Cognitive coaching · Adaptive intelligence · US dollars
Cognitive coaching with Dr Mark Ashton Smith focuses on a live goal in focus, learning, decisions, digital-tool use or follow-through. Build a minimum sufficient model, choose a proportionate action and decide what evidence from the real world will tell you whether to continue, adapt or reopen.
Choose the amount of guidance
Start with a recent example and the outcome you want. You do not need app results or a technical explanation of the problem.
Work through one concrete challenge and leave with a small experiment and written next steps.
$125one online session
Try a plan in your own setting, review what happens together and adjust it across three sessions.
$325three online sessions
What cognitive coaching adds
The output is not a label. It is a clearer working model of the problem, a proportionate experiment to try and an agreed way to review what happens.
Describe what happens, where it happens and what you want to change. Consider workload, interruptions, time pressure, emotional distraction, sleep and fatigue alongside the task itself.
Explore possible demands on attention, memory, retrieval, planning or reasoning without treating them as a diagnosis. Choose a practical aid, workflow change, relevant training or an AI-use routine. Decide what to delegate and what to understand and check yourself.
Agree what to observe and when to check it. Keep training scores, AI-assisted output, independent performance and everyday outcomes distinct. Decide what to keep, change or stop, and what to check again later.
Different adaptive starting points
Sometimes there are too many viable paths. Sometimes existing demands leave too little room to think or too few feasible alternatives. Coaching starts by distinguishing those situations rather than assuming a motivation or commitment deficit.
Clarify the viable options, identify what information could genuinely change the choice, represent the opportunity cost of further search and set a review point. The goal is not stubborn persistence; it is evidence-sensitive commitment.
Map the demands first. Externalise what is competing for attention, identify what is fixed and what may be negotiable, and look for one feasible change, source of support or protected space before adding another commitment.
Review what the current evidence supports and the cost of changing course. The useful outcome may be to continue, adapt the method, renegotiate a demand, pause, run a small test or stop.
An example of a coaching plan
We could examine one typical work session, try a visible next-step note and a protected work block, then record how often you need to restart over the next week. Attention practice might be an additional option. The question is whether the changes help in your actual work.
Use digital tools without losing the learning
Humans have always used external cognitive supports — notes, search, communities, software and other people. Generative AI is a particularly powerful new scaffold. Bring a real task and explore how to gain its leverage while keeping the understanding, judgement and decision control that matter under your control.
Clarify your goal and the kind of thinking involved — sensemaking, critical evaluation, decision-making, strategic action or learning. Then decide where AI can organise information, suggest alternatives or challenge a plan, and which judgements you will retain.
Compare suggestions with the original material. Inspect sources, missing context and assumptions. Practise explaining why you accept, revise or reject a suggestion.
Leave with a reusable routine and a way to review it on a new task. Check what you accomplish with assistance and what you can still explain or do without it.
Appropriate scope
Suitable goals may involve focus, remembering what you learn, planning, decision routines, demanding study or AI-assisted work. Clearer thinking under pressure can be a goal to evaluate; resilience and broader cognitive gains are not promised outcomes.
IQ Mindware coaching is non-clinical and does not provide an official IQ assessment, clinical diagnosis, guaranteed cognitive gain or guaranteed work or study outcome.
Organisation workshops, pilot reviews and customisation are priced separately.
We look at what you want to change, the conditions around it and what might be getting in the way. That could call for a practical strategy, a different workflow, focused cognitive practice, thoughtful AI use or a combination.
For example: keep the thread of a project with a map you can explain; learn with hints while checking later recall; or test a decision against alternatives and evidence. You can work entirely without AI.
Agree what progress means: time and accuracy, decision quality, learning, coping with a demanding situation or everyday functioning. Review what worked with support and what you can now do independently. Broader intelligence gains are not assumed.
Explore the seven nodes and their AI exercises coming soon →
The embedded AI exercises and g loop app are coming soon. Coaching offers personal guidance now.