# Are Mind Maps a WASTE OF TIME?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mHAhV8YIlks

[00:00] so a lot of people know me as the mind map guy that was one of the first videos that i made that sort of went viral but the thing is that mind maps most of the time do not work and let me explain why a number of years ago i was giving the seminar on study skills it was one of the first times i've ever given a big seminar on study skills and i remember that a student in the front row she put up her hand and asked what's another technique that's not mind maps because i've tried it and it didn't work for me and at the time i wasn't experienced enough to really know the nuance behind the question that she was really asking years on looking back at it now that's a memory that sticks out to me because it was a very simple question and a very common thought that a lot of students have a lot of you may have this thought as well that you've tried mind maps before and it hasn't worked so well for you and what's an alternative technique and let me explain why that question is kind of not looking at things in the right angle for those of you that are new i'm dr justin i'm a former medical
[01:01] doctor now a full-time learning coach
[01:03] and it's my job to teach students like yourself and professionals how to learn and manage themselves more effectively
[01:10] i've been practicing now as a learning coach for almost 10 years and if you like the content i'd appreciate if you give it a like and a subscribe
[01:16] now the first thing that i need to establish straight off the bat is that the mind map is not a single technique
[01:23] this is very important see a lot of people teach mind maps very differently
[01:28] there are different methods there are different books each guru seems to have their own kind of version of it and i guess i'm no different
[01:33] i have a very specific way that i teach it but the thing is that most of these methods and very specific instructions on how to do the mymab are basically completely unsupported by any evidence or even theory in most of the situations that i've seen especially with some extremely common methods of mind mapping which i won't name because i don't want to get sued
[01:57] the guidelines seem like they were
[02:02] just the favorite flavor of the person
[02:05] that made that technique and then they just felt that it would work or something
[02:10] and then they published on it
[02:12] and as a result inadvertently some of those recommendations actually end up being detrimental and can lead to a bad experience
[02:20] and what i think a lot of people don't realize is that there are literally an infinite number of ways that you can make a mind map
[02:28] because what's important is not the way that a mind map looks on paper once you've written it all down
[02:38] what's important is what's happening in your brain it's about what you're thinking about and how you are processing the information that you consume in your mind and how your note-taking technique facilitates that kind of thinking
[02:54] it is a mind map a map of your mind and just like if you go to a new city that has roads that are
[03:03] really hard to follow and you look at the map and you think man this map is really hard to follow.
[03:07] you wouldn't say that therefore maps are categorically not effective.
[03:14] you would say that this city is disorganized and if you had you know some city level god powers you could rearrange this city streets and roads to make them more organized and then your map would reflect that and so it too would be more organized and you would be able to use it as an effective reference point as well as to facilitate your ability to navigate from point a to point b.
[03:41] obviously this is analogy because this is kind of also how the brain works as well.
[03:45] we form these networks we form these pathways and the more organized and the clearer the pathways are i guess the better quality the roads are that is how deeply we've thought about the connection and how explicit we are because there's a difference for example between knowing that two concepts or ideas or facts are related together.
[04:03] understanding what the relationship between those is and being very clear and explicit about the nature of that relationship and how important that relationship is compared to let's say another set of relationships that may be very similar.
[04:19] those are different levels of thinking.
[04:21] live different levels of knowledge mastery and that also translates to a different ability to perform and retrieve that knowledge.
[04:26] it's very logical and this is kind of all within this field of what we now call human cognitive architecture.
[04:34] which is one of the leading schools of thought behind how learning works now.
[04:38] the appearance of a mind map on paper can be a good reflection of what's happening in the mind.
[04:43] so often when we have students working through our program myself and my coaches we look at your work and then we pull out symptoms like a doctor diagnosing.
[04:55] we look at signs we look at symptoms we look at particular patterns we say hmm if it looks this way if they've demonstrated that they're writing words like this and there's a certain arrow.
[05:05] going in this direction instead of the other direction.
[05:08] it indicates that they probably didn't think about a certain aspect of it.
[05:12] which informs us about the likely cognitive processes that you are using.
[05:16] but the tricky part is that there is a lot of variation between different individuals, different topics, even on different days.
[05:25] the same person studying the same topic may activate different cognitive pathways.
[05:30] and therefore they would have different thoughts.
[05:35] and therefore those thoughts would affect other thoughts in a different way in a different order.
[05:40] and if your mind map is truly reflecting your thought process, your mind map would actually look different as well.
[05:46] and you could in some cases actually get a different result in terms of your retention, in terms of the depth at which you were able to understand the information.
[05:54] so there are relatively subtle small differences that can make very large significant impacts.
[06:01] anyone going through my program, you will know completely what I'm talking about here.
[06:04] and in fact if
[06:05] you are going through programming.
[06:06] actually can you leave a comment down below just to tell other people about how significant some of these tiny little nuances can be at affecting your result?
