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Whether you’re writing an essay, creating a presentation, or brainstorming strategies with your team, it’s a challenge to sort ideas effectively. There’s a simple solution to this, used by students and established writers alike: mind maps! A mind map helps you organize your ideas in a systematic manner and reveals clues for you to arrange your material better.

In this article, we’ll explore what mind mapping is and learn how to make a creative map for your ideas. We’ll also take a look at some mind map examples to show you unique and innovative ways to create a mind map. But before we begin, let’s establish a mind mapping definition.

What is a mind map?

A mind map is a visual tool used for brainstorming, problem-solving, and organizing ideas. It is a diagram that starts with a central idea and branches out to related subtopics and details.

As you lay out different topics and subtopics visually, you can clearly see the connections between them. In this way, mind mapping helps you see the relationships between different ideas and understand complex topics easily. It’s time to throw away those hefty notes and make note-taking a fun activity!

Let’s see how you can use a mind map in different ways.

Why use mind maps?

Is there any advantage to mind mapping beyond the obvious joy of drawing out your thought process? It’s all very well that you avoid working like a grumpy professor, but what beyond this? 

Here are some benefits of using a mind map:

• Learning becomes a stimulating process.
• Difficult topics can be simplified and easy to understand.
• You can visualize complex points to easily remember and recall dense pieces of information.
• The freedom to connect ideas without a specific order leads to creative and innovative solutions.
• You can come up with a hierarchy of points by easily differentiating between primary and secondary topics.
• The engaging act of making a mind map speeds up brainstorming and improves productivity.
• Easy collaboration allows an entire team or group to work together on a presentation or project.

Mind mapping allows you to see connections and relationships between different ideas. The process makes it easier to understand complex topics and make the right decisions. In this way, a mind map enhances your memory, comprehension, and productivity.

How to make a mind map

It’s quite easy to create a mind map. All you need is a pen and paper! If you prefer working on a laptop, there are several tools you can use, our mind map template being one of them. Scroll down and you’ll find our template.

Follow these steps to make a mind map:

1.  Start with a central idea

Write down the central idea or topic in the center of a blank page. This can be your essay title, an area of research, or a problem you need to solve. Make sure you leave enough space on all sides to create a spreading map.

We’ll add a step-by-step mind map example to help you understand the process. Let’s say you had to brainstorm an essay on types of democracy. Your first step will begin at the central point.

2. Add related ideas

Think of the most important subtopics or areas of interest and arrange them around the central idea. Connect these to the main topic with lines or arrows to indicate the relationship between the two.

So for an essay mind map, the first relevant bubble will be the essay introduction, which will further lead to your thesis statement . For now, we’ll show you the second stage of mind mapping in this example:

3. Create a hierarchy of ideas

Keep adding more layers until you get a spreading map that starts with your central idea and ends with specific facts, evidence, and examples. As you break down your information into smaller and smaller points, you’ll also need to denote the connections between them.

If any facts from separate subtopics are connected, draw a dotted line or arrow between them to indicate this. When you open your mind map later, all hierarchies and connections should be instantly clear to you. Come up with a system of arrows and lines to denote various types of connections between points and subpoints.

Our mind map example will outline this for you:

4. Review and refine the map

If you don’t have a rough essay outline in your mind, you can just focus on getting everything out on the page. After seeing the rough layout, you can decide on the final set of points and remove everything else.

So, the last step is to review your mind map and refine it until you are satisfied with the outcome. In this stage, you’ll add all the smallest details to your mind map and establish important connections through lines.

In a mind map for essay writing, the last few points will be the evidence you use to support your arguments. It’s a good idea to mark the page numbers or other citation indicators so you don’t have to go looking for them later.

Your mind map should look something like the example below:

5. Add symbols and images to help you remember

While making mind maps for writing essays, it’s essential to use any techniques that can help you remember information better. A great way to ensure this is to use symbols and images to signify specific things.

You could develop a system of meanings for different signs. A star can represent important data figures, while a vertical arrow can highlight ascending or descending order. While you can utilize mind mapping tools and software to achieve this, it helps to use symbols that are personal to you. This way, it’s much easier to memorize things!

Let’s add some symbols to our mind map example and breathe life into it.

If you’d like us to add more mind mapping examples, let us know in the comments below!

Note: Keep your mind maps clean! Add only the most central points in one or two words rather than writing entire phrases or sentences. Making a cluttered and chaotic mind map serves no purpose. Keep your focus on the bigger picture and what you want to achieve through the mind map.

