After writing yesterday about the differences between PersonalBrain and Mindmappers, I started thinking more about what the core difference between them are.
- Is it a temporal difference? Mindmaps tend to expire whereas information in PersonalBrain tends to be valid over a longer period of time.
- Is it a difference in the amount of data you can to see at once? Mindmaps allow you to see possibly hundreds of nodes at once where realistically in PersonalBrain you can only deal with maybe 10 or 20 on the screen at a time.
- Is it a difference in the way you can connect the information? PersonalBrain is more organic and mindmaps are structured.
While these are all valid points, they don’t get at the heart of it which seems to be:
In PersonalBrain each node is first class data, whereas in a Mindmap, nodes have hierarchal importance. This means that in PersonalBrain any element in the “plex” can have infinitely detailed information associated with it. You can extend any node with unlimited sub-nodes that provide additional detail without consciously structuring the data to allow for specialization.
For example, I’ve created a Mindmap of my notes for the book Linked and one of the nodes in the map is “Power Laws”. The more I research power laws and get into the details, the more nodes I’ll need to add. Eventually, one of two things will happen – either the mindmap will become cluttered and unwieldy or I’ll have to start a new mindmap. If I do the latter, I’ll then have to remember it exists and open separately if I go back to my book notes. Neither is desirable.
In PersonalBrain if I have a power laws node I’ll never run out of space under it and everything associated with that node can be associated with any other node in the system.
On the other hand, it’s sometimes beneficial to have the concept of a leaf node and the structure a mindmap offers. In PersonalBrain it’s difficult to emphasize the importance of a node since there really isn’t the concept of the “center node” that a mindmap has.
So, the conclusion remains the same–different tools for different purposes.
3 replies on “PersonalBrain vs. Mindmapping Part II”
Great review. I’m just getting into mind mapping and was doing some research on which software to use. Your information was just what i was looking for! Thanks..
Actually, it's much simpler. Mindmapping is just a way of displaying stuff hierarchically, like any ordinary filesystem. Personalbrain combines multiple techniques at once but it's mainly a thesaurus with classical BT/NT/RT. Therefore it is possible to do classical mindmapping with PersonalBrain too. But why should you if you've got all those neat features at hand?
I seldom leave comments, but after browsing
a great deal of comments on this page PersonalBrain vs. Mindmapping Part II | Best Tool For
the Job. I actually do have a couple of questions for you if it’s okay. Could it be just me or does it look like like a few of the remarks appear like they are coming from brain dead individuals? 😛 And, if you are posting on other online sites, I would like to keep up with you. Could you make a list of the complete urls of all your social community sites like your linkedin profile, Facebook page or twitter feed?