[06:13] so let's take an example let's take the six steps to a perfect mind map video that i made and one of the first things that i talk about there which is grouping information.
[06:24] now it seems relatively straightforward all you have to do is group information together how hard could it be to group information?
[06:34] well i'm just going to demonstrate to you right now how big of a difference it is in terms of how you group it and what thoughts you have while you are grouping it.
[06:45] so what i've got here is a list of some of the basic principles of learning.
[06:50] it's not a comprehensive list but i thought it was enough just to set an example.
[06:55] now this could be a list of keywords that you got from your curriculum or from your coursework or wherever you're getting the information from and what we're going to do is we're going to go through and we're going to show how different ways of grouping can affect
[07:06] this now the thing about grouping.
[07:08] something is that it's not a checklist.
[07:09] it's not just like oh here's a group.
[07:11] done here's a group done here's a group.
[07:12] done you're not activating much.
[07:14] cognitively from doing that you are.
[07:17] comparing the ideas against each other.
[07:19] you are having to evaluate them and you.
[07:22] are having to use slightly higher orders.
[07:24] of thinking to.
[07:25] group something even if you're grouping.
[07:27] it poorly you're still having to do that.
[07:29] but the level and the depth at which.
[07:32] you're thinking about things completely.
[07:34] affects the quality of the group and.
[07:35] therefore the quality of the learning so.
[07:36] for example if i looked at this group.
[07:38] and i just said okay i'm just going to.
[07:39] group this based on the things that have.
[07:41] the letter o in them well then i'd group.
[07:43] this and then this and so on and so.
[07:45] forth you get the picture so.
[07:48] that's not a very meaningful way of.
[07:50] grouping and you guys already know this.
[07:51] intuitively that that's not really going.
[07:53] to produce any learning it's kind of.
[07:54] like a meaningless activity but it's a.
[07:56] spectrum right so that method of.
[07:58] grouping is very brainless it's very.
[08:00] passive and so a more active way of.
[08:02] grouping it is to think a little bit.
[08:03] more about each of the ideas to see how.
[08:05] we can group it to make a bit more sense.
[08:07] but it's not binary like i said it's a spectrum.
[08:08] so even if we're saying that it makes sense to group it this way it makes sense to group it in multiple possible ways.
[08:16] so for example it would make sense to group this list in terms of maybe the historical significance things that were you know old older schools of thought versus transitionary versus newer schools of thought.
[08:32] see that type of grouping is very logical and actually makes a lot of sense but alternatively we could group the exact same set of words into things that are from a cognitive perspective versus a self-management perspective versus a self-regulation perspective versus a strategy perspective.
[08:53] and so these would also be completely logical and very valid ways of grouping it or we could do it in terms of things that are more theoretical versus things that are more practical.
[09:07] things that affect encoding versus things that affect retrieval versus things that affect both versus things that allow you to achieve them so.
[09:15] each of these methods of grouping would be potentially valid and they involve different types of thinking.
[09:23] you can imagine that the type of comparison and the similarity and differences that you're looking at when you're looking through this list to see which one is historically significant in different ways is a different type of thinking and a different type of exploration as would be to divide it into encoding versus retrieval for example and in this process of grouping we're gonna have to go through and we're gonna have to learn a little bit about each of the words and we're gonna have to get a basic understanding of it so that we can form these groups.
[09:54] so this is the thing is that the way that we're thinking about the groups completely affects the type of groups that we form obviously but also that changes the way that we are processing the information and that changes the way that we're encoding the information and
[10:08] there's obviously flow and effects
[10:09] because if we groups you know half of it
[10:12] in one way that affects the way that
[10:14] we're going to group the remaining half
[10:16] so let's say i use a slightly more
[10:18] passive way of grouping this information
[10:21] and then i try to represent that on a
[10:23] mind map and i'm going to show you an
[10:24] extremely common issue that occurs so
[10:28] the tricky thing is that often when
[10:30] you're taught about things in a textbook
[10:33] or even in lecture slides because of the
[10:35] way that most of the information you
[10:37] consume is written it's in a linear
[10:40] format usually left to right down a page
[10:42] bullet points and things like that it's
[10:44] very difficult to show relationships
[10:47] especially relationships between three
[10:49] or more pieces of information
[10:51] because that's simply just the
[10:53] limitation of linear structures you'd
[10:56] have to really explain a lot to show
[10:59] relationships and if you've got four or
[11:01] five things that are interrelated to
[11:03] each other you kind of need to have like
[11:05] a whole paragraph just talking about the
[11:07] nature of those relationships across an
[11:10] entire topic that gets extremely overwhelming.
[11:12] so textbooks often structure their information in a way that makes it easily readable for a linear format.
[11:20] and so they group the information in a way that is suited for that.
