Effective Mind Mapping Techniques

I've taught people to mind map for over 10 years. I've made hundreds of mind maps myself and reviewed thousands more as a coach. It's a skill that's allowed me and my students to not only get top results but to do so efficiently and without spending every waking hour studying. So in this video I'll show you my six-step framework for mind mapping which I call GRIND and each step of this framework helps you unlock a different learning outcome. Following these six steps correctly will help you create the perfect mind map which allows you to have a deep and nuanced understanding of a topic much more quickly than what it would normally take you as well as a stronger memory on what you have learned and the ability to apply what you've learned in deeper more nuanced ways. But first we need to clear up a common misunderstanding and talk about what a perfect mind map even is and once we understand what a perfect mind map actually means creating one becomes much easier. You see The perfect mind map is less about the mind map and more about the process you use to create it. Let's say you took one of the mind maps that I created and got first in class, and then you imported that into your own notes. Would you do just as well? With just that, probably not. And that's because you can't just copy paste knowledge from one person's brain into another. Well, at least not yet. Learning is not something that happens automatically or even naturally in some cases. Learning is a series of processes that we have to deliberately engage in. Great learners are ones that have a lot of great processes and bad learners are ones that are either not engaging in enough processes or they're wasting time with the wrong processes. And when we engage in the right effective processes, the side effects of that are better understanding, better memory, and a better ability to apply what we've learned. When we use the wrong processes, that's when we can spend hours and hours reading and writing notes and not really having any benefit on our memory or our understanding or ability to use knowledge. So what most people don't appreciate is that the point of mind mapping isn't to have a mind map. The mind map itself is not the knowledge. Mind mapping is a skill that helps us engage in the right... thinking processes to build the knowledge. And that concept is distilled in my six-step grind checklist. When we create a mind map following grind, we effectively force our brain to engage in high-efficiency encoding, which is basically the technical term for our brain turning information into memory. So let's start with the first step of grind, which is also one of the most fundamental processes that you should ever do in learning. There's almost no situation where you should not be doing this. And step one of grind, the G, is grouping. Grouping is simply arranging related ideas together. So for example, if I have these pens, then grouping just means that I'm categorizing them somehow and putting the categories together. The hard part, which takes thinking and therefore promotes learning, is figuring out what... kind of grouping I want. For example, I could group these pens based on color or I could group them based on how much ink is left in them or I could even group them based on sentimental value. This one I got as a gift and this one I just found off the floor. So you see the way that we think about how these items are similar or related to each other affects the groups we arrive at. The point is that there are always multiple ways that we can group information. And the right way for you and your memory is not always the first or most obvious one, even if that's the way that it's taught to you. So if we have a look, here are some mind maps that do not have much grouping going on. And now we have a look at some mind maps that do have grouping. When we create groups to organize information, it has a two-fold benefit. The first one is that the process of grouping and figuring out how I want to arrange information promotes a stronger memory and depth of understanding. But in addition, the fact that we have organized the information in these categories makes it easier for our brain to then retain and access that information again in the future. In other words, we not only benefit from having these groups in our memory, but the process of making the groups themselves more accessible. is also beneficial. In the learning science research you'll often hear the benefits of grouping referred to by terms like chunking or scaffolding or creating mental models or information schemas and as more and more research comes out we're increasingly finding that grouping is critical for Promoting a strong memory. Now, these days with AI, there are actually some ways that we can kind of cheat this step and get the AI to group things for you. And there are definitely some ways that you can use AI to help you, but there are some ways that it can harm you instead. I'll show you the right way to use AI later, right after I go through the other steps of Grind. Now, step two of Grind is something that we already started doing back in step one while we're grouping. but here we take it to the next level. The R in GRIND, step two stands for relational. We want to make our mind maps relational. Relational means we're thinking about how ideas are related to each other and we're expressing that on our mind map. And there are broadly three levels of relationships that we can form while mind mapping. In level one we have two few relationships. And here's an example of that. Now at level two, we are having too many relationships. It's getting overwhelming. And that's what it looks like here. And then in level three, we have a good amount of very organized relationships. And it's the fact that you can actually have too many relationships that makes this second