The Mind Map Book
Your brain is a super bio-computer that dwarfs any machine on the market. If you understand how it works and how to work with it, you can employ and enjoy astonishing powers of learning, memory, concentration, and creativity in planning and structuring thought on all levels. Now, in The Mind Map Book, Tony and Barry Buzan have provided a comprehensive operating manual for all who want to use their brains to their fullest potential. Mind Mapping and Radiant Thinking, the revolutionary new method of accessing heretofore untapped intelligences, was developed by world-famous brain-power expert Tony Buzan by analyzing original breakthrough scientific insights into the workings of the brain. It is a process currently used with extraordinary success by multinational corporations, leading universities, champion athletes, and outstanding artists. The Mind Map Book is the only book that both explains the fundamental operation of the brain in terms of its thinking processes and explains how to unleash and harness its power. This remarkable book clearly and concisely describes how your brain actually stores and processes all the information that pours into it. Then, with the aid of vivid diagrams and exciting, easy-to-follow exercises, it shows you precisely how to mirror and magnify your brain's pattern of perception and association in the way you learn, think, and create...
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Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- Probably _The Mind Map Book_ by Tony Buzan.
This was a long time ago, but the book was beautiful right off the shelf and it made so much immediate, intuitive sense. It also came at just the right time in my life when I needed to focus on broad outlays of information, but didn't yet realize it, or how to do it.
Later on I developed my own method but I still go back and browse the book from time to time. A few years after my first reading, I used mind mapping to help me with a very stressful job and was able to get weeks ahead of my work there, using the extra time to learn about interesting new tech.
But beyond the principles/methods themselves, the book opened my mind to the idea that one could find ways to work with additional inspiration and productivity in the ideas & concepts space, which I built on as a foundation later as a professional trainer and coach.
The author's lecturing presence and style was also pretty unique. He was a broad thinker by nature, and was able to impart the beauty of such as quite uniquely different from the deeper sort of thinking.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEokHNWf-Qg
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Buzan
Interesting post idea, thanks.
- The Mind Map Book by Tony Buzan is a good place to start. As are his video interviews and lectures that can be found here and there.
Essentially they are all about creating a breadth-first outlay, when there are lots of things to cover, think about, or discuss. Then you can tack your additional needs on around that.
Tony was also obsessed with learning, memory, and memorization as general aims in life, so he tried to map natural patterns like sensory factors, fractals, and meaningful branches onto his mind map scheme. In his view, this merge with the mystically-natural was in effect a merge with the best one could achieve in taking notes.
IMHO however, those are some of the least interesting parts in terms of day to day note taking utility, and the capture of a broad set of ideas as if it's all owned by one central topic is basically fantastic enough for most uses. This is also known as a concept map.
- Here are some of mine...
Non-fic
- Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman by Richard Feynman
I used to be a member of a cult, and toward the end of that experience, I laughed when I realized I had read this book more than my cult's holy texts. We used to ask each other how many times we'd read those books, and I'd always think, "don't ask me about Feynman," as his experiences really get at the analytical-intuitive mind and takes it to a spiritual level that's not really allowable or approachable from within a typical spiritual text. I still think this is a pretty remarkable feat.
- Alone in the Ocean by Slava Kurilov
Something of the opposite of Feynman's book above, this is a very spiritual feelings-oriented book but it's grounded in a very real experience--the author defected from the USSR by jumping off an official "cruise to nowhere" ship and swimming to the Philippines. It helped me consider the concept of personal freedom and how much it overlaps with feelings for some people, long before it overlaps with objective logic. I learned that my feelings can be an important early-alert system, far from an unintelligible mush.
- Around the World on a Bicycle by Thomas Stevens
This book got me back into cycling exploration after a long hiatus.
- The Mind Map Book by Tony Buzan
I can't put a number on how many helpful and even liberating mind maps I created since buying this book in 1996 or so. I eventually spun off my own system that's similar but with various extensions.
Fiction
- The Aubrey-Maturin Series by Patrick O'Brian
Reading this series I realized how much depth, detail, and subtlety can really do for a work. It blew me away. Previously I had been of the mind that it was best for an author to act something like a professional communication robot, serving the reader and relentlessly cutting away any fat. But I think that kind of reverses itself if you are able to get at the human aspect, the us-fascination of your work--once it's there, it's probably more fun for both writer and reader to celebrate it.
- The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon
While reading, I was excited and horrified to learn that my psychology overlaps with this fictional kid's psychology in more ways than it was comfortable to admit. I decided to hold onto that, and explore it. It helped me open up a world of functionality I now use over and over in journaling and problem-solving.
- Watchmen, writer Alan Moore, artist Dave Gibbons and colorist John Higgins
Wow--what _do_ you do, how do you act, what is your response in this general kind of a situation? It's an incredible setup for such a question, one in which the ideal situation has ended up on its head, completely upside down with the good looking totally bad, and the totally bad coming out even worse than before.
- I looked it up out of curiosity. In Buzan's "The Mind Map Book" (and other books by him), he suggests mind maps can significantly enhance learning, memory, and creative thinking, and that labeling lines/branches:
• Creates meaningful connections between concepts
• Allows more fluid and associative thinking
• Allow for greater creativity and recall compared to spider diagrams
He suggests using curved lines, colors and images, and to develop your own personal style of mind mapping
- Wow I'm surprised to see "The Mind Map Book" on that list. I was just about to buy that book from Amazon when I decided to read Hacker News first. Now I'm going to wait until Sunday to see if I need to buy it. Thank you for your generosity, this is a great idea.