[11:24] but that method of grouping is often not the best way of grouping it for our human cognitive architecture in facilitating our memory and allowing us to have high depth of knowledge.
[11:39] after all someone that memorizes a textbook word for word clearly has a lower level of true expertise than someone that is able to use that information freely back in front you know side to side all over in a fluent way.
[11:57] fluidly utilizing all of those concepts to solve real world problems there's obviously a deeper level of expertise.
[12:04] and that relies on their ability to manipulate that information and to find those relationships and navigate them.
[12:11] so let me give you an example here so.
[12:13] what i'm going to do is i'm going to take this list of words and i'm going to group them in a way that would be very similar if you would have read about these in a book for example so let's see what that looks like.
[12:26] [Music].
[12:30] all right so we now have a order that is kind of similar to how you might find it in a textbook.
[12:38] it's looking obviously a lot more organized you can see that i shuffled things around now i'm able to do this because i obviously have insight into each of the particular words themselves.
[12:46] if you were reading this in a textbook it would already be laid out for you like this or if you needed to shuffle things around you'd have to go through the textbook uh and and learn a little bit deeper about it.
[12:57] not that much but you know maybe spend you know 30 seconds a minute kind of reading about it just so that you can figure out okay well i could move it here i could move it here to see what makes sense.
[13:05] it doesn't take super deep knowledge to be able to figure out whether a group kind of makes sense or not especially if you can revise it.
[13:12] later.
[13:12] So, we'll start with this and let's say that we then want to represent this information in terms of a mind map.
[13:19] So that my map would end up looking something a little bit like this.
[13:25] [Music]
[13:41] And there we have it uh that took me I don't know how long but it was super boring.
[13:47] I'm glad I got that over and done with.
[13:49] So this is what it would often look like with some changes and variations obviously.
[13:54] This was a super super passive process and most people when they do mind maps for the first time it looks kind of similar to this.
[14:03] Now, here are the issues, okay?
[14:04] First of all, that took absolutely no brain power at all.
[14:09] My brain was completely not active in doing that process and it was.
[14:13] essentially just the same thing as writing this list except in a non-linear format so this thing here activated no real meaningful cognitive effects and it's you know kind of useless i'm not really gaining much benefit from having done this activity you can see it's basically the same thing as what was on the uh the the list it's the only difference is that literally it's just in this webby kind of mind map format that everyone is used to now here's where some of the problems start arising is when we start thinking about it a little bit deeper we start learning about a little bit more we know that we're meant to represent these relationships so let's go through now and start identifying some of the key relationships not all of them just some of the ones that are really important that we want to show on this mind map okay let's do that let's see what that looks like
[15:08] [Music]
[15:18] do.
[15:26] Right now we've got some relationships.
[15:28] And that's this is by no means comprehensive.
[15:30] And uh in terms of additionally the actual value that was added here.
[15:34] In this case I already know the relationship so I'm able to do this without looking at anything else.
[15:37] But in reality you would be going through the words.
[15:40] You'd be reading about them.
[15:42] You'd be learning about them.
[15:43] You'd be thinking about them and you'd be thinking oh this and this thing I related.
[15:46] And you'd show that relationship and you draw it in.
[15:48] So every time I drew an arrow here that process would take you maybe like three to four or five minutes per arrow.
[15:54] Because you're having to read like paragraphs and think about it.
[15:58] Okay so we've got relationships now.
[16:00] However, look at it.
[16:02] It's impossible to follow.
[16:05] You cannot see what's going on.
[16:06] It's super disorganized.
[16:09] Imagine going to a new city and then you get a map that looks like this.
[16:11] Who knows where to get anywhere.
[16:14] And your brain is thinking the same thing when it's hit with a difficult question that requires you to navigate these.
[16:20] relationships and connect multiple ideas together to synthesize something that is at a higher level.
[16:25] it's going to be very difficult to do that with this even though technically it's grouped and technically there are relationships that have been thought of and they have been demonstrated so it ticks all of the boxes but it kind of doesn't because at a cognitive level it still wasn't sufficient.
[16:42] it didn't really do much at a cognitive level and this is why what i said at the very beginning it's not about what it looks like on page it is what is going on in your brain to create what is out here and so if it looks disorganized here on paper then it probably is going to also be disorganized in your mind as well.
[17:05] now yes you can use different colors and you can arrange things in space a little bit differently trust me.
[17:12] i've seen many many many many many mind maps in my professional experience not even looking at my own experience it
[17:20] doesn't make a big enough difference.
[17:22] it's still going to be messy and it's still going to be a very hard limit on the efficiency that you can gain so this is not the way that we want to do things.
[17:31] so someone that does mind maps like this it's just going to be a waste of time that you're really going to get no real benefit from doing this if we want to have a higher quality of learning and that is to spend time studying and actually have that information in our brain so that we can actually use it in real life purposes.
