The six sessions 🎯 · one meeting, six shapes
The running situation is Daybreak's autumn roast launch: one planning meeting at the coffee-subscription company from the SQL, dataviz and visual-storytelling courses. Fourteen things were said. Every session gives them a different shape, so the only thing that ever changes is what you did with them.
One centre, many branches
A list is the order things were said. The four parts of a map, Buzan's ten laws read as layout rules rather than brain claims, and the research quoted with both halves of every abstract.
🔑 Session 2 · easyKeywords and the branch budget
Why four and seven are both quoted as the limit and what the argument is really about. One keyword per branch run on real notes, the twig test, and what to do with the ninth branch.
🔀 Session 3 · mediumMind map, concept map, or list
The cross-link test: an idea that belongs to two branches is telling you which diagram you are drawing. Novak's propositions, Eppler's four formats, and when a plain list is the honest choice.
📏 Session 4 · bench nightThe map bench
One outline, five shapes, nine numbers read off the drawn map: branches, depth, words per node, balance, shared ideas, collisions, off-page labels. Paste your own notes and watch them move.
📝 Session 5 · mediumMaps as text
Indentation is the map. Why a text outline diffs, versions and survives the tool that made it, when to render it and when to draw by hand, and the two lines of Mermaid you need.
🧭 Session 6 · hands-onMaps that do work
Planning, briefing, deciding and revising with a map, and the hand-off: a map is where thinking happens, an outline is where it ships. Final scorecard on a map you actually owe somebody.
Your passport 🎫
Clear all three quiz questions in a session and it gets stamped. Six stamps means your notes stop being a transcript. Stamps live in this browser only.
What this course is not, so you land in the right place 🧭
| If your question is | Go here instead |
|---|---|
| How do I write the Mermaid mindmap syntax, shapes and icons? | learn-mermaid-with-phoebe session 5 |
| How do I draw icons, containers and lettering while somebody talks? | learn-sketchnoting-with-phoebe |
| Which chart does this question need, and is it honest? | learn-dataviz-with-phoebe |
| The charts are right; how do I turn them into a decision? | learn-visual-storytelling-with-phoebe |
| What goes in the middle, what becomes a branch, and how do I know if it is working? | you are in the right place |
Session 5 owns the reasons to keep a map as text, not the grammar. Syntax lives in the Mermaid course, and two courses owning one grammar disagree with each other eventually.
What is honest here 🧾
The bench in session 4 reads its numbers off the drawn map. The one-line verdict is a rule of thumb and is labelled as one on the widget. There is no recall model, because the evidence does not support one.
| Claim | Status |
|---|---|
| Branches, depth, words per node, balance, shared ideas | Really counted in the parsed outline you can see and edit |
| Labels colliding, labels off the page, smallest label | Really measured off the rendered SVG with getBBox() after it is drawn. If the layout fails, the numbers say so |
| The verdict line | A heuristic, labelled as one on the widget. Its two thresholds, four and seven, are the two capacity estimates session 2 teaches side by side |
| "Mind maps improve recall by X" | Not claimed anywhere. The research is quoted with both halves of every abstract, including the study whose table disagrees with its own summary |
| Daybreak's meeting | A teaching situation. The measurement code is real |
The knowledge map 🧠
The whole course at a glance - hover a session to spotlight its concepts, click any node to jump in.