Mind mapping is a skill with different levels, from Level Zero to Level Three. Level One is breaking the old linear mold, while Level Two involves thinking about how ideas are similar or different, and Level Three is where the real power comes in.

At Level Two, there are groups of information, and the structure and flow are clearer. The emphasis is on some groups and arrows over others, making it easier to remember.

At Level Three, we have to spend time identifying alternatives and then make a judgment on which one is the best. This is where the quality of connections and relationships improves.

The type of thinking that you have to do for a level three mind map is so crucial that virtually any top 1 or 2% learner is going to be thinking in this way even if they're not using mind maps as the technique mentally they're engaging in those same higher order thinking processes and patterns.

Just going back to my article on metacognition here I'm going to do the like pseudo level three note taking with linear notes uh here so as I do this just notice how I'm spending a lot of time reading and um and when I'm writing I'm not actually just reading things and writing things down I'm actually thinking about it and synthesizing it and I'm doing all of that higher order thinking and grouping and thinking about how things are related to each other

this is actually also the reason why you should use mind maps to plan uh literature reviews and essays it's also probably two or three times more time consuming overall not just when I'm writing the notes but later when I go to review the notes I'm forcing myself to have to read through this entire thing all over again to extract the meaning from it whereas if I had just the Mind map I can just glance at it to review the structure in like seconds or minutes