step. tricky. Here's why. A relationship can be any way that two facts or concepts relate to each other. This could be a influence that they have on each other, it could be a cause and effect relationship, it could be a chronological relationship like step one or step two, or any other conceptual link. Which means there are really a lot of different ways that two things or three things or an entire topic can be related to each other. So it's not enough just to know that two things are related. We have to understand the nature of that relationship. When we put down just every relationship we can find, that's when it ends up looking like that level two where there's too much going on. We have to consciously decide which relationships are important enough for us to put down on the mind map and that's a decision that we need to make. Now the reason that the grind checklist is so effective is because each step of grind influences the other step. So for example, depending on the types of relationships we want to emphasize, it also affects the groups we will form. So if we take this example of a medical disease, this is the method of grouping and the types of relationships. that are a little bit more obvious. This is usually how it will be taught in a textbook. But here is that exact same topic and the same information arranged differently by looking at different types of relationships which leads to different types of groups. And you can see that the two look very different to each other and that reflects it being organized in a different way in our mind. Now there's no right or wrong answer. It's the process of trying to figure out which is best for me that promotes that stronger memory and depth of understanding. You'll also see later on how the other steps influence your grouping and relationships as well. Now the third step of the grind checklist is something that should naturally occur if we did step one, the grouping, and step two, the relationships properly. But if we do happen to miss step three, then we'll find that we know each individual concept pretty well. But we struggle to apply that information, especially in more complex problem solving, having deeper discussions, or just trying to use that knowledge in a way that's different to how it was just directly taught to you. So if you've ever felt that way about what you've learned, then step three is the one you need to look out for. And step three, the I in GRIND, stands for making our mind maps interconnected. Once we have formed the groups and relationships in step one and step two, we need to make sure that the groups themselves are related and connected to each other to create an overall structure, aka a big picture understanding of the topic. And here's an example of a mind map that has done step one and step two correctly. So there are groups and there are lots of relationships, but it's not very well interconnected. You can see that there are these really dense bodies of relationships, but the overall connection between between each group is relatively weak and loose. When we zoom out, it's a little hard to see how that entire topic comes together. This is a pattern I call islands, and it's actually one of the over 90 patterns. in my training program that I teach people to avoid. This usually happens when we get tunnel vision on what we're learning and we're not really thinking about how what we're learning right now relates to that overall big picture frequently enough. And when that happens and we end up with these islands of quite concentrated but sort of isolated groups, then it compartmentalizes our understanding of the topic and it restricts our ability to use that information more freely and fluidly, which is exactly the type of way we need to be able to think about the information to do complex problem solving or to have deeper more nuanced applications. So here's an example where there is a similar density of information but it's been organized with a much better overall structure and aka the interconnectedness is a lot better. And you can see it actually just looks cleaner and more organized as well. And by making sure that our mind maps, are grouped, relational, and interconnected, we're able to form what's known in the research as a knowledge schema, which is basically the way that our brain organizes information to form knowledge and memory. Now, just for your reference, getting to this point with your mind mapping skill is not something that you can usually pull off in just one or two attempts, at least not correctly. Most people try mind mapping they're not really able to hit these first three steps correctly, they don't find mind mapping is very useful for them and then they stop. And yes, if you're not doing it correctly it's not going to be effective. On my training program I normally teach these types of processes over three to four weeks and then an additional three or four weeks to refine and consolidate them. And the reason is because each step of GRIND has several cognitive processes. that we need to get correct to be able to do it properly. And those processes are not always obvious. Trying to do all of them correctly all at once is pretty much impossible. But when we spend a week on just nailing one part of the process and then the next week on the next part of the process, then it means that every week we can consistently improve, unlocking better and better results along the way. By the way, these processes do get quite complicated, so if you want me to dive into any of them in more detail, let me know in the comments. Alternatively, if you want to learn each step of making the perfect mind map straight away in complete detail with step-by-step instructions and feedback on your work, then you might be interested in my program at I Can Study. I'll leave a link in the description if you want to learn more about it and see if it's