How To Make Mind Maps For Studying, Step-By-Step Example

Make Mind Maps For Studying

In my humble opinion, the best way to take notes is to make mind maps for studying. While making mind maps for studying does take a little bit more time than most other (if not all) methods, the payoff you get is well worth the trouble. Let me give you an example:

Let’s say that you made a pizza (don’t worry, this is an imaginary scenario, I know that the best thing you can make is cereal with milk). If you want to start eating the pizza you made, wouldn’t it be more convenient to cut it first?

It’s true that it takes more time than just eating it. But by investing a bit of time, you can make smaller slices that can fit in your hand. I am sure you agree with me that eating a slice of pizza is easier than eating the whole thing at once (and if you don’t, then what is wrong with you?)

I hope that my brilliant analogy (if I say so myself) convinced you to learn how to make mind maps for studying. If not, here are some benefits that mind maps provide (at least according to Google):

• It helps you remember and recall information
• It helps you learn new concepts
• It’s a fun way of learning
• It makes complex ideas easier to understand
• It improves your presentation
• It boosts your creativity
• It improves productivity
• It’s flexible

How to start making mind maps for studying

The first step you have to do on your path to learning how to make mind maps for studying is… obviously to read the material (how else did you think you were going to start?).

After you read the material find the key concepts. Now pick one key concept (you can do more once you understand mind maps well enough, for now just stick with one). Write that key concept right in the middle of your paper (or digital paper, or whatever new invention you use).

Now make a few branches, like those on a tree. On every branch you make write down a term that is related to your key concept. Once you are done, make a few more branches, this time with one term at the centre. Do this for every one of the terms you wrote down.

After that, you can repeat the same thing again, until you get something that looks like this:

Now compare this to the regular note-taking method, where you just write down what you see.

Which one is easier to read?

I hope that you understand the most basic advantage of mind maps. But that’s not all (this is starting to sound like a commercial, maybe I should start to learn marketing). When you look at a mind map you can see how things are connected. Every term is connected to another term and you can clearly see what goes where.

Mind maps make it easy to see the big picture.

Start making a mind map – example

As promised by the title let’s make one mind map, to show you how I would do it. This will be the perfect chance to see how someone else makes a mind map, and how it might be different from yours.

The topic I was recently interested in was the Cold War. I watched some videos and read something on the internet (I know textbooks are better, but that is only the case when you are really into a material, I just started getting interested, so don’t judge me), so I don’t have a full picture of the whole situation yet. This is the perfect time to make a mind map and see how all of the things are connected.

The key element is the cold war so it goes in the middle. There are 4 terms connected to the key concept:

• Race to space
• Cuba
• Germany
• Other countries

I know that there are other elements that are missing (like the Truman Doctrine, NATO or Warsaw Pact), but I found them easy to understand and don’t need them on this mind map (and I don’t want too much clutter on my mind map, more on that later). I specifically chose 4 places with significant impact so that I could remember it easier.

But there are other ways to build this mind map. You could have the United States on one side and the Soviet Union on the other. Then from there pick the important actions they took as other terms and go from there. You could pick a few important presidents from each country and do the same.

If you like numbers better you could make 4 terms for every 10 years of war, like this:

Make it visual and personal

There is no doubt that mind maps are easier to remember than normal notes. What’s more, when you need to look over the notes, you can quickly see what is connected with what and how it all fits together.

That being said it still takes some work to remember what is connected to what. And it’s not like you can just glance at the notes, you have to read what is written to understand what is going on.

Don’t you have to read every type of note if you want to understand what is going on?

Not really. There is a way to remember your notes, without reading them and in just one glance. There are two things that you need to do for that:

1. Make it more visual, so that you need just one glance to see what is going on
2. Make your mind map personal so that you can remember it easier

Make your mind map visual

You know the old saying “A picture is worth a thousand words” (I don’t actually know if it is an old saying, it just sounds good to introduce it that way). As you can guess by this introduction, the way to make your mind map more visual is to add pictures and drawings to it.

There are 4 reasons why it’s better to add pictures instead of only relying on words:

1. One picture can convey more ideas than a few words
2. You don’t need to read a picture, just one glance at it is enough to remind you what it is about
3. You can add your own spin to the pictures/drawings, making them even more useful (more on that later)
4. And the most important reason, pictures are easier to remember than words

Make your mind map visual – example

Here is an example of how to add some pictures/drawings to your mind map. When you see a German flag (provided that you know that is a German flag😃), you instantly think of Germany, no need to read any words. That is the case for the other things as well.

