Mind on Maps takes you on a tour of methodical thinking with digital mind maps. Reflect on your past, plan for your future, learn something new, get organized. Study the structure of your thoughts and process of working with them. Perfect the skills that are needed for you to become a mind map ninja — and prepare yourself for the exploration of the uncharted territories of your mind.
I enjoyed "Mind on Maps" by Antti Halla because it was just what I needed to get back into mind maps. A few years ago, I created a few mind maps, but then became interested in a different direction and dropped my interest. Recently, I decided to get back to mind maps as a way to generate ideas for some writing I'm doing. So, I picked up "Mind on Maps", and, rather than teach me how to create mind maps, the book concentrated on why. That got my juices flowing. I began to see past the techniques and into the expectations of what a mind map could do for me.
To greatly summarize what Mr. Halla professed, a mind map: reveals feelings, Opens introspections on my life and/or the project, Evaluates objectivity compared to wishful thinking, Emotional reactions to how the project is developing with each node or topic development, and Idea generation.
Of course, there is much more, but that's what I took away from the book.
The mind map is only a tool. It's not real life. When you're done with the tool, the get on with your life or project and change, advise, build, or do whatever you are trying to do by creating the mind map.
The book probably isn't for everybody, especially those with a high level of mind map experience, and some areas are almost simplistic. But, despite that, I learned something that will help me - to don't become too complex, which I tend to do sometimes. That seems simple advice, but when you're in the middle of a project going bad, you tend to fall back on the details rather than keep focused on the ultimate result. The details belong elsewhere in the project plan.
The author has some great insights about mind maps, but they needed some help in illustrating the concepts more clearly. By definition a mind map is a visual medium, but the only examples were the most basic: the tree design. The author writes frequently about linking maps but never shows what that looks like. There are no examples of the dozens of applications they describe. I also found it awkward that they wrote about using a mind map to explore past, present, and future before they described how to create one. This had the potential to be an extremely helpful book, but it falls short.