If you’re using the mind map for essay writing, you should know how to transfer ideas and information from your map to your essay. Knowing how to write a MEAL paragraph can help! 

Done brainstorming and writing your essay? Let’s make it perfect Get started

Free mind map templates

If you need innovative mind map ideas and templates, we have no shortage of them! Mind mapping for writing differs from mind mapping for a presentation or brainstorming session. Accordingly, mind mapping methods also differ from one another.

So, we’ve created four blank mind map templates to help you find the format that works best for you. Based on your requirements, you can choose from the mind map templates available below. 

1. Basic map that radiates outward

2. template to brainstorm a topic, 3. mind map for writing an essay, 4. mind map that uses arrows for cause-and-effect.

If you’ve created a mind map for your assignment and need an editing and proofreading service , we’re here to help.

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PhD tool: Map out your PhD

We know that steady everyday progress is a crucial factor in finishing a PhD. In previous posts, we have seen productivity techniques to support us in taking more of these daily steps. Yet, a lot of walking does not necessarily get us anywhere. We need to know that we are actually getting past key reference points, closer to our final destination. In this post, I propose a diagramming exercise to map out key obstacles, milestones and the “everyday fuel” that propels us past them in our journey towards PhD completion.

The idea for this exercise comes from the doctoral and supervisor workshops about progress that we have been doing since 2019, both in Estonia and in Spain. Despite the big distance (geographic and cultural) between these two countries, we noticed a common pattern. Doctoral supervisors that seemed to be “on top of things” in supporting their students to progress towards completing the PhD, mentioned in passing that they had a clear plan, a “ map of the PhD” that they discussed with their students and helped them know how far they were from the destination. This got me thinking: is there a way we can help PhD students make sense and track their progress at a higher level , a sort of “10,000-meter view” of the doctorate?

In a previous post, I have talked about a diagram that helped me (and many other students –now doctors– around my old lab in Spain) to conceptualize, define and refine the main concepts and contributions of the thesis (the CQOCE diagram ). Yet, that diagram provides no idea about the process until those contributions come to fruition. And it says absolutely nothing about the biggest risks and pitfalls to watch out for.

Enter the map of the PhD…

Mapping out the PhD… step by step

The map of the PhD will guide us in the long journey through uncertain terrain that is research. Think of it more like a medieval map, rather than a nice, modern map of roads and cities.

Not the kind of map I'm talking about

A map of this kind has three types of elements: milestones (reference points), obstacles (places to avoid), and fuel stations (inns and villages where we get the energy and nourishment needed to go from one milestone to the next). Below, I illustrate these elements with examples drawn from the workshops, but keep in mind that:

• We need to come up with our own elements, for our own field, research topic and our own personal strengths and weaknesses.
• Even if we brainstorm at the beginning many elements of each kind, it is useful to prioritize and simplify the map so that it contains only the 4-8 most important elements of each kind: the ones we need to focus on the most.

The Milestones

Brainstorm and select what are the most important reference points in the PhD process. These are events or actions that will happen only once or rarely during the doctorate, which are crucial to know that our thesis is going somewhere. Examples could include:

• to write and present the thesis project,
• to complete the literature review of the thesis (including a synthesis of the main gaps detected in it),
• to perform a research/lab process reproducibly,
• presenting our results at a conference,
• designing a study that is considered feasible by the supervisors,
• having your first journal article published,
• having the CQOCE diagram of the thesis be considered final/stable by the supervisors,
• completing a draft of the analytical overview (sometimes called kappa ) of an article-based thesis,
• doing a research stay abroad

… or anything else relevant for our particular thesis. The order of these milestones may or may not be important. The milestones should probably have scientific or learning relevance (rather than being bureaucratic in nature, like the yearly attestation process happening in some doctoral programs, where the contributions/content is not really discussed). Also, try to come up with milestones of different kinds (i.e., do not just put “write article 1”, “write article 2”, … etc.).

