down to write. I have no statistics to back this up, but I believe that every hour that I spend mind mapping a lengthy piece of content like this saves me about two hours if compared to just sitting down and beginning to write. As the article gets longer, I've been in that place where scrolling through the document and I'm trying to find the things that are missing from the flow, you know, and I waste a whole bunch of time trying to do that, getting that last 20% of the thing done. Creating the mind map first allows me to get everything out there, arrange it all the way that makes sense. And then when I sit down to write, my brain is able to just fully engage

with the actual process of writing because I've thought through the structure already. And it's not the type of thing where I kind of know what this is going to look like. I've already written it down. It already exists somewhere else. And so that allows me to just enter into that state of flow and just crank out the words. Again, the word I use all the time is magical, right? But it really is. It's a totally different experience. And there's way less stress when I do that work prior to sitting down to the keyboard. Everybody has felt that stress. Anyone who writes staring at the blank cursor, I got to come up with something. Well, that basically disappears if you spend a little bit of time mind mapping first.

Yeah. I feel like we're just preaching to the choir with each other, but all my field guides start out as mind maps. The books I wrote for Wiley Press, the iPad at work, Mac at work, those were mind maps. Just so much of this content that I ship in my life starts out as a mind map. And the thing that it does for me, because I do so much thinking about organization and concepts at that level, when it comes time to

the production, I just make it, you know what I mean? There's no, um, there's no hangup. You just execute at that point. And I find that very, uh, very. And another angle to focus because when you're planning while you're writing, your brain is being pulled in two different directions. It's really hard to focus on writing well when you're not even sure what the organization is. And it's really hard to organize when you're trying to write.

So it gives you a way to break this stuff up. Essentially what it is, is you can say mind mapping is a focus tool, but really it's a flow tool. I think that focus and flow obviously are related, but mind mapping for me is the thing that kind of triggers that flow state when it comes to the actual act of creating. Because a lot of times i don't view creating the mind map as the creative process it's kind of priming the creative pump or sharpening the saw if you want to think of it that way but literally every single time that i do it it makes getting to that elusive flow state so much easier yeah i agree but i would argue that the organization and planning in my mapping is just a different kind of flow.

But by separating them, it makes it an easier on-ramp either way. Absolutely. We've been talking a lot about MyNode. That's our choice. This is not a show sponsored by MyNode or anything, but we both have just kind of independently kind of fallen in love with the app. Full disclosure, I think they sponsored Mac Power Users years ago. thing but we both have just kind of independently uh kind of fallen in love with the app uh full disclosure i think they sponsored mac power users years ago and i occasionally have done some video work for them but not in the recent past um but i just i came to my node looking at a lot of other apps and kind of growing up in an environment where these apps are very expensive. And my note has always been very reasonably priced, but also it just has a really nice, clean aesthetic that

really connects with me. And they just do a really good job of adding features. You know, it's a group of people, it's not a single developer, but they put a ton of effort into making it the best possible app without making it too fiddly. Because I think a real risk with mind mapping applications is getting too fiddly about them and not using them for what they're, they're best at, which is connecting ideas, you know, and they walk that line.

Well, they were the first app to my knowledge to have a, a simultaneous outline plus mind map on the screen that it builds automatically for you, which I find very useful feature. They've come up with a lot of cool innovative features over the years. But I think the reason I love it most is because it's just easy to use and it looks good. Yeah, you can't overstate the importance of that last part. It looks good. Because when it comes to mind mapping, personally, I think that the user interface matters more here than just about any other type of application that

you may use on any of your devices. Because when you are in a positive state, if the app that you are using for mind mapping brings you joy and has that fun whimsical aesthetic essentially what you're doing is you're playing with your ideas and the user interface i feel goes a long way into helping you think better about the the things that you're you're trying to to consider via the mind map yeah i i love the way my node makes it super easy and this is not the only app to do this so you know i'm not trying to like sell you this app but like they use the tab key to create new nodes and they've got if you hit three carriage returns that adds a new uh sibling node like i there's a shorthand to this app that once you learn, makes the process of building it with a keyboard super easy. But then when you go over to the iPad,

it interacts with touch just as easily. And I just think those are all real nice features. Yes, and the iPad specifically, maybe this is the place to talk about this. I feel like that's the best medium for working with mind maps because you've got a big canvas, but you can physically touch things and move them around on the screen. And there's just something that is, it's a different experience than clicking on things and moving them with a mouse. Being able to physically touch your ideas creates this connection with them in a way that's hard to put into words.

