I read that our minds are associative. I think of boots and immediately my old boots, hiking, jogging, being shape, being too old, consuming oxygen for fuel come to mind. Web or tree drawings with branches from one association to another are sometimes said to be helpful tools for thinking. I have never found them so but I feel more and more that I can tell my mind does exactly that sort of associations. The psychologist Robert Ornstein said long ago that we tend to think of things which are recent, vivid, comparatively outstanding and personally significant. Of course, personally significant can mean many different things. I remember my role as Captain Queeg in a high school play because I was proud of getting the role and I got lots of praise for my performance. So, those background factors and emotional satisfactions matter.
Each time, an association emerges, it is an invitation from that point to further associations. Did I have perform any other roles? What about roles that were not on stage such as being a parent or being a speaker or selling candy for the Boy Scouts? Again each idea or memory points to further ideas and memories that I can connect to. I didn't think "Mind Maps" or semantic web diagrams would be very helpful. I just looked up the words Mind Maps and find that mindmeisters, mind jets and other purveyors of software are pushing their products as helpful and as ways to organize information.
I have often found that my associations spring up much too quickly to write them down. Besides, one association might be a sort of shame while another is a thing of pride and a third represents a fear. So, some rather extensive explanation is required for me or anyone else to make sense of a tree diagram of things that came to mind but that are so different from each other.