Here be Dragons (aka The Obstacles)

Again, we can brainstorm and select the most important, concrete obstacles and challenges that might prevent us from finishing the PhD. These can be internal (i.e., related to our particular personality, tendencies, or the nature of our thesis project) or external (i.e., economic or social factors, or unpredictable but probable events that may influence our progress). A nice way of brainstorming these challenges is to do (alone or with a group of fellow students) a " premortem 1 of our thesis " . Our initial brainstorm can be pared down to the 4-8 challenges that we deem most likely to happen, catastrophic, or difficult for us to overcome. Example obstacles could include:

• Procrastination (internal)
• Too much stress or anxiety (internal)
• Vague or non-existent thesis project (internal)
• Overwork and burnout (internal)
• Poor post-PhD outlook demoralizing us (internal)
• An experiment provides bad results (external)
• Technical problems in running an experiment (external)
• Getting too little (or too much?) guidance/supervision (external)
• Toxic department/laboratory atmosphere (external)
• A global pandemic cancels our research stay (external)

So far, we have been talking about clearly meaningful but infrequent events that either give us a big push forward… or send us down a cliff. Yet, between these milestones months apart, there is the everyday . The PhD is a long-distance race, and such distances are covered one step at a time, day after day, getting up and doing more of the right things and less of the not-so-good stuff.

Following the medieval journey metaphor, I see these everyday actions as the inns at the end of a day’s march, providing a bed and a dinner, which enable us to recover and continue walking the next day. These are much more frequent, often smaller, actions or habits we take on and do every day… or things we put in our “not-to-do list” . Be it through doing or not doing them, they help us avoid the obstacles and make sure we hit the milestones. I’ll say it again, these can be very personal.

People often focus this “fuel” part too much on events that they cannot control . That sort of fuel is a sure recipe for getting stranded in the middle of nowhere. An example could be “get a paper accepted”, as opposed to “submit a paper we are happy with” – the latter being much more under our control. While there can be a certain element of chaos or randomness in getting to milestones, and in the obstacles that pop up on the way, our fuel should be as much as possible under our control (e.g., focusing on our own behavior, rather than other people’s actions or judgements).

Also, make sure that fuel is frequent enough: daily is best for developing habits, but weekly could also work. If we decide to leave a less-frequent fuel piece in the map, we can think of it as a sort of “occasional turbo boost ”… we still need most of our fuel to come from more conventional, frequently-available sources.

Example fuel items may include:

• (Feedback during) Regular thesis-oriented meetings with supervisors,
• Discussing our work with external researchers,
• Writing results reports after each study,
• Reading research in our area regularly and writing syntheses/reflections about them,
• Writing new concepts regularly in our lab notebook,
• Solving particular technical problems,
• Learning new lab techniques,
• Writing regularly,
• Teaching others a method we know,
• Taking time off with family/friends regularly,
• Any habits related to exercise, good sleep or nutrition

A few additional notes on the mapping process

That’s it! Now we have all we need to start mapping out our PhD. Do it using pen and paper, or copy this Google Drawings template I created.

Example map of the PhD template

Update (23.06.2022): We have now added a “map of the thesis” template you can copy to our PhD Toolkit (under the “Conceptualizing your dissertation” section).

A few more ideas about how I would go about doing it:

• We can do this exercise alone, but it would be even better to do it together with other PhD students in our area/lab/department (that’s what we do in the workshops I mentioned at the outset).
• Every research area (and sub-area, and sub-community) is different. Also, every person is different: we all have different strengths and weaknesses that may play out during the PhD. Hence, even if we do a map together with others, we may want to tweak it for our own particular case later on.
• No matter how good our initial map of the PhD is, it will probably benefit from suggestions and feedback from colleagues and supervisors (especially, more experienced researchers that have seen many doctoral processes in our area). We could show them the whole map, or just ask a few questions about its elements: what is the most common reason you have seen PhD students fail? what habits helped get you through your PhD? what would you say are the most important milestones in a PhD in our field? Etc.
• The map is just another tool to help us reflect about the PhD. I would use it sparingly, maybe just at the beginning of the PhD (or in the first meetings with a new PhD student, if you are a supervisor), or in less-frequent reviews and self-reflections (e.g., once a semester). If we focus on this goal-oriented view too much or too frequently, it runs the risk of making us excessively obsessed with the destination… while the PhD is also a process to enjoy in its own right!

We could take the map metaphor further (what would be the equivalent of alternative routes? or scenic spots? or …), but this is the simplest exercise I could come up with that still provides a complete idea of the dissertation process.

Just do it. See if it helps you decide what to focus on for the next stretch of the way.

Did you try out this exercise? Did you do it alone or with fellow students? Let us know how it went (you can even share links to your resulting maps), in the comments area below!

Header image by Wikimedia Commons

Klein, G. (2007). Performing a project premortem. Harvard Business Review , 85 (9), 18–19. ↩︎

Luis P. Prieto

Luis P. is a Ramón y Cajal research fellow at the University of Valladolid (Spain), investigating learning technologies, especially learning analytics. He is also an avid learner about doctoral education and supervision, and he's the main author at the A Happy PhD blog.

