Customer Reviews

The Mind Map Book: How to Use Radiant Thinking to Maximize Your Brain's Untapped Potential

5 star:		(44)
4 star:		(18)
3 star:		(9)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(16)

 

 

The majority of the reviews seem to focus on the reviewer's feelings: towards the author, his previous works, "it was too simple," "too complicated," "repetitive," and so on. However, if you're not familiar with mind-maps (which are creative techniques used to organize thoughts, identify key ideas, link themes, and remember more effectively, while using the both sides of the brain), you might think of it as a gimmicky New-Agey concept without practical applications. In other words, not useful, interesting but not useful. I'd just like to give personal endorsement. I've used mind maps for about twenty years to organize engineering projects at work, remember books I've read, identify daily goals, learn chess opening ideas, outline papers I'm writing, and identify the important from the trivial. This book does have flaws in that Buzan has already written it in his earlier works, and the title suggests to more impressive results than can be delivered ("maximize your brain's potential"). You won't become a genius, you will still have to work at thinking, you'll just have an additional tool to help you. Mind maps are fun, easy-to-use, useful ways to organize and retain information and generate ideas. Linear notes just don't jog the memory. It's still amazing to me how a hastily drawn mind map on an article, book, movie, lecture - a map I'll scribble with stupid little drawings and doodles and throw away days later - can help me remember so much years later !! It works. I use it. It helps.

"..half of the human brain is devoted directly or indirectly to vision.." said Professor Mriganka Sur of MIT's Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences
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In this book, Tony Buzan convincingly argues for the importance of Mind Mapping--a method of recording and organizaing information based on the nature of human brains. After reading this book and experimenting with Mind Mapping myself, I do believe that our usual writing system does not enable our brains to function effectively and Mind Mapping is a major improvement over it.

Mind Mapping is based on a few basic principles summarized as follows:
* Represent concepts with keywords
* Make associations
* Organize into hierarchy
* Visualize concepts using images
* Stimulate your brain with colors and symbols
* Order and emphasize according to importance

The major benefits from the use of Mind Maps are:
* Images, colors, and associations stimulates creative thinking.
* Mind Mapping forces you to think actively about the things you learn.
* Efficiency in making/taking notes.
* Learning is simply more fun!

The latter part of the book suggests many uses of Mind Maps: writing a personal diary, sharing stories within a family, thinking, teaching, making notes, presenting a lecture, and collaborating in a professional environment. For example, Boeing created a 25-foot long Mind Map summarizing an aircraft engineering manual, which helped save millions of dollars worth of staff time.

Tony's writing is lucid and the presentation of the book is excellent. I found the colorful examples given throughout the book especially inspiring and useful. The only complaints I have would be frequent repetition of information and sometimes excessive claims of the power of our brains without solid scientific proofs. These will however likely to have positive impacts on the readers, that is, help them think more positively about their own capability and strengthening the message that the book wants to deliver. So you can think of them as features or defects depending on your personal preferences.

Given the amount and complexity of information we need to deal with in the modern world, Mind Mapping is a very valuable tool everyone needs to possess. The benefits far outweigh the cost of learning it.

I loved this book. It is especially fun to flip through and look at all of the illustrations which are just as valuable as the reading. My only criticism of the mind mapping model and subsequent software is that it is "too centralized." Natures systems are often decentralized where many hubs are of equal importance. Our mind is the same. Our thoughts are built upon many "hubs" of equal importance rather than one central hub in the middle of many radiating thoughts. In other words, I have found mind mapping to be far more useful when thought of as a "network" rather than a "central hub" like that of a wheel with radiating spokes. A decentralized network is made of many equal hubs with many radiating thoughts and ideas which relate to other thoughts and ideas and other hubs. No single hub is more relevant, "bigger," or more "central" than any other. In this way, the system has greater integrity and stability.

This book uses vivid color images and clear examples to explain the theory and practice of Mind Mapping. I worked through the excercises sequentially and found that one task led into another nicely until I was Mind Mapping like a pro. I found the thorough explanation of the rationale underpinning the structure of Mind Maps helpful and interesting. I also enjoyed all of the different uses covered. I use Mind Mapping to write speeches, plan projects, plan my days, make decisions, communicate ideas, and learn and retain information. I plan to use Mind Mapping to design Websites. If you want a complete and beautiful treatment of Mind Mapping, this is the book.

