Physical overhead of Mindmapping

While I have often argued for Cmapping and against simple hierarchical mindmapping, Quinnovation offers some plausible thoughts about the benefit of simple mindmaps: They may help understand the structure of a talk when you try to capture it during a presentation. And:

“[…] find the drawing and rearranging to be a nice physical overhead to facilitate reflecting.”

I like the idea of the physical overhead as a possible explanation why rearranging “[is] part of the benefit”.

I also suspect that, for many people, the radial, spatial layout can be superior to a merely linear outline form of the same nested hierarchy, because it activates the mode of brain operation that McGilchrist calls the Master, and that Sousanis characterizes as all-at-once instead of sequential.

These are benefits that mitigate the inherent problem of such nested hierarchies, that they lure us into premature pigeon-holing, in particular when the typical mindmapping applications make it difficult to add cross-links. The best application for nested thoughts and notes that I know, is iMapping — notwithstanding, of course, my own tool that Jenny Mackness has tested recently.