You can do it on a phone as well, but an iPad with the larger canvas is really where this provides the most benefit, I feel. Yeah, it really does stand out as something where the iPad excels at. And even just using the pencil or a keyboard or whatever, but having to lay hands on it and physically move things around with your finger, I think really, really pays off. But MindNode is not the only app out there.

There are others. You can build them. I've done them in the past in Omni Graffle, which is more of a graphics app, but it has mind mapping applications built into it. An important feature to me and a lot of the stuff is what I'd say magnetic connections, where when you connect a node to something that the connection remains, if you do it graphically and you just draw a line between two boxes and you move one box, the line may not follow.

A magnetic connection allows it to do so. And that's something about OmniGraffle you might know do well. There is an online service called Miro that I've worked with in the past that's more of a flowchart-style web app. But I feel like that's really good, and you can mind map in that as well. What about Obsidian, Mike? Is Obsidian a good candidate for this? Well, you can do it in Obsidian. There are some plugins that allow you to take your plain text outlines and display them via a mind map. I think you can even manipulate the nodes

of the mind map and have your outline be updated. But Obsidian, in my opinion, is a better outliner than it is a true mind mapping tool. I bring my mind maps into Obsidian as kind of long-term storage for my book notes and things like that. But I don't think that's the place that I would recommend that you start with it. And really, this is the thing. You have to try this, right? If you have not tried mind mapping before, taking an outline and displaying it via a mind map is not the same thing. You've got to start with that blank canvas, and you've got to put an idea right in the middle, and then you've got to build it out around that. So there are lots of other applications that do this.

One that I've used in the past, which is a great online option, especially if you want to collaborate with other people on MindMaps, is MindMeister. And there's a bunch of other ones out there. In fact, if you've got a Setapp subscription, I think you get XMind and iThoughts in addition to MindNode. So you have your choice. You can figure out whichever one really clicks for you. But I think that everyone should give this a shot. I don't know what... We're going to get into some of the ways that we use mind maps in a little bit, but I use this almost every single day. It's become an essential part of the way that I work. This is not just a once in a while when I really need to solve a problem, I'll bust this out. How often do you use mind maps? Daily. I mean, that show we did, I don't even know what year we recorded that cooking

idea show for Mac Power. It was episode 82. So I'm assuming it was about 10 years ago. I don't even know what year we recorded that cooking idea show for Mac Power. It was episode 82, so I'm assuming it was about 10 years ago. I don't know. But it was a long time ago. And at that point, I'd been using MindMaps daily for a while, and that's never ended. And I understand the point you made earlier about it's still good to spend two hours as opposed to 15 minutes. But the 15-minute thing for me is part of my daily structure is like i've got several mind maps i'm working at any time and i love dipping into them making them better and then dipping out

and you know just like a short stay and then when it's time to go into production mode like right now i'm working on the obsidian field guide that's the next big one I'm going to work on. And that's a mind map right now. And it's a big spider web of ideas and thoughts, but it's starting to get structure. And I think in not too distant future, I'll be recording on it. And that this has all been the benefit of me,

you know, going in there regularly and adding little bits as I go through it. And the visual nature of it connects with me and that was a very long answer to say I use it daily right so we're talking about a lot of different tools here but really the point I wanted to make is like the tool almost doesn't matter yeah you should really just look for a way to build this into your your workflow and doesn't even have to be an application. I mean, talked about analog stuff at the beginning. I've got a whiteboard in my office,