right for you. Now, by this point, if we've got our grouping, relational, and interconnected parts of the mind map done... We should be seeing some real improvements to our memory and our ability to understand concepts deeply, comprehensively, and accurately, and our ability to apply that information. And in my experience, this is almost certain. So if you've done the G, R, and I steps and you're not seeing these improvements, it probably means that one of those processes was not quite done correctly. However, even though it's effective, a lot of people find that Doing this can take a lot of time, especially during lectures or seminars where someone is talking to you and you need to process that information and write notes on the go. It can seem impossible, which is where step four, the N of GRIND comes in, which is to make our mind maps non-verbal. Non-verbal simply means that we should try to express our ideas without necessarily using so many words. There's a lot of research around how writing lots of notes can actually reduce the quality of your learning because it probably means you're not processing the information as much before you write it down. You might have also noticed that in the previous mind map examples I showed you, most of them were not that wordy. And this is the first level of achieving N, non-verbal, which is just to reduce unnecessary words. Reducing unnecessary words forces you to synthesize and summarize what you're learning. Doing this also helps you to engage in what's called the generation effect of learning, which is one of the most important processes to build new knowledge effectively. One excellent way of reducing your wordiness is just to use your lines, arrows, and spatial arrangement to represent ideas. For example, instead of writing the sentence, the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. She sells seashells by the seashore. We can instead draw something like this. And the bonus benefit of doing this is that it gives us an opportunity to look at the information and ask ourselves, how can I group this? What are the relationships that I can find? Those step one and step two processes. For example, why is the fox jumping over the lazy dog? Why is the dog lazy? Why is she selling seashells? Is there a relationship between the selling of seashells and the lazy dog? Is she raising money to build a fence to protect the dog from the fox because a dog is not lazy, it's actually elderly and disabled? This kind of thinking and questioning is one of the most important things that we can actually do. It's part of a process that's called active learning, which is crucial for promoting a strong memory and a deeper level of understanding. We can also take non-verbal to the next level by adding some simple, sometimes abstract, Images. You can see I did a very basic example on this here with the shells, some symbols here for she and the money. But here's another example where I spent a little bit more time to flesh it out. And doing this is something that I call adding a memory landmark. By drawing these memorable, somewhat abstract images in our mind maps, it makes it easier for us to review the information and come back to it in the future. It creates a unique element in our notes that makes it more memorable and also makes the process a little bit more fun. It does take a bit of time though so I probably wouldn't be doing that during a lecture or seminar. Now to get to this point where we've got G, R, I and N down, I would expect that this takes at least a couple of months of practice. Remember before you have mastered this, you're still going to be getting benefits from just applying this probably straight away. And once you have mastered it, your mind maps are going to be so beneficial for your learning that people around you are going to look at your notes and have no idea how you are doing so well. And they will certainly have no idea about how deep the process was that you used to create your notes. But it is the next two steps of grind that take our mind mapping skill to the highest level. Starting with step five, the D of grind, we have to make our mind maps directional. A perfect mind map not only has groups, has relationships, is interconnected, is non-verbal, it also has directionality or in other words, flow. And no, I don't mean a mystical chakra flow. I mean that we're using arrows to show how the ideas on our mind map interact with each other. Using mind maps purposefully to add direction and flow in our mind map achieves two main things. First of all, it forces us to examine the nature of the relationships and the groups that we've formed. Like for example, if I've got these concepts here, sure, these might all be related to each other, but are they related to each other in a way that looks like this? Or maybe it's more accurate to say that the relationships are more like this. They're the same relationships but it paints a completely different picture. And number two, it actually helps make our mind maps clearer and more organized, which also helps with our retention. Have a look at this mind map that doesn't have great directionality. And now have a look at this one that does. You can see that this one with more directionality, gives the mind map more of a purposeful structure. It adds meaning and context to the mind map which ultimately makes it more memorable. Now finally we're ready for the sixth and final step of grind which is arguably the step that most people skip but is also the step that probably increases our knowledge, our memory, our depth of understanding to the highest level. A grind map without the final sixth step. The E is not a perfect mind map. And the E, step six, stands for making our mind maps emphasized. Emphasizing your mind maps is all about making decisions and judgments about what you're learning, aka that critical level five of Bloom's