[17:51] we have to engage our brain and have a little bit more active learning a bit more thought a bit more processing and a bit more effort injected into this process and the thing is that even though that allows you to have better encoding most people do not do that because they cannot be bothered and they see that the effort is a negative thing they don't understand the relationship that that effort has and actually saving them time and effort.
[18:22] overall because they are enhancing their memory and so they're forgetting less and getting a deeper level of knowledge mastery.
[18:30] so i'm going to take that same list and what i'm going to do is i'm going to run through a few different steps and i'm going to show you how the exact same information can look completely different and i want you to really pay attention again not to what's on the page but i want you to be more meta cognitive what that means is we're thinking about our thinking i want you to think about what's going on in my brain and i want you to think about what type of thinking does that engage in and think to yourself in what world would that result in my depth and knowledge mastery being worse and what world would that make the knowledge less relevant in what world is my memory not improved from engaging in that process so let's go into that now.
[19:15] off the bat every time i do a video people are always asking for more more specific more examples.
[19:21] learning is a complicated thing it is
[19:24] not possible for just these tips alone to be sufficient for you.
[19:29] this is the reason why i have a whole program which takes months to go through to completely retrain yourself from start to finish in terms of how to learn these techniques properly.
[19:40] if you're interested in working with me to develop yourself from scratch and completely transform your learning system then i recommend that you check that out.
[19:46] you'll see the link in the description below however these tips are going to be very solid starter steps for you.
[19:52] they're not going to be easy but they're not easy because it's not meant to be easy.
[19:57] there is no path there it's kind of like saying hey you should do these workouts at the gym and you're like oh i would love to do that and get stronger but i also don't like the fact that it makes me have to work out.
[20:11] it's like there is no way for you to achieve that without doing the work you know those like platforms that you stand on that just like vibrates you and then like you know it's like burn your belly fat and there's like this you know this belt
[20:24] around you and it just kind of like
[20:26] vibrates on the spot
[20:27] like the shake weight thing doesn't work
[20:29] okay it doesn't work you need to put in
[20:31] the work there is no secret magic hack
[20:34] for this okay so here are the tips that
[20:37] i'm going to start you off with the
[20:39] first one is make sure your mind map is
[20:42] an accurate reflection of your thought
[20:45] process and when i say thought process
[20:47] i'm talking about like the pattern of
[20:48] thinking and the order in which you've
[20:50] thought about things it needs to reflect
[20:51] the type of thinking that you've done if
[20:53] it doesn't reflect that then it's going
[20:55] to be very hard to improve on it because
[20:57] you've essentially got two completely
[20:58] different processes that are not linked
[21:00] together you've got thinking that's
[21:01] going on which may frankly be quite good
[21:04] and a lot of people that um have higher
[21:06] levels of deep processing that are
[21:08] naturally kind of a you know they don't
[21:10] have to try that hard to get good grades
[21:12] or their you know it's enough just to
[21:14] use a few flash cards here and there
[21:15] people that are like that often have
[21:17] subconsciously a decent level of deep
[21:20] processing that's going on that you can
[21:22] really tap into and then absolutely
[21:24] weaponize if you don't have that kind of
[21:26] natural ability per se then it's even
[21:29] more important to be in tune with that
[21:30] because you need to know what's going on
[21:32] in your head to start retraining
[21:33] yourself to think more like the people
[21:35] that are naturally intelligent so in
[21:37] order to start fixing that you need to
[21:39] know what's happening and it's a great
[21:42] tool to have a mind map that shows
[21:44] what's happening
[21:46] rather than just like constantly being
[21:47] just deeply introspective and reflective
[21:50] um you know it's a lot easier to have
[21:52] the introspection as well as like a
[21:54] visual cue that you can look at and
[21:56] think oh okay so this part looks a
[21:57] little bit weird so therefore the way
[22:00] that i was thinking about that must also
[22:02] be a little bit disorganized right we
[22:05] want to be able to have those insights
[22:08] so that's the first reason
[22:09] the second reason is because we want the
[22:12] mind itself to facilitate the right type
[22:15] of thinking so we need to get into the
[22:17] habit of making sure that when we're
[22:18] writing the notes we're not just writing
[22:20] it thoughtlessly we're not just like
[22:21] reading it and then just writing it
[22:22] straight away we want to be thinking
[22:24] about it first and we want to know what
[22:26] we want to put down and how we want to
[22:28] put it down when you i was doing this