which is typically where I will start building things out and add to things daily when I'm creating a product. I just like having it up in my face all the time. I know you've got a great big monitor where you can kind of leave that stuff up, but a whiteboard serves the same purpose for me. Another way to do this mind mapping thing, we were talking about like a whiteboard or piece of paper. You could digitally do that as well. And this is where you don't have a tool that was made to do mind mapping,

but you can still do it. And that's literally any drawing application. Anything that you can draw digitally with, you can make a mind map out of. Right now we're in the beta process with Apple. They have a new app called Freeform that I'm starting to experiment with. It's early beta, but I think you could mind map in this. But there is a family of what I would call infinite canvas apps, which is an infinite piece of paper you can draw on or, or a very big piece of paper, you know, that works too, but there's digital tools for that,

that work as well. The advantage of those over the piece of paper is you can still move things around on it, even if they aren't, you know, magnetically connected. But if you like to use a pencil, that's another advantage. there's just so many ways to do this and i guess that's the point we're just trying to make here even though we both use my node use whatever one connects with you but um but do try this workflow out yeah try it try an app try a whiteboard try a big piece of paper on your desk like like you did you know but i would argue uh if you've tried it before and it hasn't really worked for you, you probably just haven't found the right medium or the right tool.

I tend to be a very analytical, logical, left brain type of person, which typically they would gravitate towards the outlines. But I have seen the light in terms of mind maps. And I feel like this is the kind of tipping point or moment of enlightenment that everyone has the potential to have with this tool. I don't think this is something that is just for a certain group of creative folks. This is something that everybody can leverage.

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Sofa as well. We'll do research. We've got hundreds of board games too. So I really like the fact that you can add board games to Sofa as well. We'll do research. We've got hundreds of board games at my house, but we'll find something new on Board Game Geek and we'll want to remember to try that out. And a lot of times I'll just forget about it unless I add it to an app like Sofa. What I really like about Sofa is the user interface. It's got enough features where you can track things in these different lists, and it's smart enough to know that the things that you listen to could be podcasts or audiobooks, for example. But it doesn't burden you with a whole bunch of features and a whole ton of metadata. It is very easy to get things into Sofa when you want to just jot something down so you don't forget

about it later. That's really the whole point. I know that there are hundreds of things that I did not jot down just because it was too much trouble to decide where to put those things and those recommendations now are lost forever. But with Sofa, this is really, really easy. I definitely recommend that you give this a shot and Sofa is available for iPhone, iPad, and Apple Silicon Macs. So start organizing your downtime today by heading over to SofaHQ.com slash focused, F-O-C-U-S-E-D. That's S-O-F-A-H-Q.com slash focused to download the app and get more out of your downtime. Our thanks to Sofa for their support of Focused and all of RelayFM. So what are some other ways that you personally are using mind maps in your day-to-day work, David? personally are using mind maps in your day-to-day work david it's a combination of categories really i would say the first one is problems and concepts i'm working through you know when i say problems

it sounds like you know only trouble but it's really more like things i'm trying to solve like i was just looking through my history here and I have a mind map here called why max Sparky. And a year ago I was going through the process of deciding to change my career. And I had made a decision that I knew was right for me, but I'm the, I knew at my gut level before I knew it kind of more on the practical level, why I wanted to make that decision. This is of course, when I stopped being a lawyer and kind of went full time with this stuff. And I opened a mind map on it and just started dumping ideas in it. Earlier, I think I called it vomiting ideas onto the page. That's really what I do. I just keep putting anything randomly that occurs to me.

And looking at this now, I hadn't opened it in about a year. It really, it's a nice memory trip down memory lane, but it also makes sense to me what I was thinking through. And it, it gave me a way to kind of work through that stuff and use more than just my gut to make a decision. And so I, I use them for things like that. You know, when I'm trying to work my way through problems, I often use them as I've mentioned through the show, on projects.

