A favorite tool to organize my own thinking or to learn about a new topic is to make a mindmap. Mindmaps allow you to abstract the logical structure of a topic from the details, to exploit spatial representations without drowning in linear text, and to let geometric symmetries identify what is missing or unbalanced from your conceptualization of a field. They also help maintain discipline for organizing thoughts top-down (and force you to make explicit a hierarchical structure of concepts). There are many software tools to help with this.
I keep 3 levels of mindmaps. The first is an enormous and detailed map which no one else sees – it’s for my own thinking. The second is a subset of it – a map of our lab’s current and next-5-years focus plan, connecting big ideas to existing and future projects, grants, and personnel. It’s printed as a ~10 ft wide silk poster in our lab hallway, which I try to update regularly (I’m hoping to get a giant touch-screen instead, to make it easier to modify).
The third is a subset of that – a conceptual overview of the major topics throughout our work for a general audience, that otherwise would require synthesis from dozens of papers which focus on individual aspects which often makes it hard to know how it all fits together. I recently asked GPT Astra to produce an interactive map of the main concepts from about a dozen key conceptual papers. I edited the graph structure and wrote brief descriptions for the nodes. Here it is, including an outline, sources, and a glossary of terms:
Download the whole mindmap (with all leaves) as JPG file
Here’s the list of papers it covers, in a timeline organization based on how the concepts were rolled out:
(more of our lab mindmaps here).
Many thanks are due to the support team (especially Maria J.) at WordPress who helped get the map integrated into the site here.
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