In December 2025, the Australian Institute of Sport AIS sought School of Thinking training for their elite level Olympic coaches who then qualified for a Diploma of X10 Thinking – DipX10(SOT).
As a friend of SOT, if you would like to be considered for this new neuroscience and AI training your LESSON ONE begins here. There are no fees.
This elite training is not for everyone but everyone is invited.From experience we know that, very often, only 1 in 4 make it through to the end.
Each lesson has the SOT’s famliar DFQ (Daily Feedback Question). When you complete all 30 DFQs you can apply for your personalised School of Thinking Diploma which you may post on your Linked-In, if you wish.…
We respect the wisdom of the Traditional Custodians of country throughout Australia.We pay our respects to their Elders past, present and emerging. We recognise that for untold millennia this land has been the place of ceremonies of teaching and knowledge.
The SOT AI Team is currently finishing a 3-year project to design a SOTbot.
At SOT we teach thinking as a skill. There are two kinds of human thinkers: natural and trained.
For 40 years SOT has been training natural human thinkers (reactive, pattern-driven, biased and inhibited by the human Intelligence Trap) to become trained human thinkers. Even x10 thinkers.
The SOTbot project is to see if we can train AIs to be x10 thinkers.
Why? Because most current bots today are trained by humans who are natural thinkers. Bots like Copilot and others assist humans to be faster but not to be better thinkers.
Speed without quality thinking is a future risk multiplier, not a competitive advantage.
Using the 40 years of experience and cognitive science IP, R&D and practical case studies with measurement of results, we are now adapting that to the training of SOTbots. So far so good. We are about 60% there to having a SOTbot that can think as well as a trained human in certain settings like business and banking, elite sport, agricultural science and trades like plumbing.
SOTbot is the latest product of the C AI O S Project.
The C AI O S Project
cAIos, the Cognitive AI Operating System, began in 1980s New York as a radical idea: the brain needs software. Published through Software for Your Brain, it offered structured thinking routines—moving from current views to better ones—but relied on humans to execute them, limiting consistency and scale. Today, AI makes cAIos fully executable. With bot-based interfaces (COS) and algorithms like GBB, thinking is externalised, structured, and repeatable. Humans direct; AI processes. What was once a training method is now a live cognitive layer.
cAIos has evolved from internal discipline into an additional lobe—running outside the brain.
For years we assumed that thinking harder meant thinking smarter: more intelligence, more data, more arguments. Neuroscience tells a less flattering story. Raw intelligence is excellent at defending a point of view. It is far less capable of escaping one.
That’s the problem GBB was designed to solve. GBB stands for GOOD, BAD, BETTER. A simple yet demanding thinking algorithm.
When you ‘Do a GBB!’ you generate ten GOOD points for an idea, ten BAD points against it, then ten BETTER points that break free of the original framing altogether. Not a compromise. An escape. Often a ten-times-better one. This is x10 Thinking.
Here’s the catch.
Over forty years of teaching across cultures and continents, the School of Thinking discovered the same limit again and again: humans can’t do the ten points GBB.
Most stall at three or four points. The brain loops, defends, justifies. That isn’t stupidity. It’s biology. The human brain evolved for fast judgments under uncertainty. Current views feel safe. Better views require effort, inhibition, imagination. Scarce resources in a busy cortex.
Until now.
In 2026, GBB finally got its killer app. Now anyone can generate ten GOOD, BAD, and BETTER points in seconds. Not as answers to follow, but as cognitive scaffolding. The effect is immediate and quietly radical.
TheGBB doesn’t make you right.It makes you less trapped.
The future of intelligence isn’t artificial. It’s finally escaping from the trap of our ‘selves’.
When you ‘do a GBB’ you consider 10 GOOD points; things you like about the idea, or in favour of the decision. Then 10 BAD points; things you don’t like or go against the idea. Then 10 BETTER points; things that allow you to escape from the decision or idea as it stands and to look for a much better approach or outcome. Maybe ten times better. This is what we call x10 Thinking.
Now you can do x10 Thinking at the press of a button.Click on the image above and you’ll arrive at the GBB with powerful AI.