Google Scholar profile

Free Mind Map for Essay Templates by GitMind

Making an essay is a common piece of advice offered to you along with your writing assignment. In that case, this post will teach you how to make mind maps as well as how to use pre-made mind maps for essay models. Mind mapping organizes information in a way that mirrors how our brains truly operate, as opposed to standard note-taking or linear text that you’ve been taught or have grown accustomed to. It can also help you avoid the stumbling blocks and overload created by overt analytical thinking. It lets you view more than one notion at a time, which helps to clarify your thoughts.

Free Mind Map for Essay by GitMind

Effective essay writing, essay topic template, paragraph essay organizer, mind map for essay benefits, how to create a mind map for an essay.

A mind map for writing an essay is a written piece in which you convey a certain topic and then back it up with facts, claims, analyses, and explanations. The five-paragraph essay is the most common style of an essay, though an essay can have as many parts as necessary. A 5 essay is comprised of five paragraphs. An essay, on the other hand, is divided into 3 sections: an introduction, a body, and a conclusion.

According to the mind map essay example, an essay is a written piece in which you convey a certain topic and then back it up with facts, claims, analyses, and explanations. The five-paragraph essay is the most common style of an essay, though an essay can have as many parts as necessary. A 5 essay is comprised of five paragraphs. An essay, on the other hand, is divided into 3 sections: an introduction, a body, and a conclusion.

Plan essay mind map template with this paragraph organizer. The introduction should begin with a broad statement and end with a thesis statement that zooms in on the themes you will discuss in considerable depth. The proof of your idea should be included in the body paragraphs. Lastly, the conclusions affirm your topic and the key ideas of your work and then zoom out with an assessment or comment on the greater issue.

Mind map for essay may be an excellent method for you to try if you want to attain higher levels of attention and creativity, as well as the improved organization and more succinct communication. The advantages of concept maps are numerous and diverse. In essence, they include: presenting an overview of a vast subject/broad issue and enabling you to portray it in a more compact manner and also creating a more appealing and entertaining structure for your ocular to look at, ruminate over, and remember.

Creating a mind map essay example is always challenging, even if you are a superb writer and are well-versed in the subject. In contrast to other types of writing, you need to cultivate an interesting way of thinking in order to persuade readers of your point of view. In this instance, a program like GitMind might be useful. It will enable you to write essays that need ordered thought. While there are various strategies for arranging the thoughts you want to include in your essay, many people connect using a mind map for essay writing to utilizing a mind map. This program makes it easy to brainstorm, convey your ideas, and clarify your position.

• To get started, go to the GitMind official website. and then press the “Get Started” button.

• Start designing your mind map for writing an essay by clicking the “Create MindMap” button.

• Select your favorite layout and begin entering data into each node.

• When you’re finished, just click the “Save” button to save your changes.

In summary, making a mind map for essay writing is a basic yet very efficient method of brainstorming and outlining your thoughts. A mind map represents your topic by using a primary thought and branches that explain the center notion. Terms and keyphrases, color codes for phrases and branching, and visual materials like doodles or symbols are all used in well-drawn mind maps. On a single page, you may generally summarize all of your essay’s main points.

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How to Use a Mind Map to Prepare Your Research Proposal

Plan out and finish your research proposal in no time using a mind map. Learn how to prepare it by following the steps described in this article. The examples generated by a mind mapping tool define each step.

Mind mapping is a great tool to help you come up with your research proposal. The mind map will guide you through the process of research proposal preparation and even the whole study with less effort as you become more systematic in your approach. It will help you plan out in detail those things that you want done within a specified period and at the same time, monitor your progress.

How does mind mapping work? To those who are not familiar with this excellent tool that has many applications, the following example is given to show how it works.

Mind Mapping as a Tool in Research Proposal Preparation

Let’s say you already have finished most of the required subjects in your chosen course and is now faced with the task of preparing a research proposal. You can come up with your mind map by following the three steps outlined below. You may do this without XMind using a clean sheet of paper, marking pen, and a set of colored pencils.

Step 1. Identify your main goal.

Since you intend to prepare your research proposal, your goal will be “Prepare Research Proposal.” Type in XMind as the central idea or write in bold strokes at the center of the paper.

Step 2. Figure out what major activities you should do to prepare the research proposal.