taxonomy, that higher order thinking. To achieve step six and make our mind maps emphasized, We need to deliberately make a decision on which relationships and groups and combination of relationships and groups are the most important for this topic. And we need to visually represent that on our mind map. This creates something that I often call the backbone of the mind map. Here is an example without Claire emphasizing. And now here are a couple that have good emphasizing. Now, those of you that are on my program have probably heard me or the other coaches talking about the backbone constantly, and there is good reason for that. It's because a mind map with a clear backbone means that the most important relationships and groups have been clearly emphasized, which means we have made clear and deliberate judgments about which parts of the mind map and the topic are most important. Now, remember how I said that each step of the grind map actually influences each other? Well, here's another example of that. When we examine which relationships and groups are the most important, often we find that the relationships and groups we expressed are not actually the best. Maybe there's an alternative grouping or relationship structure that we think would actually make even more sense. And if that happens, that's a disaster because now we have to go through and do step one, two, and three all over again. And that takes time, is what you might think. But actually, this is a good thing. By forcing ourselves to think about what we're learning more critically and make more explicit judgments about the importance of different things, it helps us to refine and consolidate our knowledge. Helping us arrive at a knowledge that is more accurate and deeper and is also stickier in our memory. This back and forth process where we are redoing parts of the mind map and adjusting the structure and regrouping and testing different relationships and going back and forth between different resources. This is actually a natural part of learning which in the research is often called the recursive nature of deep learning. And you can't skip this step. or at least you shouldn't if you want a high level of knowledge mastery. The ability to explain what is and is not important and justify that is a hallmark sign of expertise. Likewise, not being able to clearly articulate what is or is not important, but instead just knowing a whole bunch of individual facts that are generally connected to each other is a sign of a beginner in that topic. Now, earlier in the video, I said that there is a right... and wrong way of using AI to help you make a mind map. And if we remember that mind mapping is a process, a skill that helps us engage in the right thinking process to promote good learning, it becomes much more obvious as to what will help us and what will harm us. For example, I could plug a bunch of keywords into ChatGPT and get it to generate some groups for me. And just like that, it's done. Would that be harmful or helpful for our learning? Well, if we remember the fact that the process of looking for similarities and differences and therefore deciding on which groups we want to form in itself is a process that helps us with learning, then getting AI to just do that for us would be harmful. It saves us time, but it... defeats the purpose of grouping it in the first place. Okay, but what about instead if I think of some groups myself, but then I use ChatGPT to verify whether those groups make sense or not. After all, those are the types of things that it could be hard to verify using a Google search or crawling through your textbook. Now that bit of feedback actually seems pretty helpful. So was this going to be helpful or harmful for our learning? Well, in this case, it would be helpful because we've already done the hard part of thinking about the groups and comparing and arriving at some kind of hypothesis and verifying whether that hypothesis is legitimate or not through Google searches and reading through pages and pages of textbooks and lecture slides. is not really that different from getting the answer in a single report. So as a rule of thumb, using AI in our learning is generally harmful for learning if it, number one, makes it cognitively easier for us to organize the information, and number two, if it bypasses the need for us to compare or make active independent judgments about what we're learning. On the other hand, AI is generally helpful if it saves time for us in just collecting information or in just summarizing large bodies for us to then process and compare and make judgments on. Or number three, it saves time compared to doing a Google search of essentially the same thing. Now, if you follow these guidelines, you will be well on your way to creating the perfect mind map. But as I mentioned before, there's a lot more to mind mapping than just this and there are dozens of these cognitive processes that you need to pull off correctly to get to the perfect mind map stage. If there's a particular aspect of grind that you'd like me to go deeper into those processes for, then please let me know in the comments and I'll think about that for some of my future videos. Or better yet, if you want to get started straight away at becoming a hyper-efficient learner, then you might want to check out my full guided program. You can learn more about it in the link in the description. And if you found this video helpful, you will definitely also like my free newsletter. Every week, I send you a key learning concept and a practical takeaway to enhance your learning efficiency taken from my years of coaching experience. And some of the concepts I email you about are ones that I have never even made a YouTube video about. I'll leave a link to join my newsletter in the description as well. Thank you so much for watching and I will see you in the next one.

