We reviewed close to 40 different mind mapping tools, and after thoroughly testing them, here are the nine best. That's why, if you do a lot of mind mapping, you should consider going digital and using an app. You're limited by the size of the sheet you start with, there's no easy way to digitize it and make it searchable, you can't undo any mistakes or easily make edits, and if you lose your mind map, you don't have a backup. Of course, mind mapping on a piece of paper has its downsides. From those nodes, you draw yet more lines branching deeper into the different concepts, and you keep going, branching out more and diving deeper, until you're out of ideas-and the relationships between things appear. Then you draw lines branching out into new "nodes," each with its own related idea or theme. To make a mind map, you start by writing a central idea or theme in the middle of a blank sheet of paper.