When I do any kind of project, there are pieces to it that occur to me immediately, but there's always angles to it that I haven't thought through. And I don't want to discover those angles at the end of the project. I want to discover them at the beginning. This stuff is always cheaper in terms of time, money, and mental energy if you identify it at the beginning. So I'm a big fan of taking my time with getting started on projects and using MindMaps as my primary tool to make sure I identify all the speed bumps that I feel like I might hit along the way. Now, is that a guarantee

that I'm not going to find a speed bump? No, but I find a lot of them that way that I wouldn't find otherwise. Yeah. Project management. I know people actually manage projects via mind maps and I don't think I would really do that, but it's definitely invaluable for the beginning stages of figuring out what exactly is this project. I do that as well. I've already talked about the writing projects and just jotting down everything that I can think of when I sit down to write an article. And that's a lot of times I go into those articles

knowing this is what this is going to be. So a lot of the Suite Setup stuff is the best whatever app. I know exactly the angle that I'm coming at this with. But there are other projects where I don't really know what this is going to be. And just looking through my MindNode iCloud, the dates go back to 2013. And I've got things in here like home improvement projects. We finished off a bedroom in our basement for my oldest two boys. And there's a MindNode document, which is just a place to capture all the ideas for what we want that room to look like. And there's a lot of notes in here on just like

products that I've created. I'll have an idea for a product like the personal retreat handbook sort of a thing, you know, put that in the middle and then I'll build out the nodes and it becomes clear as I do that. This is where the different videos should be or the different modules and how things group together and the key points that I want to make sure are in those videos. I've got a lot of projects here for talks and webinars that I have done in the past. One of my new favorite applications for MindMaps is occasionally, I'm an elder at our church, and occasionally I will get asked to preach. And I have discovered that when I am preaching, I'll do all this prep,

and I'll have all these notes, and I'll never get through everything. And if I do it in an outline format, I'm constantly jumping up and down in the notes trying to relocate and figure out where's the flow right now, and what should I be focusing on. But when I have it in a mind map, I can kind of see all that stuff and it's all broken down by the different colors and the different branches. And I find it's a lot easier for me to let go of the outline and be in the moment. And I can go back to that and I can attach to the different color branches and pick up my place a lot more easily using a mind map than I would an outline. Yeah. I really think that to me, a mind map is a place that I go to start big things. A lot of the biggest things in my life, whether they're

life decisions or projects, have started life as a mind map. And for all the reasons we've been talking about through today's episode, I find that a really great place to start because it just gives me a pause between idea and execution. It's so easy when you have an idea, a big idea particularly, to say, oh, this is a great idea. I'm going to write a novel about elves. And then you sit down and you start saying, there once was an elf named whatever, right? And then very quickly you run into all sorts of trouble. With a mind map, it gives you that pause place to say, no, no, I'm actually planning my elf story right now. And I'm going to start, you know, making ideas and structure to it. And, uh, I find that that really useful. That's the reason why, like you, I've been making them

for years. And, uh, and I really, uh, I really think people should be doing more of it. What, what, what is not a mind map to you? Like a traditional outline, for instance, why wouldn't someone say, well, that's a mind map for me. I'm just going to go fill in the individual branches of an outline as the ideas occur to me. Is that a mind map? I'm not sure. I think that there are definitely places where I'm going to go to a list instead of a mind map. And those are going to be essentially like a checklist type things, like a packing list, for example, makes more sense as a checklist rather than a mind map. Although Tony Buzan would make the argument

that you can apply this in just about any arena. I do think some of these just don't make a ton of sense. Something where you need to go through and make sure that you follow a set number of steps in a specific order. That sequential nature of the project, I think, is not going to lend itself well to a mind map. Just because it's fighting against the value that the mind map brings, which is the fact that you can see all this stuff at any given moment and you can jump between the different sections. If you have to go in a certain order, then that's something that should probably not be a mind map. Yeah. I think that people get too hung up on the semantics of all this stuff. The idea is to have a pause point for these ideas and you can do it with an outline i think i just

