> do they ever actually help anyone realize anything?

Mind maps help me realize things. I use a conference room whiteboard rather than an app.

Starting with asking a question as the root node like "Goals?" and then putting goals around that, and then from those goals, things I'd need to do to accomplish them. "Obligations?" and writing out various people/places/things I have obligations to, and then next what it means to fulfill those obligations.

Being able to look at it all on the whiteboard and pace around a bit seems to be very useful for me. This type of thing helps me sort things out and frequently I have realizations during it that make things more clear.

I mostly do project planning in outlines, but sometimes I will break out the whiteboard. Sometimes those are mind maps and will make me see missing pieces; frequently, I suppose they're diagrams and may not count.

Have you ever tried doing this with a plain text Markdown file with hierarchy (headers/subheaders)? or an outlining tool (emacs org-mode etc)? or a spreadsheet? What do you see as the advantages of the mind-map method?

I've used all of those to organize ideas for different things. Markdown files with hierarchy for planning blog articles, talks. An outlining tool (OmniOutliner or vim with * and indentations) for project planning from building things to cleaning my office. Spreadsheets for figuring out how I'm managing time and using the cells to represent time I'm awake in the week.

I think the advantage of the mind map is using it as a tool to explore things I'm not entirely sure about and get more depth on them. Like in my examples, I choose Goals and Obligations as things I had used mind mapping for exploring. Once I have some of them written on the whiteboard, more like items start to come to mind that might not otherwise. I might also be conflating the value of any of the elements of this -- pacing in front of the whiteboard, it being a more physical representation by being big and hand-drawn, that it starts to look a bit like a puzzle. Then it starts to present all of these questions. Like after mapping out what my obligations were, it made sense to ask, "well, why?", and then tie those to core reasons, which started to get into agreements, which then made me think about agreements. Why do we form agreements? In a way, I suppose it's giving me space to go on a somewhat controlled and documented deep dive into my thoughts.

Thank you! This resonates a lot with my experience. In particular, sometimes making writing more of a physical exercise is helpful.

There's this scene in Finding Forrester where Sean Connery marks up a manuscript with the phrase "constipated thinking." Mind mapping for me is a way to grease the skids, as it were, since the hardest part in organizing thoughts is just getting them down. While I prefer pen and paper--the tactile sense of it helps me--the mind map is a useful tool for taking what is essentially a disorganized mass of thoughts and figuring out how to organize it.

You may want to take a look at ABC lists https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3XlLCgKBdgY&t=3s

They’ve helped me in the past realise project/idea scope - breaking it down. Although I often do that breaking down with heirarchical lists… mind maps aren’t a game changer for me.