Draw Better Mind Maps with Notability

Hi, everyone!  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today’s video, I’ll show you how you can use the Notability app to draw a visual representation of concepts with a mind map.

First of all, what is a mind map and why would you use one?  A mind map is a visual diagram of a topic showing its interactions with other concepts. That just sounds like blah, blah, blah.  So, here’s how I’ll explain it. Sometimes, you'll have a topic which you can immediately put into linear form, which is how we are forced to present things when using text-based applications like word processors. 

I consider an outline to be linear. Let me use an example of a book I’m currently reading. The topic is sleep and the author has outlined four parts to the book.

Sleep:

• What is it?
• Why do we need it?
• How do dreams work?
• How to handle sleep problems

Then you can group smaller topics underneath each of these broad categories to create a detailed outline. This is very linear — it is also helpful that the author Matthew Walker has done all of the mental work of figuring out what those 4 broad categories should be.

But what if it’s not a well-structured book that I am diagramming, but a complicated topic that I am researching? In order to get to a point where I can create a linear outline, I need a way to organize all my jumbled thoughts. For that, I use a mind map.

Let’s say, for the sake of this video, that I am researching sleep. That’s my topic, so I write that in the center of the page. Now, as I research, I’m going to find lots of smaller topics that are connected with sleep. So I will note them down as I go around the main topic. I’m starting to see that some of the topics are connected to each other. For example, problems sleeping seem to be connected, so I can draw connections between them. Also, all of the biology driving sleep can be grouped together or connected.

Now at this point, if you are doing a mind map with pencil and paper, you are stuck just connecting concepts with lines or highlighting like concepts with the same color. This is okay – it’s still helpful, but it’s messy. In the end, I’m using this mind map to help me group like concepts so that I can create a linear outline that I can use for writing. Using the Notability app helps you create cleaner, more helpful mind maps. How? Two ways. First you can

Move concepts

Right now I have all of the sleeping problems scattered around the page, connected by lines. Instead, I want them all grouped together. With Notability, I can use this select tool to select a concept and drag it around the page. Using this, I can move all like concepts together. Once I get them together, I realize they are part of a subtype — sleep disorders. So I write that as a broad category and move the words to surround it. Great! I can do the same for other topics. Obviously, I have some things that don’t fall naturally into a category, so maybe I drag them to the side or create a miscellaneous category for them. OK, this is good. But Notability can also help

Color code

Once I get all of these concepts together, I can use the select tool to make them all the same color that are in a single category. Just select, choose style, and choose a color. Before I move them around, I can color code all like concepts the same color to remind myself that they are in the same category. I can also use the highlighting function, just like you can with paper and pencil.

Once I move concepts and color code them, I really start to see the structure of the information that I’ve gathered. Now I can take this map and use it to create an outline easily. In addition, I can draw connections between concepts that might be useful in my research or in my writing. I can go back to this diagram and re-organize things as my thinking changes or his new connections arise. 

I’ve tried a couple of tools that are specifically built to produce mind maps and I find them clumsy and frustrating. Notability — particularly if used with a bigger screen like an iPad — is easy to use and flexible. Plus, you can export your diagram to a PDF to keep it long term.

And that’s it! Let me know what you think. Comments are always appreciated and thanks for watching.