A brainstorming session has three phases – “capture,” “resistance,” and “organization.”

In the “capture” phase, you choose a topic and write down everything you can think of. Ideas will flow faster than your fingers can type. This will probably last for several minutes.

In phase two, you begin to slow down. You may get stuck because you ran out of ideas. Or you may feel overwhelmed by complex problems arising in your thoughts. You may struggle to find a coherent organization for the mess of ideas you’re writing down. This is called “resistance.”

When you feel the stress of “resistance” beginning to build, that is your signal to move to phase three – “organization.” Phase three is when you organize your chaotic ideas into a structured format, so that you can see important relationships and focus on just one area at a time.

When you have completed phase three, you then return to phase one, “capture,” with renewed inspiration.

So, which of the phases do you think is the most difficult, and the most important? The answer, of course, is phase three, “organization.”

Anybody can do phase one, or “capture,” with just a pencil and paper. Most people spend a lot of time at phase two, “resistance.” That’s very frustrating and draining. Multiply it over a lifetime of work and you get premature aging.

Few people are able to properly and consistently execute phase three, “organization,” so that they never spend much time in “resistance.” Those who can do this are able to build infinite amounts of informational complexity without ever breaking a sweat. For them, it’s like a perpetual motion machine of brainstorming.

How to Eliminate Resistance

So how do you achieve this Zen-like state?

With a very special piece of software… BrainStormWFO.

BrainStormWFO does one thing, and does it very well. It is the ultimate inductive categorizer. For building knowledge from the bottom up, it is indispensable.

It achieves this ability at a cost – it is nearly useless for getting an overview of things, for seeing the big picture.

Due to its “auto-hoist” feature, you are forced to focus on the immediate children of one parent entry at a time.

This extreme focus makes BrainStorm useful only during one phase of brainstorming – the “organization” phase.

And for that phase, it’s exactly what we need.

How to Use BrainStormWFO for Brainstorming

You start out as you would normally, writing your thoughts into a text file – the “capture” phase.

Then, when things get too complicated, you transition to BrainStorm. There are two ways to do this:

1. Dump all your text into BrainStorm, or
2. Dump your high-level concepts into BrainStorm, but leave out the details.

Now you have a clear mindmap. But you need to go back to your big picture view.

You can do this in several ways:

1. Paste the BrainStorm model into a text file or into a different outliner program
2. Paste the BrainStorm model into a mindmapping program to see the map visually represented
3. Use the individual outline entries in BrainStorm as writing prompts to create a long-form text document

You’re now done with the “organization” phase of brainstorming.

As you go through this process, you will inevitably gain new insights and inspirations. Start writing these down, which returns you to the “capture” phase.