The more you use cvs2bvs the better your brain gets at it. It soon becomes a wired skill.
PROBLEM: For over 40 years at School of Thinking we have seen that, regardless of geography or demographics, humans can never think of 10 GBB points. Never. Without special training, we have never encountered a single student to do so. It usually takes human thinkers about 5 minutes just to think of 3 or 4 GOOD, BAD and BETTER points.This is a wicked problem.
Here are the School of Thinking’s standard three practise items. We have been using these three items to teach the GBB to many thousands of human thinkers and to enable these thinkers to acquire x10 Thinking skills.
• PRACTISE 1: “By law, all Friday’s should be‘free public transport’ days”.
• PRACTISE 2: “People should wear badges showingwhat mood they are in that day”.
• PRACTISE 3: “Marriage, should not be forever, butfor a 5-year period with an option torenew”.
You can now go to cvs2bvs.ai anytime you want some fast x10 Thinking on a problem, a decision, an idea, a proposition, for research, for planning, for meetings, for thinking both inside and outside the box.
Why even bother to ever do a GBB? Here are 6 strong reasons:
1. Without a GBB you may not be able to appreciate an idea that seems bad to you at first sight.
2. Without a GBB you may fail to see the disadvantages of a proposition that you like very much.
3. The GBB can reveal that a decision is not only good or bad but can also lead to a much better decision.
4. Without a GBB most judgments are based not on the value of the idea but on your emotions at the time.
5. With a GBB you decide whether or not you like the idea after you have thought about it instead of before.
6. The GBB is simple but powerful brain software and the more you use it themore skilled at using it you become.”
Click on the image and ask the AI to ‘Do a GBB!’
(To get started, you can choose one of the 3 practise items above and then check out current users below).
••• CLICK ON IMAGE AND START TYPING •••
••• CLICK ON IMAGE AND START TYPING •••
Current Users
Users are seeking x10 Thinking on a wide range including the following …
Career & Work Issues 1. How can x10 thinking improve job satisfaction in my current role? 2. What are the pros and cons of transitioning to a new career? 3. How can I better manage work-life balance?
Current Affairs 1. Should the US control Greenland? 2. Prince Harry should lose his titles, as did Prince Andrew, because of his scandals and loss of favour in the UK. 3. What if Australia and Canada created a much stronger alliance?
Financial Concerns 1. Can x10 thinking assist me in creating a detailed budget plan? 2. I must improve my financial security over the next five years. 3. Debt is a constant worry. How can I reduce debt effectively?
Relationship Challenges 1. What are the aspects of my current family dynamics to consider? 2. How can I improve my romantic relationship with my wonderful partner? 3. What are potential ways to improve my social connections?
Health & Wellness 1. Should I do something to optimize my physical health routine? 2. What should I consider for maintaining mental health? 3. How can I improve my sleep habits for better well-being?
Personal Development 1. How can x10 thinking assist my current self-confidence levels? 2. How do leaders set better goals for personal growth? 3. Can x10 thinking help me to break a bad habit?
Life Transitions 1. I’m thinking of moving to a new city. 2. I don’t really know how to navigate the transition into parenthood. 3. I’m beginning to focus retirement planning. Can x10 thinking assist me?
Time & Productivity 1. What are some tips on developing my time management skills? 2. What are the some hidden opportunities in my current job? 3. How can x10 thinking prioritize tasks more effectively?
Technology & Modern Life 1. What are the cost/benefits of my heavy social media usage? 2. I’m starting to realise I may have ‘digital overwhelm’ in my tech-driven world. 3. What do I need to consider to personally ensure my digital wellness?
Every day users are identifying what’s working, what’s not, and how to use x10 thinking to make things better in their life.
Australia is the first country in the world to have Olympic Head Coaches fully qualified as Brain Coaches.
The Australian Institute of Sport AIS sought Dr Michael Hewitt-Gleeson of the School of Thinking to conduct two SOT Brain Coaching masterclasses at a Summit of Australian Olympic Head Coaches of 20 sports. On completion of the masterclasses the elite level coaches qualified for a Diploma of Applied Brain Coaching DipABC(SOT) and received their Brain Coaches’ Handbook to assist their own Brain Coaching activities.