feel like it you're um you're playing to the wrong strengths with that software yep and and if you want to get the advantages we're talking about a traditional mind map application is going to make that a downhill walk whereas if you try and do it in something like a word processor or an outliner, it's an uphill walk. So I'm not arguing that you can't do it, but you're making yourself walk uphill when you don't need to. Exactly. Something like meeting notes, I think would be another one where you've got a specific agenda. You got to follow a certain order. Could you do that in a mind map? Yeah. But generally speaking, I think you're better suited with the outline format there. Another thing I wanted to talk about a little bit was just kind of like,

okay, so we've got these things we do with them. Let's walk through the process a bit. I'll tell you, for me, a new idea or a new project or whatever starts just as a single node with the name of it. starts just as a single node with the name of it. And then I just start creating individual nodes on the screen of things around the idea. And for example, like when I was saying why Max Sparky, I put the word spiritual and I didn't know really where that fit, but I knew that was something I wanted to think about in relation to that decision. And then I'd put another thing, economical or financial.

And then like, so I've got all these things floating around. And then eventually they do start getting structure and using software, just with about any software that does this, you can just drag them on top of another node and they connect. The language generally uses parent and sibling.

If it's underneath a node, that's the and sibling. If it's underneath a note, that's the parent note. If it's below it, that's the child. And if it's in the same level, it's a sibling. So I start drawing those around, but I never think of them as set in stone. As I continue to look at it, a lot of times I'll move nodes around and say, well, this is actually a sub point to this other thing. Or maybe this is a major point and needs to be broken out into its own node. Or maybe this is something I don't think fits anywhere yet. And I'm just going to pull it off to the side and come back to it. And so for me, it's a very organic process of developing these. So at any point that I open a node or a mind map, I will have various stages

of things connected and disconnected. And the workflow for me is just to kind of look at it all and see what fits. My process is pretty similar, especially with something that I'm trying to flesh out. What exactly is this thing? I will put the main topic in the middle and then i will start to build things out and almost every single time i'll have a couple of main ideas and i'll be building out one of those main ideas so i've got the central the the main node in the middle and then i've got a child node off of that which let's just say it's it's red right because my node has all the different colors. And then I'll be building out that red branch and I'll have a whole bunch of child nodes

beyond that red branch. And I'll realize actually one of these things is big enough that it should be another main branch of this mind map. And so I'll do exactly what you described. I'll take that node and I'll drag it over to the main node and then it will create another branch and a whole new color and I'll continue to develop things that way. One of the other things that I think is important as you're

building out mind maps, and I don't know if you do this a whole lot but one of the things that you can do with with my note is and other apps too you can connect nodes uh across different parts of the the diagram and it's almost like you just draw an arrow from this node to this other node to show that these are related ideas do you use that much all the the time, all the time, especially as I'm thinking through things. And, uh, it's a, I use it as a, it's a dashed line and, uh, I'm always looking at those connections. Yeah. I think those are important and it's, uh, easy to just forge ahead without looking for those connections, which again, this is kind of like the, the, the beauty of the third dimensional thinking and tools like Obsidian. You know, when I take my book notes, I will export that actual mind map.

I'll drop that into the note, but I'll also export all of the text. And then I'll build that out and some of those will become their own notes and that will build out that whole local graph based off of that one core note, which is the notes from the book. That's essentially the same sort of thing. This is related to that, right? And so there's different ways that you can do this, but I feel like you're missing out on the full value if you're not looking for those types of connections. Yeah. Another tip I would give is try to avoid doing outlining style work in a mind map. Like, for instance, if your idea or project is starting to get legs, this is particularly tempting when you're writing and you say, well, I feel like that is not good in a mind map because that starts to close your brain down to the idea of saying, well, what if something fit between section one and two? Or what if this other idea should go up there ultimately? And anytime you start adding structure, like an outline style structure to it, without having the ability to

change that structure, you're creating friction for yourself. And that defeats the purpose of all this. So that's something I try to avoid. And that's a trap I have fallen into in the past. A lot of the better tools, the software tools allow you to reorganize at will. And that is the reason why I prefer to do it in software over analog tools, frankly,

