In The Fog

Although any creative process requires a previous period of maturation (for instance, by reading different books before writing an article), I think the best way to get results is to start doing it. I know it sounds a simplicity but I usually get much better results than expected, once the previous work has been done. My advice is not to delay too much the moment of action. You are probably ready for it so, do it.

Hi Chris,

I'm not sure your in a fog. It seems to me that you are thinking quite clearly.

Tony Buzan's ideas about mind-mapping are quite helpful and I have used the techniques as a personal tool and with students. In the end, however, I'm not sure if there is an ideal way to "map" a book. The ideas in a book for me are in constant motion by virtue of the fact that my own experiences in life change over time. A book can never be read in exactly the same way twice. While we might be able to mind-map the content, form and structure of the basic ideas in a book it is far more difficult to map the evolving relationship we have with a book. A mind-map is really one possible perspective on a book frozen in time.

McLuhan once commented that, "Information overload is an opportunity for pattern recognition." I know I have read a single sentence and found myself overloaded. I have also read entire books and felt no sense of overload at all. The idea of information overload, for me, is significantly bigger than anything to do with the so-called information age. It's not merely a quantity of something that can cause overload.

You mentioned in your entry that some ideas you have read in the past "just stick" with you. They become your companion. You have no need to "remember" them or "memorize" them. Why is this? I suspect that these ideas have some kind of intimate connection to your own personal experiences in life - they speak to the life you are having and form a very natural and normal part of your inner dialogue. Thoughts and ideas in books that are hard to remember or require memorization have a more distant connection to our personal experiences so we spend mental energy to keep them in store.

You mentioned in an email to me that you are interested in finding tools to help you better connect ideas across various books, articles and so on. What I'm about to suggest may sound trite, but I don't think it is. Your experience in life is the best "tool" for connecting these ideas. Your experiences and how you perceive and understand them are the best "medium" for these connections. This is a core aspect of your own personal narrative - your story. To be sure, you may find other ways to write them down or represent them visually, but your brain is a master pattern maker. It is here that I suspect you will find there is no need to "remember" or "memorize" ideas. And, of course, your brain is intimately integrated with our emotions - the two cannot be separated (see David Suzuki's thoughts abut "neural narrative" as well as Candace Pert's ideas about the "bodymind"on my site). The database is you.

None of this is to say that we should not try to find ways to express and communicate these patterns of thoughts and feelings in our interior world. Perhaps we learn how to do this the best from the artist. As I mentioned, I cluster books together on my bookshelf that, for me, in some way speak to each other. There are relationships across them that I can see in their physical arrangement. And this arrangement will change over time. However, to the onlooker I would suspect the whole thing looks disorganized.

Clarity comes to me simply by sitting and pondering. If I get overwhlemed and confused by information - and I quite often do - I just make it stop and go back to basics. I'll ask the question, "Whose information is this and why should it matter to me?" Sometimes I'll try to force fit an answer into one sentence. If I can't make it simple then the chances are it doesn't matter. Sometimes I'll simply sit and listen to music and let the ideas float away - they inevitably return to me in a different form. Sometimes I will try to put these ideas to writing, othertimes I just let them be in my mind. I believe that imagination is our most powerful tool in dealing with infomation - not reason and rationalism.

Thanks, EM. I'm not even sure if what I'm looking for is possible: a kind of database of the books I've read that I can peruse to see connections in thinking (both author's and my own). I tend to have a short-term memory so while I can remember some things and consult my margin notes, it would be neat to have everything in one place.

BTW, can't wait to read the book :)

The only way I know to "mindmap" mutliple books in any meaningful way is to read them all with one specific question or purpose in mind. Then I find that certain "aha" moments do stand out as they pertain to that focusing idea. Those "aha" moments come together like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, and I can see where each fits together to inform the topic or lead toward an answer to the question.

Otherwise, it's all just reading for fun and inspiration. That's a wonderful way to read in and of itself! But it doesn't lend itself well to meshing books together. When I read without a specific focus in mind, each book tends to stand on its own, and eventually the ideas I had while reading them get lost.

When I read with focus, the ideas stick - so much so that it's downright uncanny. I'm writing a book of my own right now, and some of the ideas in it were fed by books I read over a decade ago. I didn't write my ideas down at the time, but I read those books while I was focusing on a particular question. After thirteen years, I can still tell you off the top of my head what each book contributed to the whole.

- EM