Mindmapping: Your Personal Guide to Exploring Creativity and Problem-Solving

List Price: $12.95 Discount Price: $6.83

Customer Reviews:

Solid concise book [Posted on 2004-10-13]
If you're a busy person who is who is interested in learning how to use mindmapping for business - you'll appreciate this concise book. If you're an intermediate mind mapper, (I've been mind mapping for 2 years) there's nothing new. The book heavily emphasizes business concepts so I don't recommend this book if you're not interested in business related mind mapping.

The author focuses on general business related matters, meetings, brainstorming, to-do list, writing, problem solving that are relevant points for business people. She doesn't get into advanced mindmapping concepts like Tony Buzan's, "The Mind Map Book." But it's 150 pages shorter.

The author began her own career in accounting, as a result of mind mapping, she is now is consulting on creativity matters for business... pretty amazing if you ask me.

Brian Carroll
Author of Lead Generation for the Complex Sale : Boost the Quality and Quantity of Leads to Increase Your ROI

Complete blather. Find a different book on this topic - any other book [Posted on 2006-09-21]
Mindmapping is easily a five star topic. It is a powerful way to visually show the structure of thoughts and of human memory. I'm an IT guy like one of the previous reviewers below, and I can vouch for mindmapping working wonders. Tony Buzan, who (I believe) invented it and has written much better books on the topic is some kind of genius.

This book, unfortunately, contains few examples of how to construct mindmaps. And those examples and explanations are poor quality. The very few diagrams are of very low monochrome stick figure quality - whereas the whole idea behind mind-mapping is to create a multi-color visual extravaganza to nurture visual thinking and the production of ideas. The paper it is printed on feels like the cheapest newsprint they could buy. It is not in color like Buzan's five star 1996 "Mind Map Book: How to Use Radiant Thinking to Maximize Your Brain's Untapped Potential". It basically is an attempt to ride the coat-tails of a successful book on a hot topic by pulling in all those people who buy all the books they can find on a hot topic like mindmapping who want to get "as broad a perspective" on the topic as they can.

It rambles wildly page after page and in a totally unfocused series of scatter-brained essays about theories of creativity, how to write, how to conduct meetings, and etc that are potentially applications for mindmapping. The problem is that the execution of these chapters is horrible, and they don't really tie in mind-mapping into their unfocused thesis. After reading each of these chapters, the reader is left to their own devices to try to imagine how to apply mind-mapping to the applications listed. Two thirds of this book can be condensed down to one page listing the potenital applications and saying "I think you can figure out how to apply mindmapping to each of those".

One possible merit of the book is the short chapter on how to use mind-maps in place of "to-do" lists. This 7 page chapter is the only well executed element of the entire book. For some buyers out there, this chapter will be worth more than the cost of the book. ...but from the standpoint of most readers needs, it is not good enough to warrant adding an additional star to my review score.

The meat of the book is chapter 3, about 15 pages. It tells the "basic techniques" of mindmapping and leaves out vast elements found in Buzan's instruction. More than half of that chapter is filler.

I should point out that there are many detractors to the whole idea of mind-mapping. It works for some people, like myself, who are very visually oriented. ....The method of mind-mapping outlined in this book simply doesn't work at all.... Real mind-mapping that works is full of clear pictures drawn by the artist/author/creator that are designed to summon up complex memories in the person who created the mind-map - visual cues to complex ideas stored visually. There is no real discussion of how to use pictures in this book - the very few examples are inane doodles that add nothing.

Total waste of money. Total waste of time. Lousy introduction to the topic. Aside from the chapter on replacing to-do lists, this book has nothing whatsoever to add to the "field" of mindmapping, and will leave a bad taste for mindmapping in a beginner's mouth. I have no idea why the publisher picked it up or why it is still in print.

Most readers of this review have probably discovered Buzan already. The book you need and are probably looking for to expound on and give another person's perspective on the topic is the four-and-a-half-star "Mapping Inner Space" Second Edition by Nancy Margulies, which is brilliantly done and in color (although kind of expensive...).

I Thought It Was Okay [Posted on 2007-02-19]
I think if I could do it again, I would just look up mindmapping on google to see what it says. I hadn't heard about mindmapping before this book, when I first tried I thought it was stupid (very similar to brainstorming in school), but once I started using it I really loved it. It really does help, and I realize that most of my teachers in law school use some form of mindmapping though they don't realize it. I would recommend this book if you want buy a book on the general idea about how to mindmap. It has a lot of filler, it does focus on business use, but in general it will help you if you've never done mindmapping before.

This book must be mandatory at first levels of university [Posted on 2007-02-27]
Just excellent. Try this book and you will end up using a big percentage of your brain that probably was slipping for many years (if it was ever awake)

Good book but too confusing for me [Posted on 2008-03-15]
This is a good book but I did find it a bit overwhelming to read. maybe a need to learn mind-mapping before I read it. LOL

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