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.
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.