Drawing Your Thinking
A naturalist's notebook and a branching drawing: how to see the shape of a subject on one page, and then walk through it.
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A tree in a notebook
London, July 1837. A young naturalist, Charles Darwin, has been back from his long voyage on the Beagle for less than a year. His head is full of facts: finches from one island and mockingbirds from another, fossils, shells, bones, and a question he is not sure he dares to ask. His notebooks are full of lists.
On one page of a small notebook he stops listing. He writes two words at the top, I think, and underneath he draws something that is not a list at all.
It is a small, rough drawing: a single line that splits, and splits again, like the branches of a tree. Some of the branches end. Some keep going. It shows his idea that all living things are related, descending from common ancestors, with new kinds branching off over time.
The drawing is famous today. It shows the thing a list cannot show: how ideas connect. A list puts every item in a row, and every item looks the same size. A branching drawing shows which things belong together, which come first, and which are the trunk and which only twigs.
In the 1970s the writer and educator Tony Buzan popularised a way of taking notes in this branching form, which he called mind mapping. He explained it in a BBC series, Use Your Head, and in a book of the same name. A mind map starts from one central idea and spreads out in all directions, with a key word on every line.
A map is a good memory tool for another reason. It is a picture of a subject, and you already know what to do with pictures. In this lesson you will draw one and then turn it into a house.
Words worth knowing
Say what you think each one means, then open it.
Darwin's 1837 'I think' tree is in his Notebook B. Tony Buzan's Use Your Head series was broadcast by the BBC in 1974. Retold here in our own words.
The rules of a good map
A mind map is a single page with a central image in the middle and branches spreading out from it. Each branch carries one idea; smaller branches carry details.
- Start in the middle. Draw the main idea as a picture or a word in a shape. Use the whole page.
- Give each main idea its own branch. Three to seven main branches is a good number.
- Use one key word per line. Not sentences. Keep the words short and write them on the branch.
- Add detail on smaller branches. Each sub-branch comes from a main branch.
- Use colour and small pictures. A different colour for each main branch.
From map to palace
A map shows you the structure. A palace lets you keep it. The two fit together because both are made of places.
- Choose a palace with a room for each main branch. Five branches, five rooms.
- Turn each branch into a picture and put it in its room. Metaphysics could be a huge glowing question mark floating over the hall.
- Turn each sub-branch into a picture in a place within the room. Detail goes on furniture and walls.
- Walk it. From room to room, branch by branch.
palace it to keep it.
Now you build
Have a go before you open any answer. A rough attempt teaches you more than a perfect model you only read.
Branches and questions
Make your own map
Turn it into a palace
The rules
Explain your map
Drill
Flash cards
Say the answer first, then tap the card.
Quick quiz
The memory challenge
Memory challenge: the five branches
Learn the five branches of philosophy in order, one in each of five rooms. Metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, logic, aesthetics.
Use the five rooms from the example, or your own. A picture for each, and one question for each.
The list has gone. Type what you remember, one item per line.
Look back
These reach back to earlier rooms. Answer in your head or out loud, then check.
What I can do now
A thought to keep
Which subject on your desk right now would be best seen as a map? What would be its centre?