• A picture of a galaxy for a race to space
• Pig for Bay of Pigs
• a naval ship for the naval blockade

You could do this with all of the terms if you’d like. If you want, you can delete the term and just leave the picture. You can leave the picture next to the term so you have both. Experiment and see what works best for you.

Make your mind map personal

Sadly, this time, there is no good quote that I can steal from someone else while pretending to be smart. So, just like any other normal human being, I will make my own quote:

“Something personal is easier to remember” by me (if this is a quote from someone else, then I am sorry that I claimed it as my own).

While it might sound simple, there is actually a lot of truth behind it. Think about which stuff you remember easier.

• Is it something you don’t care about and barely notice
• Or is it something you really like (or hate) and pay a lot of attention to

When you make mind maps for studying make sure to make them personal. Don’t write something somewhere, just because you think it makes sense for it to be there. Make a mind map that fits you. Make it so it’s easy to remember.

There are pictures/drawings on your mind maps as well (if you followed the previous step, that is). Make them personal too. Add elements of the things you like. Your final goal is to take one glance at that picture and know instantly what it represents.

Make your mind map personal – example

Now, let’s see how to make a personal mind map. I added quite a lot of things:

• A man in red next to the “first man in space”. Red reminds me of the Soviet Union so I know that they achieved this.
• Blue rocket next to the “moon landing”. This time blue is used to remind me of the United States
• I left the German flag to stay the same since I know all of the flags (not to brag or anything), and recognizing a flag is easy for me. If I were to complete the whole mind map I would use a flag in place of every country
• For the Berlin wall, I used a wall, that is getting destroyed by a beam (to remind me that the wall would fall).
• I added a sign on top of the naval ship to remind me that this is a naval blockade
• Lastly, I put a samurai, who reminds me of Yasuo (if you are interested, I don’t play Yasuo, I just get “slightly” annoyed when I see him) who is a champion in League of Legends, and Korea (specifically South Korea) is the best region in this game (and if someone tells you otherwise they are wrong)

I added that last one to show you that you can make the most absurd connections with something you like (or hate, thanks to all of the Yasuo mains I see).

How to remember your mind map

Now that you are done making your mind map, the next step is to remember it. You won’t be able to use them on your test/exam so you need to memorize it. Before you start freaking out about how hard that is going to be and how you did all of this work for nothing, let me remind you that you made your mind map more visual and more personal so you could remember them easier.

Now, there is a wrong way and a right way to do this. The wrong way would be to read your mind map from left to right (or top to bottom) and memorize it like that. But if you do it like this, you are only memorizing your mind map and not actually learning what is written on it.

The best way to learn your mind map is to find a blank piece of paper and redo the whole map from scratch. Start with the key concept in the center, then write the important terms connected to that concept. After that, branch out even more and write terms that are connected to other terms.

Make sure you don’t cheat and look at your previous mind map. After you finish, compare the two maps and see how you did. Write down which mistakes you made and make sure to remember them. The next time you try to redo your mind map, pay special attention to those mistakes.

What not to do when making a mind map

Now that you have seen how to make a mind map and what the good practices are in doing so, let’s discuss the things you shouldn’t do. Here are 3 things that fall into that category:

1. Don’t meaninglessly write down words that have no connections
2. Write down only the minimum you need to remember what the mind map is about
3. Every term should have no more than 5 branches

Don’t meaninglessly write down words that have no connections

Make sure that the connections you are making make sense. Most importantly make sure that they make sense to you (while being accurate, don’t make your own stuff up). If someone sees your mind map and thinks that it’s weird, ask him which parts are weird.

If you can explain it well, then you can understand it.

Write down only the minimum you need

The key to making good mind maps is to make them simple. You don’t need to describe every detail of every term you write down. There are only two important things to keep in mind:

1. Make sure the terms have good connections that are easy to understand (for you)
2. Make it so you can easily see the point and the big picture of your mind map

Just imagine how my Cold War mind map would look like if I started to describe every single event that happened on it. They would look like any other notes and wouldn’t even count as a mind map.

Every term should have no more than 5 branches

This is just an arbitrary number that I use. If you can actually understand the mind map you make go ahead and use 10 branches if you want. But, think about how hard would it be to see which branch is going where if there are 10 of them.

If you really need to use a large number of branches, then divide the terms into two groups and then go from there. Something like this could work:

I made one group with alkali metals and alkaline earth metals, which I can later split up into just alkali metals and just alkaline earth metals (as you can see by the two dotted arrows).

* * * * *

The best way to see if you can make mind maps better is to try and make them. Try to make a mind map of what you just read. You know the key concept, pick a few terms and go from there. If you want to study more efficiently and learn what you write down on your mind maps faster and for the long term go here.

The more mind maps you make the more you will learn about what works for you and what doesn’t.