Anne-Laure Le Cunff Mental maps, cognitive maps, mind maps… Scientists and popular psychologists alike have coined all kinds of thinking maps. What’s the difference? While it may be tempting to consider some of these maps more effective than others as thinking tools, the reality is that we need a collection of maps in order to make the most … Read More
My grandma just passed away. Oma was 86 years old. She was born in Algeria, in a small village called Sidi Okba. She had tattoos on her face, which she didn’t like and tried to get rid of several times, to no avail. She also didn’t like drunk people and violence. What Oma liked, though, … Read More
One of the most exciting aspects of Roam Research is metaprogramming: the ability to modify Roam’s behaviour inside Roam itself, without ever touching the source code. This ability opens the door for building custom algorithms for thoughts, and designing a thinking environment as close as possible to the way your mind works. Using CSS to … Read More
#BlackMentalHealthMatters — Scroll down to the bottom of the article for Black mental health resources and material for mental health allies. 2020, so far, has been the year we faced a pandemic, authoritarian governmental abuse, senseless murders, wildfires, devastating floods, nationalism, and a global recession. If you look up “2020”, you will find countless articles … Read More
There’s only so much we can hold into our working memory—the system our brain uses to temporarily hold information while we manipulate it. The amount of working memory we use at any given moment is called the cognitive load. While both are theoretical concepts used in psychology and neuroscience, they have profound implications when it … Read More
What do hieroglyphs, flowcharts, road signs, and knowledge graphs have in common? They’re all thinking maps. Humans have been thinking in maps since the very first symbolic communication systems. While thinking in maps may first bring to mind the idea of cartography, a map does not need to be geographic—it can be any symbolic depiction … Read More
Support groups are a great way for people with common goals and experiences to provide each other with encouragement and advice. Usually limited in size to keep them intimate, they offer a safe space for like-minded people to connect, learn from each other, and grow together. While formal support groups may appear to be a … Read More
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Writing an educational article about something you want to learn about may be one of the best ways to study a topic. The Feynman Technique—which I recently discovered may have been coined by Scott Young—helps you understand anything by pretending you are explaining the concept to a child or someone who has no prior knowledge … Read More
As I was chatting with a friend, we noticed that we both felt incredibly excited and anxious about the work we were currently doing. We could not come up with the right word to describe that exact feeling: we were stressed, yes, but not in a negative way. We did worry about the outcome of … Read More