[22:30] you'll see that i was just i was just
[22:32] going i was just going ham i was
[22:33] essentially just spamming out the words
[22:35] onto the page and it wasn't activating
[22:38] any cognitive effects and as a result
[22:40] you can see that you know it ends up
[22:42] looking really really messy instead of
[22:44] doing that i should have thought about
[22:46] everything that i'm going to put down on
[22:48] the page first and then organize that a
[22:50] little bit more and so by holding
[22:53] ourselves accountable to what we are
[22:55] putting down
[22:56] that's also going to force us to engage
[22:59] in the right type of cognitive process
[23:02] it's kind of this feedback loop it gives
[23:03] us the chance to catch ourselves when
[23:05] we're not doing the right type of
[23:07] thinking so that's the first tip is to
[23:09] make sure that they're very well aligned
[23:11] you want to make sure your mind map is
[23:12] truly a map of your mind in this example
[23:16] here that i've shown it is a map of my
[23:18] mind and the way that i've done this it
[23:20] is disorganized it is hard to follow and
[23:23] that's because the way that i was
[23:24] thinking about it is passive i never
[23:27] bothered to organize it and so naturally
[23:29] it will just be disorganized even though
[23:31] it looked so neat when i was in that
[23:33] list form you can see in actual fact
[23:35] just trying to get even a little bit of
[23:37] depth uh it's it falls apart and in your
[23:39] brain this is how it's gonna learn it
[23:42] it's not gonna learn it in that list
[23:43] otherwise studying would be really easy
[23:46] if you could just be like
[23:47] and then just store it into your brain
[23:49] it doesn't work like that your brain is
[23:51] going to think about it more in this
[23:53] networked kind of way and if this is the
[23:54] network that it's formed that's that's
[23:56] not something that's going to last it's
[23:57] going to say this is an incomprehensible
[23:59] tangle of information i don't know why
[24:00] it's relevant to keep let's bend this
[24:02] and there you go you've forgotten half
[24:04] of it the second tip is what i've
[24:05] already talked about which is to not
[24:07] avoid the effort and the thinking
[24:09] process with cleaning this up and
[24:12] organizing it and what type of thinking
[24:14] do we want to engage in here's the kind
[24:17] of sort of lighthouse that you should be
[24:19] following is try to get it to a point
[24:23] where the way you've organized it and
[24:25] the way you've expressed the
[24:26] relationships feels as simple and as
[24:30] logical and here's the key one
[24:32] as intuitive
[24:34] as possible so when we say that
[24:37] something is logical and intuitive what
[24:39] we are saying is that our brain feels
[24:42] that it just makes sense that feeling
[24:46] that it just makes sense is our brain
[24:49] saying this is relevant i get it it fits
[24:53] in with my existing knowledge structures
[24:57] if you're a strong competitive swimmer
[25:00] and you learn something about biology
[25:02] that reminds you of something you learnt
[25:04] about swimming
[25:05] that is going to be easier to remember
[25:08] because it has a way to fit you know how
[25:10] to understand it through the lens of
[25:12] swimming if you are great at playing an
[25:14] instrument or playing a sport and then
[25:16] you learn something about how learning
[25:18] works you might think oh yeah i actually
[25:21] do that when i'm learning my instrument
[25:22] or learning how to play my sport better
[25:26] it would make sense that i might be able
[25:27] to use that same kind of process in my
[25:29] academic studies so you would be able to
[25:31] understand that learning technique a
[25:33] little bit more easily than someone that
[25:34] didn't have that experience so it would
[25:37] make sense because it fits with your
[25:39] existing knowledge schemas so we're
[25:42] always looking for a way to fit it with
[25:44] what makes sense to us whenever we say
[25:47] oh i don't really get this i'm gonna
[25:49] need to repeat this whenever we get that
[25:51] feeling i'm gonna need to repeat this
[25:52] again and again in my head when we get
[25:54] that feeling like i don't really get it
[25:55] but i'm just going to smash it through
[25:57] repetition if you feel that repetition
[26:00] is going to be necessary
[26:01] that is your brain telling you
[26:03] my dude this is not relevant to me i
[26:05] don't get it i don't know why i need to
[26:07] hold on to it and you are overwriting
[26:09] that you're saying keep it hold on to it
[26:11] keep it keep it remember it remember it
[26:13] and that's why it takes repetition
[26:14] because your brain doesn't get it it's a
[26:17] red flag it is a warning sign that
[26:20] should indicate that you need to think
[26:21] of another way to integrate and
[26:23] associate that information into your
[26:25] memory and truly consolidate it so
[26:28] spend the time spend the effort to get
[26:30] to the point where you can find the
[26:32] angle that makes it more intuitive and
[26:34] this involves reading a little bit more
[26:36] you're gonna have to go through your
[26:37] textbook again you're gonna have to go
[26:39] through your notes you're gonna have to
[26:40] ask more questions you're gonna have to
[26:41] google a lot of things to get the answer
[26:44] to see
[26:45] does it make sense if it works this way