But first we need to clear up a common misunderstanding and talk about what a perfect mind map even is and once we understand what a perfect mind map actually means creating one becomes much easier. You see The perfect mind map is less about the mind map and more about the process you use to create it. Let's say you took one of the mind maps that I created and got first in class, and then you imported that into your own notes. Would you do just as well? With just that, probably not.

And that's because you can't just copy paste knowledge from one person's brain into another. Well, at least not yet. Learning is not something that happens automatically or even naturally in some cases. Learning is a series of processes that we have to deliberately engage in.

Great learners are ones that have a lot of great processes and bad learners are ones that are either not engaging in enough processes or they're wasting time with the wrong processes. And when we engage in the right effective processes, the side effects of that are better understanding, better memory, and a better ability to apply what we've learned. When we use the wrong processes, that's when we can spend hours and hours reading and writing notes and not really having any benefit on our memory or our understanding or ability to use knowledge. So what most people don't appreciate is that the point of mind mapping isn't to have a mind map.

The mind map itself is not the knowledge. Mind mapping is a skill that helps us engage in the right... thinking processes to build the knowledge. And that concept is distilled in my six-step grind checklist.

When we create a mind map following grind, we effectively force our brain to engage in high-efficiency encoding, which is basically the technical term for our brain turning information into memory. So let's start with the first step of grind, which is also one of the most fundamental processes that you should ever do in learning. There's almost no situation where you should not be doing this. And step one of grind, the G, is grouping. Grouping is simply arranging related ideas together.

So for example, if I have these pens, then grouping just means that I'm categorizing them somehow and putting the categories together. The hard part, which takes thinking and therefore promotes learning, is figuring out what... kind of grouping I want. For example, I could group these pens based on color or I could group them based on how much ink is left in them or I could even group them based on sentimental value. This one I got as a gift and this one I just found off the floor.

So you see the way that we think about how these items are similar or related to each other affects the groups we arrive at. The point is that there are always multiple ways that we can group information. And the right way for you and your memory is not always the first or most obvious one, even if that's the way that it's taught to you. So if we have a look, here are some mind maps that do not have much grouping going on. And now we have a look at some mind maps that do have grouping.

When we create groups to organize information, it has a two-fold benefit. The first one is that the process of grouping and figuring out how I want to arrange information promotes a stronger memory and depth of understanding. But in addition, the fact that we have organized the information in these categories makes it easier for our brain to then retain and access that information again in the future. In other words, we not only benefit from having these groups in our memory, but the process of making the groups themselves more accessible.

is also beneficial. In the learning science research you'll often hear the benefits of grouping referred to by terms like chunking or scaffolding or creating mental models or information schemas and as more and more research comes out we're increasingly finding that grouping is critical for Promoting a strong memory. Now, these days with AI, there are actually some ways that we can kind of cheat this step and get the AI to group things for you. And there are definitely some ways that you can use AI to help you, but there are some ways that it can harm you instead.

I'll show you the right way to use AI later, right after I go through the other steps of Grind. Now, step two of Grind is something that we already started doing back in step one while we're grouping. but here we take it to the next level. The R in GRIND, step two stands for relational.

We want to make our mind maps relational. Relational means we're thinking about how ideas are related to each other and we're expressing that on our mind map. And there are broadly three levels of relationships that we can form while mind mapping.

In level one we have two few relationships. And here's an example of that. Now at level two, we are having too many relationships.

It's getting overwhelming. And that's what it looks like here. And then in level three, we have a good amount of very organized relationships. And it's the fact that you can actually have too many relationships that makes this second step.

tricky. Here's why. A relationship can be any way that two facts or concepts relate to each other.

This could be a influence that they have on each other, it could be a cause and effect relationship, it could be a chronological relationship like step one or step two, or any other conceptual link. Which means there are really a lot of different ways that two things or three things or an entire topic can be related to each other. So it's not enough just to know that two things are related. We have to understand the nature of that relationship. When we put down just every relationship we can find, that's when it ends up looking like that level two where there's too much going on.