is that that constant reorganization and just move on is really helpful. Yeah, I remember back in the day, you mentioned the really expensive programs. For me, the one that is still pretty expensive, but was always available is Mindjet Manager. And the killer feature for that was that you could automatically clean up your mind map, right? You drag something to a different section and everything kind of shifts to accommodate that. And that was a really big deal. But now just about every application that you would use for my mapping is going to allow you to do the same sort of thing. One other thing you've mentioned a few times that I wanted to touch upon was this has been primarily an individual process for me

creating my maps. I don't necessarily collaborate on those a lot, although I do find it helpful to share them once in a while. And it sounds like you do as well. What, how do you share them and how do you use that like as a feedback mechanism with other people? Well, when I'm going to collaborate with people on mind maps, I've always used mind Meister. That's the best one that I've found because it just allows both people to have added access to the, uh, the mind map and you can both kind of flesh things out in real time. The other, I guess, group application for mind mapping is, if I'm going to do this live with a group of people,

sometimes we'll share screen to a conference room TV or something. And then as people are throwing out ideas, I'll build the mind map live so people can see things take shape. But if I'm just going to create something and I'm going to share it with somebody afterwards, I'm going to use MindNode myself. And they allow you to export it a lot of different ways. The ones that I use most often are exporting an actual mind node file. So I can share that with somebody and they can build off of what I did if they really wanted to do that. But we're not passing that back and forth in terms of iterating on the idea. It's just, hey, can I get access to the mind map that you created? So I'll export it

so that they can open it on their own devices. Or I'll just export the image as a PDF. So we have a shared knowledge base as we communicate via Zoom or a phone call or something on the content in that mind map. MindNode also has this cool, I think maybe it's still a beta feature, where you can embed things. And I will do that. I'll embed my own mind maps using the HTML embed codes inside of Obsidian. So you can kind of navigate those mind maps in the little window, zoom in, zoom out, fold things, things like that. Yeah, there's lots of different ways. But I think if you're going to have, there's limited options if you want to actually have

back and forth in the mind map itself. Otherwise, just about every application is going to allow you to export it in some way, shape, or form as an image so you can discuss it. Yeah. And the way I do that with my team when I'm working on something that they want to see or need to see is my node has a web-based publication. Like you can publish it to the web, which I believe might be a security through obscurity. It's like a very unique link or something. But I share that link with the team. And they can see what I'm working on

and how it's developing. They can't actually edit it, but they do give me feedback on it as they see it. Yeah, that's a really cool feature. And underrated, I would argue. I wish there were more applications that allowed you to have those public web views because the value of that is that you can make changes to that

mind map and you can publish those to that public url that you've shared yeah and when you do that they get the updated version of it it's not a separate url that they have to use every single time nice stuff man it's nice i uh I feel like we have been really banging the drum hard for mind mapping, but that is because we're both passionate about it and it's helped us a lot. Hopefully today, if you've not used mind maps, we've inspired you to give it a try. If you do use them, maybe we can give you a few tricks that'll help you do it as well. But in a world where it is hard to stay focused, a mind map to me is very much a nice place to go because it makes it very easy for me to get focused. Maybe you call that intentionality or you call it, you know,

separation of these processes. But I find it very easy to go in there and really get lost in an idea or a project and then be able to come back out of it later. And I like that. Yeah, this is an essential focus tool. And like I mentioned earlier, I would just encourage people, big takeaway from this would be look for more areas to try mind mapping and see what sort of benefit it can provide you. You're not doing it very much. Don't consider it something that you just keep in your bag of tricks for when you absolutely need it.

Look for ways that you can make this a more regular part of your workflow, because I think everyone can benefit from thinking non-linearly. All right. We are the Focus Podcast. You can find us at relay.fm slash focused. Our sponsors today are Indeed and Sofa. Thank you so much for your support. Stick around for Deep Focus if you're a subscriber.

If not, you should check it out. You get an ad-free version of the show plus a little extra content. On Deep Focus today, we're going to talk about my mind map that I made when making my decision to leave the law practice behind me. I thought that'd be kind of fun to talk about the elements of that. So we'll do that. And otherwise, we'll see you next time.