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Mind mapping software

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Vurbal:
Thread necro powers, activate, form of...Graduate Thesis Student!

Vurbal,

I am interested to see how your quest to organize your thoughts has turned out as it seems you and I share a similar mind. I was wondering what you found and what you see as the strengths in such a product. I am not officially underway on my thesis in my Master of Science in Information Assurance course, with the ultimate goal being a Doctorate of Science in Information Systems to follow. As such, I am looking for a way to keep all of these random ideas and thoughts that populate in the tangled mess I call my brain somewhat organized. Have you had any luck?
-Josh (September 03, 2015, 09:54 PM)
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I don't have time right this moment,  but I'll try to answer this with enough detail to be useful. The short version is yes, I have had some luck, but with quite a few caveats.

If I haven't posted again before tomorrow afternoon, shoot me another PM because it probably means I've forgotten entirely.

Innuendo:
I'll be interested in hearing your answer as well, Vurbal, although I imagine it'll be of very limited use to me...which I'll probably elaborate on once I've learned your process.

TaoPhoenix:
Thread necro powers, activate, form of...Graduate Thesis Student!

Vurbal,

I am interested to see how your quest to organize your thoughts has turned out as it seems you and I share a similar mind. I was wondering what you found and what you see as the strengths in such a product. I am not officially underway on my thesis in my Master of Science in Information Assurance course, with the ultimate goal being a Doctorate of Science in Information Systems to follow. As such, I am looking for a way to keep all of these random ideas and thoughts that populate in the tangled mess I call my brain somewhat organized. Have you had any luck?
-Josh (September 03, 2015, 09:54 PM)
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Hi Josh.

I am turning more and more to the Tre-DB type programs to corrall my stuff. (Tree-DB itself as the main brand hada a fatal data destructive flaw, and I was VERY lucky to find a damn-near-clone done better at MyInfo. Paid user, no conflicts of interest, etc.)

Thoughts don't have *too* many overlapping source thoughts, so at worst you just note it as "copied twice" and on you go.

The "devastating killer app feature 1" is these / this program can "roll up" and "roll down" so you can click little icons to see or ignore "last month's news" etc.

So the last trick is, you make a few nodes *specifically* designed for "junk" and those begin to replace the stickies on your desk that work great up till about 18 until they explode into uselessness.

It's a habit thing - you have to gut-grok it's "just as fast" (and net faster!) to smash them into special nodes of "random notes" as it is stickies. I do keep a few left, some about case worker on Vacay, that will never mean anything again in two weeks, but it is an attitude change, and it *does* take getting used to.

Then the whole point is, the 3 of the 10 notes you took that are "worth something", you can shuffle and file them to your heart's content. And you have fourteen less pieces of paper on your desk!

:Thmbsup:

See my GTD notes for more.

Josh:
I had actually looked at a tool that used a more tree-like structure and I am debating if that is going to be useful for my processes. I had looked at myBase before but wasn't really drawn to it. While I do rely on a tree style architecture for things like email, I found the process cumbersome to add things in/out of this database.

I am really interested in thoughts on how people use this software so I can look at new ways to think about it. I have had a lot of random thoughts that I need to somehow relate so I can see where the major focus areas are in an attempt to focus my research efforts on my thesis (and later, hopefully, my dissertation). I will check out MyInfo none-the-less as perhaps I may be able to go back to that style of tracking.

Thanks!

dr_andus:
I am not officially underway on my thesis in my Master of Science in Information Assurance course, with the ultimate goal being a Doctorate of Science in Information Systems to follow. As such, I am looking for a way to keep all of these random ideas and thoughts that populate in the tangled mess I call my brain somewhat organized.
-Josh (September 03, 2015, 09:54 PM)
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Especially if you want to do a PhD (which would involve taking a substantial amount of reading notes, recording your own thoughts, not only for the doctoral project, but possibly beyond, for the rest of your research or academic career), I would suggest that what you are describing is not so much a mind mapping problem but a problem of developing and maintaining an ever-growing notes database that needs to function as a "secondary brain".

This is what the so-called Zettelkasten method is meant to solve, which uses the metaphor of interrelated index cards in a slip box. Here are some suggested tools: Tools • Zettelkasten Method (I use ConnectedText for this). Manfred Kuehn's thoughts concering the philosophy behind it are well worth reading: Some Idiosyncratic Reflections on Note-Taking in General and ConnectedText in Particular

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