We have to consciously decide which relationships are important enough for us to put down on the mind map and that's a decision that we need to make. Now the reason that the grind checklist is so effective is because each step of grind influences the other step. So for example, depending on the types of relationships we want to emphasize, it also affects the groups we will form.

So if we take this example of a medical disease, this is the method of grouping and the types of relationships. that are a little bit more obvious. This is usually how it will be taught in a textbook. But here is that exact same topic and the same information arranged differently by looking at different types of relationships which leads to different types of groups.

And you can see that the two look very different to each other and that reflects it being organized in a different way in our mind. Now there's no right or wrong answer. It's the process of trying to figure out which is best for me that promotes that stronger memory and depth of understanding. You'll also see later on how the other steps influence your grouping and relationships as well.

Now the third step of the grind checklist is something that should naturally occur if we did step one, the grouping, and step two, the relationships properly. But if we do happen to miss step three, then we'll find that we know each individual concept pretty well. But we struggle to apply that information, especially in more complex problem solving, having deeper discussions, or just trying to use that knowledge in a way that's different to how it was just directly taught to you.

So if you've ever felt that way about what you've learned, then step three is the one you need to look out for. And step three, the I in GRIND, stands for making our mind maps interconnected. Once we have formed the groups and relationships in step one and step two, we need to make sure that the groups themselves are related and connected to each other to create an overall structure, aka a big picture understanding of the topic. And here's an example of a mind map that has done step one and step two correctly. So there are groups and there are lots of relationships, but it's not very well interconnected.

You can see that there are these really dense bodies of relationships, but the overall connection between between each group is relatively weak and loose. When we zoom out, it's a little hard to see how that entire topic comes together. This is a pattern I call islands, and it's actually one of the over 90 patterns.

in my training program that I teach people to avoid. This usually happens when we get tunnel vision on what we're learning and we're not really thinking about how what we're learning right now relates to that overall big picture frequently enough. And when that happens and we end up with these islands of quite concentrated but sort of isolated groups, then it compartmentalizes our understanding of the topic and it restricts our ability to use that information more freely and fluidly, which is exactly the type of way we need to be able to think about the information to do complex problem solving or to have deeper more nuanced applications. So here's an example where there is a similar density of information but it's been organized with a much better overall structure and aka the interconnectedness is a lot better.

And you can see it actually just looks cleaner and more organized as well. And by making sure that our mind maps, are grouped, relational, and interconnected, we're able to form what's known in the research as a knowledge schema, which is basically the way that our brain organizes information to form knowledge and memory. Now, just for your reference, getting to this point with your mind mapping skill is not something that you can usually pull off in just one or two attempts, at least not correctly.

Most people try mind mapping they're not really able to hit these first three steps correctly, they don't find mind mapping is very useful for them and then they stop. And yes, if you're not doing it correctly it's not going to be effective. On my training program I normally teach these types of processes over three to four weeks and then an additional three or four weeks to refine and consolidate them.

And the reason is because each step of GRIND has several cognitive processes. that we need to get correct to be able to do it properly. And those processes are not always obvious.

Trying to do all of them correctly all at once is pretty much impossible. But when we spend a week on just nailing one part of the process and then the next week on the next part of the process, then it means that every week we can consistently improve, unlocking better and better results along the way. By the way, these processes do get quite complicated, so if you want me to dive into any of them in more detail, let me know in the comments. Alternatively, if you want to learn each step of making the perfect mind map straight away in complete detail with step-by-step instructions and feedback on your work, then you might be interested in my program at I Can Study.

I'll leave a link in the description if you want to learn more about it and see if it's right for you. Now, by this point, if we've got our grouping, relational, and interconnected parts of the mind map done... We should be seeing some real improvements to our memory and our ability to understand concepts deeply, comprehensively, and accurately, and our ability to apply that information.

And in my experience, this is almost certain. So if you've done the G, R, and I steps and you're not seeing these improvements, it probably means that one of those processes was not quite done correctly. However, even though it's effective, a lot of people find that Doing this can take a lot of time, especially during lectures or seminars where someone is talking to you and you need to process that information and write notes on the go.

