Learning from your daily experiences is something good. Adding your new knowledge to your long term repertoire is even better. Let me explain how I reached those goals with Daily Mind Map.
Mind Mapping and Visualizing stage
Mind Mapping is a technique for taking notes. The tools used are unlined paper, coloured pens and the brain. It’s about associations of ideas in my memory. Mind Maps was invented in the 1970s by Tony Buzan, a man who has become the world’s leading popular psychology author, with more than 100 titles and millions of copies sold. So, how goes my mechanics for Mind Maps?
- Put blank sheet of paper in landscape orientation
- Draw picture, that sums up my main subject, in the middle
- Draw organic lines coming away from my picture in the middle – one random colour per line
- Name my organic lines with main ideas of my subject – preferably, I also add a small picture to each idea
- Create additional branches recursively, representing details of my main ideas
The associations are very relaxed, there’s no restriction on the kind of links I can use. The dominating object modelling language in the software development industry, UML, has different notations for link, association, aggregation, composition, generalization etc. When it comes to Mind Maps, all these relations are drawn in the same way. The radial, non-linear, informal format eliminates the hurdle of initially establishing a consistent conceptual framework to work within.
The Pomodoro Technique defines five daily stages. The final stage is Visualizing. Francesco Cirillo, the inventor of Pomodoro Technique, writes that it’s done “at the end of the day to present the information in a format that facilitates understanding and clarifies paths to improvement”. By understanding and improvements it refers to the Pomodoro Technique process itself. The Visualizing stage present information that can help you improve how you implement Pomodoro Technique. I saw an opportunity here to also repeat and review what I had learnt about my problem domain during the day. It’s an important distinction: what I can improve in my personal process and what I have learnt about e.g. computer science, telecom technology or medical technology.
Priority for long term memory
Every working day I see a lot and make many conclusions. They initially reside in my short term memory. I want to sort them out, prioritize them and then transfer the most important knowledge to my long term memory. I will then have them on my repertoire for future usage in proper situations. I’m making a cognitive evaluation of what I should save for my repertoire.
Alan Baddeley, a British professor of psychology, showed in 1966 in his study of memory encoding, that in short time memory the information is normally stored as sound. This is opposed to long term memory where the information is normally stored semantically. Long term memory is like a gigantic association machine.
In 1933 Hedwig von Restorff performed a set of memory experiments with distinctive items. The conclusion was that an isolated item, in a list of otherwise similar items, would be better remembered than an item in the same relative position in a list where all items were similar. If I read a shopping list with one item highlighted in azure blue, it’s more likely that I remember the highlighted item than any of the others. This is now identified as The Von Restorff effect.
This is how I do my Daily Mind Map:
The trigger is that there’s not another 25 minutes left of the working day. This means that I can’t do another Pomodoro today. Perhaps I need to leave in 10 minutes in order to catch a train. I start by winding up the kitchen timer for whatever time is left – in this case 10 minutes. Then I turn my To Do Today sheet upside down and in landscape orientation. Now I’m ready to explore my mind in order to grasp at the most usable knowledge concluded today.
I draw a picture, in the middle of the paper, of my daily subject. What’s my daily subject? What have I been communicating most with colleagues today? What’s the keyword of the activity with most X drawn today? What was the subject of the meetings I went to today? What tool did I use in a new way today? That’s a lot of questions with possibly many answers. I have to choose one single thing as my daily subject. I pick the first one that pops up in mind that feels outstanding in some aspect.
Then I continue drawing an ordinary Mind Map with coloured branches, small icons and free associations. When the kitchen timer rings, I just put the To Do Today sheet/Daily Mind Map in my pile of Daily Mind Maps created during this Sprint.
It’s not important that I spend equal amount of time every day on my Daily Mind Maps. They are not aimed to be compared like Pomodoros are. Either I find them usable and create them every day, or else I stop creating them. But they need to be time-boxed. Otherwise I risk spending more or less time on them than I really want. With time-boxing I know in advance the exact cost of my Daily Mind Map. In this case: 10 minutes of effort. You probably realize now that I’m dealing with the quality. One day, perhaps I can afford 15 minutes of effort, and another day only 5 minutes. On the other hand the amount of interesting things happening in my working day varies as well. So it can’t really be a totally fair amount of time.
The Daily Mind Map does not improve my personal process, like the Pomodoro Technique does. It improves my repertoire as a professional. I prioritize what part of my short term memory that should travel VIP to my long term memory.
We should do Daily Mind Map because of Learning From Experience
Does Daily Mind Map put you in pole position? Would a linear, text based cause- affect analysis report influence your long term memory more? Or is it a waste of time to repeat what you already have learnt?
The Von Restorff effect tells us that we can provoke our memory to store things that we highlight. Creating a Mind Map is one way.
According to Tony Buzan “The reason why so many adults report that their memories are failing as they get older is not because the memory per se is failing”. He explains further that “A general guideline here is to review shortly after the learning period or daily event has occurred; to review one day later; to review a third time one week later; to review a fourth time one month later and to review a filth time three to six months later.” A proper start would be to start doing the Daily Mind Map and to go through your Daily Min Map pile at time of the Sprint retrospective.
Alan Baddeley told us that or long term memory is merely semantic based. Mind Maps is an excellent tool for pinpointing associations, suitable for long term memory.
Practical wisdom
- Repeat every day, avoids the memory go away
- Daily Mind Map is an accurate technique for transferring the knowledge you value most, from short term memory to long term memory
Additional Facts
- A living human brain isn’t firm and grey as many people think. It’s actually very soft, jelly-like, and deep red.
- Hedwig Ida Auguste von Restorff married Helmut Adolf Johannes Trendelenburg in 1942. Her last name was changed to Trendelenburg but the scientific term “The Von Restorff effect” wasn’t rebaptized though.
- The World Books Crime Thriller of the Year Award winner 2007 “The Naming of the Dead” by Ian Rankin features an Inspector Rebus who uses Mind Maps to solve crimes. Rebus explains that a Mind Map is the “perfect tool, because when you started to look at it, the complexity vanished, leaving just a central core”.
- Alan Baddeley in companion with his wife Hilary Baddeley has researched on Alzheimer’s disease.
Really nice piece. Another important fact is that mindmaps allow us to take into action our inner child. Actually mindmapping can be also a lot of fun. So, you are reinforcing your memory and at the same time doing something really pleasant (who does not like to work with paper and coloured pencils?)
Mario