[26:47] can i group it in this way does this
[26:49] relationship make sense
[26:51] that all takes effort and that takes
[26:52] time however just remember as i've
[26:54] talked about in many of my other videos
[26:56] and as i've demonstrated through my own
[26:58] practice and as thousands of my students
[27:01] will testify to you can join the discord
[27:03] if you want to talk to them directly
[27:04] it will testify to the fact that it
[27:07] saves massive time overall because by
[27:11] not forgetting things and being able to
[27:14] reach higher levels of knowledge mastery
[27:16] at an earlier stage you just cut down
[27:18] your total study time
[27:20] by a ton especially for big complex
[27:24] topics you know university level and
[27:26] beyond it thrives with this type of
[27:29] thinking so let me just go through all
[27:32] of that i'm now going to exert effort
[27:34] and energy to make it feel more
[27:37] intuitive and more aligned and then i'm
[27:39] gonna show you the end result of what
[27:41] that looks like so let's take the exact
[27:43] same list of keywords but this time i'm
[27:45] gonna think about differently okay so
[27:46] let's do that and we're gonna do that
[27:48] side-by-side comparison
[27:51] [Music]
[28:09] okay so uh that would take normally i
[28:13] suppose um i mean for me right now it
[28:15] took probably two to three times longer
[28:18] than the first one and in reality it
[28:19] would also be like two to three times
[28:21] longer because you're looking through
[28:22] the material yada yada
[28:24] uh to form it but
[28:26] uh right now what i've got here is is
[28:29] not even that clean or tidy or neat to
[28:32] be honest it's pretty you know it's
[28:34] fairly rudimentary it's not cleaned up
[28:36] i'd like to space it out a little bit
[28:38] more because it's looking a little bit
[28:39] cramped hopefully you can see if it's if
[28:42] i put them side by side you know this
[28:44] one is just impossible to follow whereas
[28:47] this one although there is a lot going
[28:49] on
[28:49] it actually feels like it has a lot more
[28:51] structure so this would be the way that
[28:53] the the brain of someone that has really
[28:55] thought about it has more expertise
[28:57] would think about it and hopefully you
[29:00] can tell that when you're sort of
[29:02] looking at me doing it there's a lot
[29:04] more time spent thinking about what's
[29:06] going on looking at things
[29:09] a lot less time on actually writing
[29:12] most of that time just on thinking and
[29:15] in your case it would also be time on
[29:17] reading and looking things up and things
[29:19] like that but again a good time
[29:20] investment very solid returns on that
[29:23] result the my map itself you know you
[29:24] can see that they obviously look
[29:26] different but to an untrained eye you
[29:28] would say they're different but you
[29:29] wouldn't really appreciate necessarily
[29:30] the significance of the difference
[29:33] especially if you're getting something
[29:34] that looks kind of neat and tidy however
[29:36] again like i mentioned before there are
[29:38] multiple ways you could group it i've
[29:40] decided to group it like this but there
[29:42] are also completely other ways of
[29:44] grouping it and different relationships
[29:45] that you could have that another person
[29:47] could think of that would be equally as
[29:49] valid if that's the way that was most
[29:51] intuitive for them and their knowledge
[29:54] structures for me this feels very
[29:57] intuitive because i'm used to thinking
[29:58] about things in this kind of structure
[30:01] so again it depends completely on your
[30:03] own mind and the way that you process it
[30:07] and you know if you put in the effort
[30:09] and you seek that intuitive simple level
[30:13] then you will find that the mind map
[30:15] technique becomes much deeper a little
[30:18] bit more uncomfortable but much more
[30:20] effective than you
[30:23] would have thought if you had previous
[30:25] bad experiences with it so now what
[30:27] we're going to do is we're going to
[30:28] actually flick to a interview that i did
[30:30] of a couple of my students
[30:34] one of them is archer who is a
[30:38] top point zero
[30:40] five percent achiever he uh
[30:43] you know got one of the highest results
[30:45] in australia in his final year of high
[30:48] school he sat um you know like double
[30:51] the amount of papers that you normally
[30:53] meant to sit in the year and he got
[30:55] first in the state for i think six of
[30:57] them uh he did two university papers in
[30:59] his final year of high school getting
[31:00] the highest possible grade at the same
[31:02] time he got a 99.95 atar which is the
[31:06] highest possible um rank that you can
[31:09] get in the country uh he was awarded
[31:11] like some middle of commemoration he's
[31:13] currently going through medical school
[31:15] on a perfect gpa and archer actually
[31:17] works at i can study
[31:20] and so i'm i'm in close contact with him
[31:22] all the time and archer works more than
[31:25] full-time hours
[31:26] while going through medical school
[31:29] and he's received the letter from the
[31:32] dean two years in a row for being one of
[31:34] the top performing students of the
[31:35] cohort so
[31:37] this is a guy that does not study very
[31:39] much because he's got his efficiency
[31:40] dialed in i started working with him
