Last March, Bijoy Goswami and I sat down for a fascinating (and lengthy) conversation about mental models and bootstrapping at Progress Coffee on Austin’s East Side. The interview was recorded and transcribed, and we’ve broken it up into a four-part series for the blog. While preparing it for publication, Bijoy and I both felt it was important to stress that the chief mental model being explained here, that of the Maven-Relater-Evangelist, may or may not be useful to you in understanding your own place in the world. The point is not to take Bijoy’s model, or anyone else’s, and indiscriminately apply it to your own life. The point is rather to start thinking about how you might create models to better understand your own path in life.

- Sarah

Getting back to mental maps, or mental models. You say mental model, and a lot of other people say mind mapping, and I wonder if there’s a difference in your view about those two things.

Digital Mind Map

Well, yeah. Mind mapping is a very technical term where you essentially brainstorm by putting an idea in the center, and so