I’ve spent the past five decades writing, teaching, and advising. I've focused mostly on how we think things through, especially when problems are complex and difficult. Recently, I created a tool, BRAINCAT, that helps people think better — and faster. As a consultant, I’ve often been overwhelmed with ideas and information from my clients. This taught me the need to simplify: distilling thoughts to make them clear. I designed Braincat to give people the power of rapid simplification.REVERSE MIND-MAPPINGI like mind maps and the way they show one “big idea” in the middle, with other ideas branching out into more and more detail. But what if you don’t know the best starting point? What if you’re facing a mass of unsorted ideas and information? For this, I created a process I call “reverse mind-mapping”: a route that takes you from a chaotic mass of stuff, to a few key topics, to one big idea. That’s Braincat. FROM NOTES TO ACTIONThere are many great note-taking tools on the market, and they certainly help. I often found I ended up with piles of notes that are difficult to use. I needed a quick way to distill my notes, and then prioritize them. So I made sure Braincat does that.FIRING UP THE MINDSometimes instead of too much in my head, I’ve found too little—the dreaded writer’s block! I became awed by the power of questions to get my mind moving. So I built lots of questions into Braincat, organized in different sets for different uses. Do you have questions for me? I'd love to hear from you!