[31:42] after year 12
[31:44] and
[31:45] giving him more advanced
[31:47] slightly more refined skills that he
[31:49] could tackle medical school and do even
[31:51] more than he was doing when he was back
[31:52] in year 12. the other person we're
[31:54] talking to is derek derek's a student
[31:55] that i was working with in his final
[31:56] year of high school um i started working
[31:59] with them
[32:00] in the early part of the year or the
[32:03] late part of a second to last year and
[32:07] they ended up finishing the year with uh
[32:10] one of the highest
[32:12] ib grades in the world
[32:15] uh obviously just completely clocking
[32:17] out again the highest possible mark but
[32:19] also beating the great boundary for the
[32:21] highest mark uh beating the threshold
[32:24] that you need to get by sometimes 20 to
[32:26] 30 percent
[32:27] so
[32:28] derek is also
[32:29] going through medical school at the
[32:30] moment and doing exceptionally well uh
[32:32] getting you know great results so far
[32:34] and so what we're going to talk about
[32:36] with them is sort of their experience
[32:38] with mind mapping and
[32:41] the idea here is to get you a
[32:43] perspective that's not just my own but
[32:45] of other students that maybe a little
[32:47] closer to your current background or
[32:50] experience or level in terms of the way
[32:52] that they think about this and the
[32:54] things that they've seen and the things
[32:55] that they've noticed
[32:56] just
[32:57] so that if you're on the fence about
[32:58] what i've talked about you've at least
[33:00] got a few more people uh there as well
[33:02] both derek and archer are coaches at i
[33:05] can study as well and look at that
[33:07] interview it's pretty short um and if
[33:08] you want to watch uh more sort of
[33:11] interviews with you know many of the
[33:13] students that i have then let me know in
[33:14] the comments as well i can always do
[33:16] more interviews i've hundreds of
[33:17] students that are super willing to jump
[33:20] on youtube and do an interview with me
[33:22] talking about their experience if you're
[33:23] interested in seeing some of those types
[33:25] of things then definitely let me know as
[33:26] well i'd love to hear your thoughts if
[33:28] you found this video useful and
[33:29] insightful then please share it with
[33:31] your friends don't throw them under the
[33:33] bus and you know take all the good
[33:35] techniques just for yourselves
[33:37] share with your friends leave a like it
[33:39] really helps with the algorithm you know
[33:40] the jazz that's how youtube works and if
[33:42] you want to see more of this type of
[33:44] content then please subscribe thank you
[33:47] so much for tuning in and i'll catch you
[33:48] on the next one when did you have this
[33:51] older method of mind mapping during yeah
[33:53] year 11. okay the first time i i
[33:55] actually did mind mapping was probably
[33:57] like in year 10
[33:59] so i would basically
[34:01] and it was because my teacher said it as
[34:04] like some task so basically we were told
[34:06] to make a mind map on this topic so what
[34:08] i did was i just got well i didn't even
[34:10] collect keywords like it was just like
[34:12] okay here's like a bunch of information
[34:14] so let me try and like
[34:16] vaguely
[34:18] group it together but the groups would
[34:20] basically just be like what how it was
[34:22] taught and then i'll just it would just
[34:24] be me reorganizing the information that
[34:27] was like already taught to me
[34:29] um
[34:30] so it was essentially kind of like
[34:31] useless like i like you i didn't really
[34:33] remember much of it and yeah it was just
[34:36] words right it was just like the topic
[34:38] header and then just like a bunch of
[34:39] sentences underneath
[34:40] so that didn't really help at all and
[34:43] that's why initially i was like yeah you
[34:45] know my maps are useless but then
[34:46] obviously like when i actually learned
[34:48] how to do mind maps for real then it was
[34:50] much different because i realized that
[34:51] it's not about the physical act of
[34:53] actually like writing things down on the
[34:55] piece of paper it's the thing that like
[34:57] is happening in my mind to
[34:59] actually create that mind map like
[35:00] cognitively in my mind in order to form
[35:03] like a good quality mind map i need to
[35:05] be like thinking about how things relate
[35:07] and like the chunking and organizing my
[35:09] trunking structure and comparing
[35:10] different flows and chunk structures
[35:12] with each other and that requires like a
[35:14] lot of cognitive effort and that's
[35:16] pretty much what the benefit is and i
[35:19] realized that yeah it doesn't really
[35:21] matter what the moment looks like as
[35:22] long as what you're doing in your head
[35:24] is you know correct so that was like my
[35:26] revelation the biggest funniest thing
[35:28] for me was essentially
[35:31] when i was doing mind maps before it was
[35:32] way easier felt way more i guess uh kind
[35:36] of fun to like just draw lines and
[35:37] connect it all together and then after
[35:40] kind of learning how to mind map more
[35:41] properly it just became way harder but
[35:43] the difference was instead of me usually
[35:45] like maybe my year 10 self where i'd
[35:47] kind of like shy away from that um kind
[35:50] of cognitive load and things instead i'm