The Mind Map Book tells us how to use radiant thinking to maximize our untapped potential. Presented clearly and colorfully, in linear manner, we are guided through the process of making our own mind-maps so that we can improve our memory, concentration and creativity in planning and structuring our thoughts. Do you need to buy the book? Basically - no. When I was a student, some twenty years ago, I remember meeting a very keen proponent of mind maps in the laundry, and what I learned from him in twenty minutes was enough. Also, there are enough traveling professors in this world who are just aching to tell you how much you can do with an addled brain and set of colored felt-tips that buying this book is really not worth your while. What is good about the book, is that it does tell you clearly and methodically how to create mind maps of good design. What is bad about the book is the relentless sales pitch. Virtually everything spiral or fractal that occurs in nature gets a full color plate, and there are lists of doodles from the famous that you can test your intelligence as to who the creator was (hardly mind maps). Finally, there is a long list of merchandise that mind map fans can buy if they are so inclined. You can even send a donation of at least $10 to the author so that you can aid him in building his money-making centers! Come on Tony. The only radial thinking that you're doing is in the numbers that spiral around your head every time you go to the bank.

Tony Buzan invented the techniques. Many others have written about it with or without giving him full credit for it. In any case, this is the only book you need to read about this subject. It covers all the aspects and applications. It covers the basic rules.

I have about 10 years of mindmapping experience. I mindmap today a lot less than I used to during my first 3 years. I think the best application of mindmapping is for studying, reviewing, and memorizing materials. If I had known about mindmapping when I went through school(s), I would have done a lot better than I did. Catching mindmapping a bit later in life, it allowed me to study a lot of new stuff much quicker than I would have otherwise. There is really something about involving your whole brain in the learning process, instead of just the left one. And, mindmapping does that naturally for you.

Having read some of the other somewhat negative reviews, I want to say this: yes, the subject matter is somewhat simple. The concepts are not difficult, but the practice takes some learning. What I found extremely helpful were the scores of maps dones by expert mind mappers from all walks of life. That really helped me get a feel for how to use this tool. Plus all the plates of 'natural architecture.' This may not be the best book for delving into the theory of mind mapping, but is excellent if what you mainly want to do is practice it.

If you are someone who "doodles" or sketches a lot, then this book will be invaluable for you. Tony and Barry Buzan first lay down the foundations for "visual memory" and then teach you how to use this type of memory in order to create "Mind Maps" to learn, synthesize and retain information. This book is extremely well organized and beautifully illustrated. There are numerous "Mind Maps" included to clearly illustrate concepts covered in each chapter. There are also photographs from nature and photomicroscopy which serve to illustrate that nature uses these structures too! By applying the concepts put forth in this book and accomplishing the exercises, the reader is left with a "toolbox" of techniques which greatly facilitate the reader's ability to organize, synthesize and retain information. I've been dealing with some extremely technical concepts for close to ten years now, never with a great deal of success or clarity. By using the techniques in this book, I was able to organize the information in a way which suddenly made it crystal clear! In addition, the "Mind Maps" I made enable me to review the material in just a few seconds. I believe this book will be invaluable for those people who process information visually. I'm sure it would be valuable for other information processing "modalities" too. The only reason why I gave the book an 8 rating is that I have found it less useful for those individuals who do not process information in a visual mode.

As an academic, whose job is to report research and organise research projects, I find mind mapping a useful tool for organising ideas, drafting outlines, monitoring progress, planning meetings, keeping minutes, etc.
So I bought the book from the guy who "invented" mind mapping to learn more about it. What did I learn? In a nutshell, DONT WASTE YOUR TIME AND MONEY, the book might even put you off for good from a quite useful tool.