Preparing your research proposal involves at least three things. These are:

Link each major activity to the central idea using a line, preferably a curved one. Allocate enough space between these major activities to make way for the more detailed activities. XMind does this automatically when you add a subtopic to the main idea.

Step 3.  Specify those things that you will actually do.

Under each of the major activities, specify those things that you will actually do. These should be action statements. Link these statements with lines to the corresponding major activities. In XMind, just add the specific activities as subtopics.

Output of the Mind Mapping Software

Following the steps above, the corresponding examples for each step were arrived at using the mind mapping software. Below is the mind map output that aided the preparation of the given examples (click the figure to enlarge).

You can add more or change items in the mind map as well as define a time frame for each of the activities that you have identified. In so doing, you will be able to make a rough estimate how long you should be able to prepare your research proposal. If you have a fixed period within which you have to submit your draft proposal, you can allocate specific time periods for the accomplishment of each activity. Thus, you can submit your proposal on time.  

© 2013 September 14 P. A. Regoniel

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Dissertation template - Mind Map

The dissertation template is a great way to find out what to write on your paper and organize and structure information to make your work easier. it follows the standard structure containing all chapters from the introduction to the conclusions, and it explains exactly what you need to add for each one. keywords: dissertation, essay, paper, report, writing, article, case study, composition, education, student, students, school, research, university, thesis, script, draft, academic writing, academic, scholarly writing, scholarly, project..

Dissertation template

The dissertation template offers the standard structure of the thesis paper to ease the students' work.

It covers all the necessary chapters (from the Introduction to the Conclusions), and it contains guidelines to help structure and organize all the necessary information and provide a framework.

Dissertation

Conclusions, conclusion 2, conclusion 1.

Add your conclusion and your final thoughts. Tip: add more details in the notes section

Methodology

How did you obtained these results, explain the method you used.

Add the method you are using to demonstrate your case study. Explain what and how you did. Examples of methods: focus groups, interviews, timescales, etc.

Results and Discussions

What are the results, describe the result.

This chapter of your dissertation refers to the results you found. Report the results and interpret the meaning putting them in context while explaining the matter for each result.

Literature Review

Important ideas/solutions.

Describe the theoretical background you've read and situate your work in relation to existing knowledge. Add only the main ideas explaining or giving arguments/objections to your research topic/statement.

Add the source

Add the scholarly articles, books, dissertations, conference proceedings, and other resources you've found helpful for your research topic. These resources contain ideas you'll refer to in the dissertation.

Introduction

Research topic, define the scope of this research.

Now that you have the research topic define the scope of this research.

Add the research topic

The first thing you need to do is to establish your research topic . It can be a problem statement or a question you plan to answer.

Why use a Mindomo mind map template?

Mind maps help you brainstorm, establish relationships between concepts, organize and generate ideas.

However, mind map templates offer an easier way to get started, as they are frameworks that contain information about a specific subject with guiding instructions. In essence, mind map templates ensure the structure that combines all the elements of a specific subject and serves as a starting point for your personal mind map. They are a resource for providing a practical solution to create a mind map on a particular topic, either for business or education.

Mindomo brings you smart mind map templates that allow you to function and think effortlessly.

A template has various functionalities:

Descriptive topics

Topics with background text

Default branch

Removing the template data

You can choose from a variety of mind map templates from Mindomo's business or educational accounts, or you can create your own mind map templates from scratch. Any mind map can be transformed into a mind map template map by adding further guiding notes to one of its topics.

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Mind Map for Research Proposal

You can easily edit this template using Creately. You can export it in multiple formats like JPEG, PNG and SVG and easily add it to Word documents, Powerpoint (PPT) presentations, Excel or any other documents. You can export it as a PDF for high-quality printouts.

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MindMap Gallery Thesis Design

Thesis Design

This is a mind map of the thesis design. You can make and share your own mind maps easily. Just try EdrawMind mind mapping software for free!

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Chapter 1\ Introduction

Background of the Study

Rationale of the Study

Problem Statement

Aim of the Study

Research Questions

Significance of the Study

Scope of the Study

Design of the Study

Chapter 2\ Literature Review

Theoretical Framework

Previous Research

Chapter 3\ Research Method

Data Collection

Data Analysis Procedure

Chapter 4\ Data Analysis

Response to RQ1

Response to RQ2

Response to RQ3

Chapter 5\ Conclusion

General Findings

Implications of the Study

Recommendations

Figure1. Design of the Present Study into Five Chapters