[35:52] like okay i actually know this effort
[35:53] and um this discomfort's a good thing
[35:55] and so i kind of always just relate it
[35:57] to the way in which um yeah you might go
[35:59] to the gym and lift weights you don't
[36:00] want to lift like the five kilograms you
[36:02] want to lift like 50 kilograms or
[36:04] something like that which is actually
[36:05] going to make you get better at that
[36:06] process um and that's been like the like
[36:09] a much bigger change for me and also you
[36:11] know it's kind of like always uh
[36:13] kind of against what you may expect like
[36:15] my mind maps now
[36:17] may have way less words
[36:20] than um kind of my previous mind maps
[36:22] which looks like they had way more going
[36:24] on so if you were to look at my mind
[36:25] maps now you'd probably be like well
[36:27] archer probably doesn't know too much
[36:28] about what's going on here but it's
[36:30] actually completely the opposite when my
[36:31] mymath doesn't have that many words and
[36:34] there's very clear
[36:35] relationships you can see the backbone
[36:37] very clearly i actually know way more
[36:39] and i can talk about it way more which
[36:40] is just funny that's an important thing
[36:42] right because like people think that if
[36:43] there's more going on it means that it's
[36:45] better but actually it's it's the other
[36:47] way around because you need to have a
[36:49] deeper level of knowledge to be able to
[36:51] prioritize very strictly and know what
[36:53] is relevant where to place things and
[36:55] how to make it clean like if you don't
[36:57] know that you got to overcompensate by
[36:58] just drawing more arrows and writing
[37:00] more words because you're just trying to
[37:01] fill in these like knowledge gaps that
[37:03] just i don't know like never really
[37:04] bothered to think about i think my i've
[37:06] had quite a few experiences with my mets
[37:08] before learning the technique i think
[37:10] the first one was out when i was
[37:11] introduced to it really really young and
[37:14] i think what the idea of a mind map that
[37:15] was taught to me was like the main idea
[37:18] in the center and it will be in a cloud
[37:21] and then you'd have all the
[37:23] big topics coming out from the cloud so
[37:25] some arrows pointing out and i really
[37:27] thought it was pointless because i might
[37:29] as well have that same information
[37:31] written out on a page that's easier and
[37:33] neater rather than just a cloud with
[37:35] some words here another group of words
[37:37] here another group of words here and
[37:39] just more in different colors i just
[37:41] hated it i thought my maps were rubbish
[37:43] because i didn't really like all these
[37:45] colors and i was kind of a weird kid i
[37:47] didn't really like all these colors and
[37:49] extra decorations yeah that's how i
[37:51] first learned it as well and i i thought
[37:53] it was useless too when i first
[37:55] encountered it yeah the clouds thing eh
[37:57] yeah oh my god
[37:59] so from there i every time i heard about
[38:01] my map i
[38:02] internally just felt some uh disgust i
[38:05] don't know
[38:06] but then i think the next time i
[38:07] actually learned about similar
[38:09] note-taking techniques was when i was
[38:11] introduced to the idea of concept
[38:12] mapping so this one is a little bit more
[38:14] structured okay i don't remember
[38:16] precisely how it works but it has a
[38:19] structure of like linking different
[38:21] ideas together by action verbs and then
[38:24] you put the action verb in a square
[38:26] so i think i've sent some of these in
[38:28] the discord before but i don't think
[38:29] i've actually shown it what i found that
[38:32] it did help was much more effective than
[38:34] the whole cloud thing but i found it way
[38:37] too messy to be to be much used because
[38:39] there were too many arrows with too many
[38:41] words pointing here and then and things
[38:43] get got crowded very fast
[38:46] but i think like what you said is
[38:48] it's not about what the mymap looks like
[38:50] like what i just said it looks like
[38:52] there's a lot going on and you think you
[38:54] probably know what what but everything
[38:56] is not really organized in your head but
[38:57] when you're able to prioritize and see
[39:00] the big picture and see how things
[39:01] relate and you can see that very clear
[39:04] structure in your mind map and that is
[39:07] reflecting what's going on in your head
[39:08] then you realize oh
[39:10] actually when you've talked about it
[39:11] more and you're able to simplify it does
[39:13] show in your mind map and i think that
[39:15] is the important thing and the other
[39:16] thing as well as like
[39:18] when i first saw mind mapping ages ago
[39:20] maybe like early days of high school i
[39:22] didn't really associate it with i guess
[39:24] like a hard-working student it's like
[39:26] too creative and fun to be you know a
[39:28] thing that um someone who's getting like
[39:30] top grades would be doing and so
[39:31] something like having really nice i
[39:33] don't know typed out notes of all these
[39:35] diagrams and big terminology words was
[39:37] something that when i was much younger
[39:39] i'm way more preferred because it looks
[39:41] like you're doing something
[39:42] which again in this case you want to be
[39:44] doing the opposite
[39:50] [Music]
[40:00] you