Of course, if you have a special kind of humour, you can read it as a perfect parody of a "scientific" how-to book. This book is a wonderful mixture of unbearable hype, awful jargon and artful use of pseudo science. Not that the author wouldn't be clear about it: Tony Buzan (I guess Barry had his reasons for emphasising in the starting chapter that it was written by Tony ...) states right at the beginning that this book will basically solve all the problems you've ever had (in fact, not just you, !mankind!) by introducing you to "a new concept in the development of thought" and "a revolutionary new tool". It gets even better later on when you learn about mind mapping as "the next step in the evolution of the human mind".
To a certain extent, the whole thing works; it does stimulate your creativity - I'm writing my first ever book review on Amazon - and it helps you practice speed reading - there is so little information amidst all this breathless writing that you can easily finish it in an hour.
But let's be serious. The first couple of chapters teach you how your brain works, empty blah based on "scientific research" mostly dating back to the 1970s (of course, only material from sources of various quality exactly supporting a preconceived argument). That's a bit like James Watt explaining a fuel cell powered car to you - not completely off the mark, but, you know, a few things have happened in the meantime ...
Then you get to learn the principles, "the laws" (I would have liked commandments; it would fit the style). Common sense dressed up as wisdom and nothing turned into something through fancy relabelling. I really like the distinction between the Mini Mind Map (TM) and the full Mind Map (TM). "Power words" and "basic ordering ideas" for comprehensive categories is also pretty cool. From there, you move on to applications. Same story. I skipped the end; at last I heeded other reviews of the book.
But the thing that makes the book a real turn-off is the way it is written and typeset:
- We know that repeating important bits aid your memory, so you get LOTS of repetitions (especially mind mapping is SUPER, mind mapping is REALLY super, you get the idea ...).
- We know that metaphors help you memorise stuff, so you get LOTS of them (really hilarious stuff, I failed to note it down while reading).
- We know that using the odd adjective and slightly colourful language enhances readability, so you get LOTS of it. This is where the book scores 12 out of 10 points. It's littered with superlatives like infinite, enormous, gigantic, etc. and very large numbers (trillions, quadrillions, 1's and lots of 0's behind them). An example "... means that we are all magically and eerily different from each other. ... You who are now reading this sentence contain, in your brain, trillions of associations shared by no one else, past, present or future" (p. 72). Spooky would have been nice there!
- We know that highlighting text adds emphasis, so we get LOTS of HigHLIghTEd text.
- We know that using different fonts add visual clarity, so we get LOTS of different fonts.
- We know that boxes are useful for setting apart important points or illustrative material, so we get LOTS of them.
- We know that a good image says more than a thousand words, so we get LOTS of psychedelic mind maps, most of them unreadable, but very LOUD.
- We know that selling nothing as something can work if you dress it up well, so you get LOTS of it, e.g. "Intuition is a much-maligned mental skill which I and neuropsychologist Michael Gelb prefer to define as 'superlogic'" (p. 111) which then allows you to engage in "superthinking" (you know, my friend and expert-of-the-human-psyche Joe Abrahamovitch Miller and I like to call it the thing only our wives have ... Joe, by the way, is a the bartender in the local pub around the corner). You also get the "parabrain", the "paraconscious", you get the regular urban myth that we only use a fraction of our brain, and so on and so forth.

I could go on, but I guess you get the picture. By the way, if you're still reading, you stand a good chance of finishing the book ...
Here are a few suggestions for improvements in future editions (of which there will be many, I'm sure):
- don't be shy of large numbers, I missed the quintillions!
- referring to the Greek and the Romans as well as a lot of people with weired slavonic names is ok. But times are changing: These days you have to have some Indians and Chinese in there and Atlantis doesn't hurt. You could also refer to the wisdom of the animal kingdom and wisdom acquired in earlier lives.

To conclude, a comment by a colleague of mine: "Can you inject the stuff?"

Pre-WW1 we had the scratchpad (write some scribbles, notes and diagrams on scrap paper to help you think and learn). Then came timelines, concept maps, spider diagrams and a multitude of other useful charts and visual styles. These were and are researched and people report that they generally work well for their specific tasks. Even better, we found the more of these various strategies you use in the right places, the more likely you will be successful as a learner and communicator.

Quite a few years later (1970s) Tony Buzan claims to have originated the mind map. Basically, this is just one of the color versions of the previous diagrams with images and a radial hierarchy. So he claimed to have invented a superior system that will boost your brain but adding color and images, and he then trademarked it for business. Then he says it will help you access the "99% of your untapped potential" "the full range of your left and right cortical skills" `It will change your life' `It is a Swiss army knife for the brain". He also claims that the other options out there are limiting for the brain, that they are "prison sentences for the mind" that they cause the mind to "phase out and shut off", and that they are a lesson in "tunnel vision". This is both negative thinking and the most sordid salesmanship you could find in a book.

The mind map uses key words only, on single lines only, going round in circles only. This is not only limiting, it is basically a horribly dumbed down version of the concept map that was developed in the 60s by J.Novak. The links between each concept are removed, thus removing the meaning, and cutting the option for communication. Dumb is right! The mind map is unoriginal and very poor compared to the other options out there.

Now I am only writing this way because this is the style you can expect in the mind map book! Generally off-putting to anyone with a brain. I had an open mind before reading the book, and the author attempted to limit it. If you want to free your mind, get a professional book on study techniques or business graphics.

Regards

D.Donna