Curious as to whether I am alone in finding mind mapping almost bizarrely useless. Maybe I just have a good working memory, but putting everything on a page in 2d seems absurdly fiddly, even irritating, to me.
One super concrete problem I have with it is that it encourages hierarchical organization, which is almost never how systems work or how I tend to think of them.
The reason why it's (imho) generally lucid and well organized is because I put all the bullet notes that I had into FreeMind, so I was able to easily drag them around and see the connections between the ideas. This is what allowed me to eventually figure out what the larger themes were.
Even if systems aren't hierarchical in their natural state, we tend to have represent them hierarchically in order to share with others -- e.g. in a blog post, a book, a YouTube video, etc. And so being able to have insights around hierarchy, and organize your thinking around hierarchy, tends to be useful.
In terms of programming, even ten years later I still put everything I learn into the same mindmap. So most recently this has been Angular (and the upgrade process from AngularJS), Kubernetes (for consulting), Typescript, etc.
It's definitely a lifesaver for documenting obscure AWS operations that I only need a few times a year, but where it would be a huge pain to have to go back to the original AWS documentation each time. E.g. using FreeMind it takes me 10 seconds to figure out how to tail the logs from my beanstalk instances, whereas just using Google that would be an ordeal.
I agree, mind mapping has never been at all useful to me, however when younger I had a memory that was remarked upon as being phenomenal by everybody that knew me (not so much anymore) and for this reason I never developed any note-taking skills at all.
So perhaps it is the memory that makes us perceive the tool as useless.
on edit: actually another thing that probably affects its utility for me, I am not a visual thinker at all. I organize things in blocks of text, I think in paragraphs. I have thought I should introduce my daughter to mind mapping, she thinks visually.
I don't know how I would describe my thought processes. Typically I am not really aware of how they work except for having a vague sense of objects of various textures and consistencies sort of sliding around, banging together, clicking, etc in the back of my head somewhere. Neither visual nor textual.
I use mind mapping as a tool for flow, and it allows me to dig an idea or a concept very deeply, very fast.
For example: If I have an unclear task at hand, it allows me to explode into sub-tasks, or ideas and in 5-10 minutes I have a big blob of more concrete stuff.
Also mind mapping is very useful to put very large concepts on a big canvas. e.g.: Need to design a feature? Easy. Write the feature, explore requirements/dependencies/blockers.
Lastly, I love to design contracts or tender documents with it. Put all requirements, group under sections, map dependencies, write notes, and convert to a document. Esp. with a large group. Reduces a 3 week intense work sprint to a week or 10 days of normal work at most.
Mind mapping is immensely useful and flexible. I both use FreeMind and MindNode.
Because it's extremely fast. Enter for a new item in same level, tab for one lower level. Also it allows visual organization and reorganization. When I start to mindmap, I can do a one man brainstorming to flesh out the subject I'm working on, software or not.
Moreover, you can add much more information under every bubble, esp. with FreeMind. Also there are other ways for showing different kind of relationships, like drawing an arrow between two nodes and labeling it "depends" or "may contradict" or whatever.
Maybe I work extremely fast with it, because my brain works exactly like a mind map. I explode an idea in my mind, and continue exploring by re-centering to a sub-idea. Mind mapping allows me to reflect that exploration process to an infinite canvas, so I don't stress about backtracking or remembering a web of ever growing connections.
I tried FreeMind a few times in the late 00's after I had a coworker who swore by it. I never really "got" it either. Though in general I really dislike any data entry interface that requires horizontal scrolling, and that's the the biggest reason I avoid Excel.
Maybe keyboard shortcuts make a big difference? A video of a power user flying around in a very large mind map without touching the mouse would be a lot more convincing to me than the usual toy examples where everything fits on one screen.
I used to use FreeMind a fair bit, essentially as a hierarchical set of lists. This tends to fall apart a bit when things start not fitting into a neat hierarchy, so I fell out of using it. It also isn't well suited to longer-form notes which I found myself wanting to mix in.
I'm quite interested in this sort of note taking organisation: https://notes.andymatuschak.org/ - it seems to better fit my internal thought process before bending it a bit to fit a mind-map application... I've not found something that quite works that way UX wise (his code is not published) and it'll be years before I get around to trying to write my own! There are apps out there that seem to enable implementing that sort of note making and linking method (https://github.com/churichard/notabase, and others mentioned in comments in the thread https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29969757) that I meant to try out when I have a bit of tinkering time.
A problem I face is that mind maps represent only _one_ form of organization. In my head I can switch between various perspectives to some extent. If I try to make a computer help with the organization, I typically lose track of the mental map that I have, once the graph layout changes. I wonder how this process works in a brain, where switching feels more fluent.
Also, your comment made me wonder if a 3d map would be intrinsically better, but I doubt that that is the case. The distance metric is perhaps the limiting factor. A time dimension (for instance in the form of hyperlinking) works quite well, but obviously this requires time and effort from the user.
And in this context I would like to mention Kinopio, which makes mind mapping fun: https://kinopio.club/
I find mind mapping really useful. People have different kinds of brains. I can look at a mind map and see status across multiple projects almost instantly. This is across dozens of projects. Not superficial details either: What needs to be done / whats the hold up. Who is doing what.
I can't get that detail from lists or other tools. A whiteboard with sticky notes needs to be huge to get this level of detail. Room size.
I never got much mileage out of mind maps for note taking or knowledge management despite giving it the old college try. I do occasionally use them to collect my thoughts (pulling together a state of the union, if you will).
Cue the org-mode brigade! (Of which I consider myself a member.)
I haven't used FreeMind specifically, but when I hear hierarchical organization with folding, I remember the rabbit hole that I fell into 20 years ago...and still haven't climbed out quite yet. From Shadow Plan[0] on Palm OS, through so many others, and landing at org-mode for the last decade or so.
Almost all mind-mapping software uses tree structures. Even org mode can't gracefully do DAG.
Still looking for that simple-to-use free text tool that has a graph structure. Task Warrior comes close, but it hard to use for deep graphs. It's a major UX challenge.
I personally use Flying Logic for this type of use case. Costs money though.
I use iThoughts on iOS to similar effect in my technical domain. The ability to collapse information domains quickly and navigate complex trees in real time basically let me cheat when it comes to learning new things.
I've tried to adopt mm tools a few times over the years. To me the main problem is I end up spending too much time adding things I never use again. Maybe I am just doing it wrong?
Mildly related self promotion: see your function call graph for your TypeScript files. It might help you get a map-like view of what is happening in your code.
Freemind is written in Java. It hasn't got much if any love in the last 10 years but it works fine. There's also a fork named Freeplane that's actively developed. The file formats are mostly compatible. I believe Freeplane files have some stuff in them that Freemind ignores.
Not much work has been done on it, but it still runs fine on modern devices. If it ever stops running, it's an open file format, so you can always transition to FreePlane or OrgMode
One super concrete problem I have with it is that it encourages hierarchical organization, which is almost never how systems work or how I tend to think of them.