Australia is the first country in the world to have Olympic Head Coaches fully qualified as Brain Coaches.
Do a GBB! That’s the new mantra of the Sydney Roosters, Sydney’s most successful professional NRL football team.
In November, Michael ‘Hewi’ presented a Brain Coaching masterclass on Lateral Thinking and AI. On how to use AI to do x10 thinking. How to ‘Do a GBB’ with ChatGPT, Meta or Claude etc to assist. Here’s some feedback from the Roosters Coaching and Leadership Team …
The Radical Experiment That Taught the World to Think
Long before online learning and AI tutors, a Los Angeles college without classrooms quietly reinvented education. Its boldest project—run by Michael Hewitt-Gleeson and Edward de Bono—taught 40,000 hospital workers how to think better. It worked.
April 1983 Reader’s Digest cover referencing “Seven Steps to Better Thinking.”
The College With No Campus
In 1970, International College launched in Los Angeles with an idea so radical it almost sounded medieval: one student, one tutor, one mission. No departments. No lecture halls. Just pure intellectual apprenticeship.
Each scholar worked directly with a mentor to design a bespoke project—real-world, measurable, and original. It was a university without walls, long before the internet made that phrase fashionable.
Turning Creativity Into Code
Among its boldest experiments was the partnership between Dr Edward de Bono, inventor of Lateral Thinking, and Dr Michael Hewitt-Gleeson, an Australian systems thinker who turned creativity into data, code, and algorithms.
Together, they conducted one of the first large-scale cognitive-training experiments: 26 New York hospitals, 40,000 participants, and a single question—could thinking itself be improved through structured practice?
The answer was yes. Thinking could be taught, measured, and improved.
The project’s measurable success proved that cognition wasn’t a mystery—it was a design problem.
When Thinking Went Global
Their work culminated in the 1982 book Learn-To-Think: Coursebook and Instructor’s Manual—a step-by-step guide for teaching creativity and logic as trainable skills. A year later, the coursebook became a global sensation when Reader’s Digest featured it in a cover story—“Seven Steps to Better Thinking”—across all international editions, reaching 68 million readers worldwide.
The Legacy
Though International College closed in 1986, its DNA thrives in modern education: mentorship-based PhDs, design thinking, and cognitive coaching.
The Hewitt-Gleeson–de Bono collaboration proved that serious scholarship doesn’t need ivory towers—just imagination, autonomy, and applied rigour. In an age shaped by algorithms and artificial intelligence, their insight feels prophetic:
Human cognition isn’t fixed. It’s upgradable.
The most powerful classroom isn’t a campus. It’s the mind.
Reference: Academic Paper: A College Without Walls
Dr Michael Hewitt-Gleeson, Founder of the School of Thinking
Neuroscience 101 Should Be Taught in all Australian Primary Schools.
Here’s Ten Reasons Why …
1. *Improved learning outcomes*: Understanding how the brain learns can help students develop better study habits and improve academic performance.
2. *Enhanced self-awareness*: Neuroscience education can help children recognize and manage their emotions, leading to improved mental health and relationships.
3. *Informed decision-making*: By understanding the brain’s vulnerabilities, students can make informed choices about substance use, screen time, and lifestyle factors.
4. *Developing growth mindset*: Teaching neuroplasticity can encourage students to view challenges as opportunities for growth.
5. *Better emotional regulation*: Neuroscience can help children understand and manage their emotions, reducing stress and anxiety.
6. *Improved focus and concentration*: Understanding attention and focus mechanisms can help students develop strategies to stay on task.
7. *Enhanced creativity and problem-solving*: Neuroscience can inspire students to explore creative thinking and innovative problem-solving.
8. *Brain health and wellness*: Educating students about brain health can promote healthy habits and reduce risk of neurological disorders.
9. *Increased empathy and understanding*: Neuroscience can help students appreciate individual differences and promote inclusivity.
10. *Preparation for future careers*: Understanding the brain is essential for careers in fields like psychology, neuroscience, and medicine.