It can seem impossible, which is where step four, the N of GRIND comes in, which is to make our mind maps non-verbal. Non-verbal simply means that we should try to express our ideas without necessarily using so many words. There's a lot of research around how writing lots of notes can actually reduce the quality of your learning because it probably means you're not processing the information as much before you write it down. You might have also noticed that in the previous mind map examples I showed you, most of them were not that wordy. And this is the first level of achieving N, non-verbal, which is just to reduce unnecessary words.

Reducing unnecessary words forces you to synthesize and summarize what you're learning. Doing this also helps you to engage in what's called the generation effect of learning, which is one of the most important processes to build new knowledge effectively. One excellent way of reducing your wordiness is just to use your lines, arrows, and spatial arrangement to represent ideas. For example, instead of writing the sentence, the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.

She sells seashells by the seashore. We can instead draw something like this. And the bonus benefit of doing this is that it gives us an opportunity to look at the information and ask ourselves, how can I group this?

What are the relationships that I can find? Those step one and step two processes. For example, why is the fox jumping over the lazy dog? Why is the dog lazy? Why is she selling seashells?

Is there a relationship between the selling of seashells and the lazy dog? Is she raising money to build a fence to protect the dog from the fox because a dog is not lazy, it's actually elderly and disabled? This kind of thinking and questioning is one of the most important things that we can actually do. It's part of a process that's called active learning, which is crucial for promoting a strong memory and a deeper level of understanding.

We can also take non-verbal to the next level by adding some simple, sometimes abstract, Images. You can see I did a very basic example on this here with the shells, some symbols here for she and the money. But here's another example where I spent a little bit more time to flesh it out.

And doing this is something that I call adding a memory landmark. By drawing these memorable, somewhat abstract images in our mind maps, it makes it easier for us to review the information and come back to it in the future. It creates a unique element in our notes that makes it more memorable and also makes the process a little bit more fun. It does take a bit of time though so I probably wouldn't be doing that during a lecture or seminar.

Now to get to this point where we've got G, R, I and N down, I would expect that this takes at least a couple of months of practice. Remember before you have mastered this, you're still going to be getting benefits from just applying this probably straight away. And once you have mastered it, your mind maps are going to be so beneficial for your learning that people around you are going to look at your notes and have no idea how you are doing so well. And they will certainly have no idea about how deep the process was that you used to create your notes. But it is the next two steps of grind that take our mind mapping skill to the highest level.

Starting with step five, the D of grind, we have to make our mind maps directional. A perfect mind map not only has groups, has relationships, is interconnected, is non-verbal, it also has directionality or in other words, flow. And no, I don't mean a mystical chakra flow. I mean that we're using arrows to show how the ideas on our mind map interact with each other. Using mind maps purposefully to add direction and flow in our mind map achieves two main things.

First of all, it forces us to examine the nature of the relationships and the groups that we've formed. Like for example, if I've got these concepts here, sure, these might all be related to each other, but are they related to each other in a way that looks like this? Or maybe it's more accurate to say that the relationships are more like this.

They're the same relationships but it paints a completely different picture. And number two, it actually helps make our mind maps clearer and more organized, which also helps with our retention. Have a look at this mind map that doesn't have great directionality.

And now have a look at this one that does. You can see that this one with more directionality, gives the mind map more of a purposeful structure. It adds meaning and context to the mind map which ultimately makes it more memorable. Now finally we're ready for the sixth and final step of grind which is arguably the step that most people skip but is also the step that probably increases our knowledge, our memory, our depth of understanding to the highest level. A grind map without the final sixth step.

The E is not a perfect mind map. And the E, step six, stands for making our mind maps emphasized. Emphasizing your mind maps is all about making decisions and judgments about what you're learning, aka that critical level five of Bloom's taxonomy, that higher order thinking. To achieve step six and make our mind maps emphasized, We need to deliberately make a decision on which relationships and groups and combination of relationships and groups are the most important for this topic. And we need to visually represent that on our mind map.

