How to make a mind map in 6 steps, with examples and tips

Write the main topic you want to explore and place it in the center of the page. Everything else on the map grows from it.

Keep it short and specific: a word, a short phrase or an image. “Annual Business Roadmap”, “Marketing strategy” and “Exam preparation” all work. “Things to think about this year” does not, because it gives the branches nothing to hang from.

Draw the first level of branches around the central topic. Each one is a main category, key theme or stage of the subject. For the business roadmap, the main branches are:

• Key Project Info
• Research & Planning
• Financial Projections
• KPIs
• Retrospective

Aim for 3 to 7 main branches. Fewer, and the topic probably needs no map. More, and some of them belong one level down. Write each one as a keyword rather than a sentence.

Now take each main branch and break it down into subtopics: the details, facts and examples that belong to it. Under Research & Planning, for example, go Competitor analysis and Customer insights.

Keep going until each branch reaches the level of detail you need. Each level should be more specific than the one above it, and each topic should still be a keyword or a short phrase.

If you work in Mindomo, AI can suggest subtopics for a branch when you run out of ideas.

A mind map is already visual, and a few visual cues make it much faster to scan:

• Colors: give each main branch its own color, so you can tell at a glance which subtopics belong together.
• Icons and labels: mark important points or categories. In Mindomo you can filter topics by icon later.
• Images: a picture on the central topic, or on a branch, is easier to remember than a word.

Use them to support the structure, not to decorate it. One color per branch says something; a different color on every topic says nothing.

The tree shows which idea belongs to which, but some ideas are related across branches. Show those links with:

• Relationships: an arrow between two topics on different branches, with an optional label. In the example, Customer insights is the basis for Investor meetings.
• Boundaries: an outline around a topic and its subtopics, to mark them as a group.
• Summaries: a bracket that collects several topics under one conclusion.

Then attach what the map needs to be useful, without crowding it: notes for longer explanations, links and attachments for sources and files, and checkable tasks if the map will become a to-do list. Your mind map is now a workspace where ideas, resources and actions are connected.

A map you keep to yourself is finished here. A map for a team is not: share it and keep building it together.

• Collaborate in real time: several people can view, edit and expand the same map at once, and see each other’s changes as they happen.
• Export it in more than 20 formats, including PDF, image, Word and PowerPoint, when you need it outside Mindomo.

Move branches as your thinking changes. A topic that started under one branch often turns out to belong under another, and in a digital map you drag it there, with its subtopics, in one move.

A good mind map is easy to scan. If a topic needs more than a few words, put the rest in a note, a comment or an attachment. The detail is one click away, and the map stays readable.

A mind map is a hierarchy, so make the hierarchy visible:

• Use a different size for each level: font size, topic size or line thickness.
• Use a different color for each main branch or category.
• Use icons to mark important topics. In Mindomo you can also search and filter by icon.
• Combine layouts where it helps, for example a timeline for one branch of a radial map.
• Give the central topic an image, and add more images where they help you remember.

Don’t treat the map as a finished drawing. Keep it up to date, and when the ideas turn into work, turn topics into tasks with checkboxes, due dates and owners. Our guide to prioritizing tasks shows how.

If you build the same kind of map again and again, for every project, every client or every exam, save one as a template. The next map starts with the structure already in place.

Ideas do not wait until you are at your desk. With the Mindomo app for iOS or Android you add a topic on the go, and it syncs to every device. It works especially well for taking notes and quick brainstorming.

Your map is already the outline of a talk. Mindomo turns it into a slideshow, one slide per branch, so the audience follows the structure instead of a wall of bullets. See how to make effective presentations with mind maps.