This creates something that I often call the backbone of the mind map. Here is an example without Claire emphasizing. And now here are a couple that have good emphasizing. Now, those of you that are on my program have probably heard me or the other coaches talking about the backbone constantly, and there is good reason for that.

It's because a mind map with a clear backbone means that the most important relationships and groups have been clearly emphasized, which means we have made clear and deliberate judgments about which parts of the mind map and the topic are most important. Now, remember how I said that each step of the grind map actually influences each other? Well, here's another example of that. When we examine which relationships and groups are the most important, often we find that the relationships and groups we expressed are not actually the best.

Maybe there's an alternative grouping or relationship structure that we think would actually make even more sense. And if that happens, that's a disaster because now we have to go through and do step one, two, and three all over again. And that takes time, is what you might think.

But actually, this is a good thing. By forcing ourselves to think about what we're learning more critically and make more explicit judgments about the importance of different things, it helps us to refine and consolidate our knowledge. Helping us arrive at a knowledge that is more accurate and deeper and is also stickier in our memory.

This back and forth process where we are redoing parts of the mind map and adjusting the structure and regrouping and testing different relationships and going back and forth between different resources. This is actually a natural part of learning which in the research is often called the recursive nature of deep learning. And you can't skip this step.

or at least you shouldn't if you want a high level of knowledge mastery. The ability to explain what is and is not important and justify that is a hallmark sign of expertise. Likewise, not being able to clearly articulate what is or is not important, but instead just knowing a whole bunch of individual facts that are generally connected to each other is a sign of a beginner in that topic. Now, earlier in the video, I said that there is a right... and wrong way of using AI to help you make a mind map.

And if we remember that mind mapping is a process, a skill that helps us engage in the right thinking process to promote good learning, it becomes much more obvious as to what will help us and what will harm us. For example, I could plug a bunch of keywords into ChatGPT and get it to generate some groups for me. And just like that, it's done.

Would that be harmful or helpful for our learning? Well, if we remember the fact that the process of looking for similarities and differences and therefore deciding on which groups we want to form in itself is a process that helps us with learning, then getting AI to just do that for us would be harmful. It saves us time, but it... defeats the purpose of grouping it in the first place. Okay, but what about instead if I think of some groups myself, but then I use ChatGPT to verify whether those groups make sense or not.

After all, those are the types of things that it could be hard to verify using a Google search or crawling through your textbook. Now that bit of feedback actually seems pretty helpful. So was this going to be helpful or harmful for our learning? Well, in this case, it would be helpful because we've already done the hard part of thinking about the groups and comparing and arriving at some kind of hypothesis and verifying whether that hypothesis is legitimate or not through Google searches and reading through pages and pages of textbooks and lecture slides. is not really that different from getting the answer in a single report.

So as a rule of thumb, using AI in our learning is generally harmful for learning if it, number one, makes it cognitively easier for us to organize the information, and number two, if it bypasses the need for us to compare or make active independent judgments about what we're learning. On the other hand, AI is generally helpful if it saves time for us in just collecting information or in just summarizing large bodies for us to then process and compare and make judgments on. Or number three, it saves time compared to doing a Google search of essentially the same thing.

Now, if you follow these guidelines, you will be well on your way to creating the perfect mind map. But as I mentioned before, there's a lot more to mind mapping than just this and there are dozens of these cognitive processes that you need to pull off correctly to get to the perfect mind map stage. If there's a particular aspect of grind that you'd like me to go deeper into those processes for, then please let me know in the comments and I'll think about that for some of my future videos.

Or better yet, if you want to get started straight away at becoming a hyper-efficient learner, then you might want to check out my full guided program. You can learn more about it in the link in the description. And if you found this video helpful, you will definitely also like my free newsletter. Every week, I send you a key learning concept and a practical takeaway to enhance your learning efficiency taken from my years of coaching experience. And some of the concepts I email you about are ones that I have never even made a YouTube video about.

I'll leave a link to join my newsletter in the description as well. Thank you so much for watching and I will see you in the next one.

Transcript for:Effective Mind Mapping Techniques

Transcript for:
Effective Mind Mapping Techniques