So, hello everyone.

Welcome back to the ADHD Women's well Being podcast.

Today you are listening to an interesting conversation I had with my colleague, fellow ADHD entrepreneur Amanda Perry.

Now, I know that we're all sort of getting back into the flow of work after the festive break.

It can feel really hard to get back into our routine.

Perhaps we've had some epiphanies and some ideas and all sorts of things.

You know, when we slow down, we have a bit of space to think and think about how we want to do things differently or perhaps how we want to change things a little bit.

And we are going to be talking about making life flow a little bit easier with business, with work and our adhd.

Especially if you are anything like me, who is in sort of the throws of perimenopause, feeling tired and depleted.

I found out I've got low iron as well.

And it really impacts everything.

It impacts brain cognition, mood, energy.

Essentially, if you're running a business, it's all on you.

And if you are working for yourself or you're self employed, it can feel totally daunting and exhausting when we run out of ideas or steam or don't even know where to delegate to, who to delegate to.

And maybe you're thinking about new structures and habits.

So I hope that this episode will help give you some ideas and maybe some new concepts.

Now, we are going to be touching on AI now as a very brief sort of intro.

When I had this conversation with Amanda a good while ago, you know, it must have been about six months ago, and I never aired it because we had a bit of a tech problem, so the whole conversation couldn't quite be recorded.

But we've got a really fantastic clip of it, about 20 minutes long.

But what is interesting is that we were having a conversation about AI, say six to eight months ago, and what's changed and what I've integrated within my own business is actually fascinating.

So you can sort of hear me sort of pondering it, talking about it, being a little bit nervous about it, and I have found my feet a bit more with it.

I found confidence and I don't have the imposter syndrome as much as I did when I first started using AI.

I've kind of hit a bit of a point of the genie is out of the lamp or the.

The cat is out the door.

It's whatever analogy you want to say.

I don't think, you know, life is going to suddenly stop using AI now, now that we've been utilizing it for a While and realizing how easy it can make our life in some capacity.

Now with adhd, we can actually get quite overwhelmed when we're given so much choice.

And I do talk a lot about simplification, so stripping things back, keeping things easy, streamlining as much as you can, and you can do that with AI.

But on the flip side, there is this whole new world which just almost doesn't stop giving you ideas and options and opportunities.

So we kind of have to acknowledge and understand our adhd, acknowledge that sort of dopamine receptor, recognize that we can go off on a tangent using AI for hours and hours and hours, and then get so overwhelmed, buy everything, that we sort of just shut it all down.

So I hope that in this episode you're going to hear a little bit about how we can be more practical.

We can use AI for more brain friendly sort of tools, especially as neurodivergent business owners.

And some simple ways we can use AI to help us with our executive functioning, our organization, and those times where life does feel a bit more challenging.

And we do need that extra support, especially when you're working on your own.

And why it's important to use AI to complement our strengths, not replace our unique thinking.

That's something that I was really worried about.

I thought I was going to sort of frazzle all my brain cells, whatever brain cells were left.

So I really hope that you will find this conversation interesting.

I really enjoyed speaking to Amanda and she has some fantastic things on her website.

So I would go and check out Amanda Perry and here is our conversation.

When I got my diagnosis in 2020, I'd already been in business for about 14 years at that point, 13, 14 years.

And, you know, we're all used to this line that we all say of suddenly everything made sense and my life made sense and everything flashed before my eyes.

And for me, it was really more of a realization of just how hard I'd been making my life for myself.

You know, these periods of burnout that I just absolutely stubbornly kind of pushed through.

And the more I learned about ADHD and our impulse control and our, you know, attention to detail and the way that we mask, like masking was such a huge problem for me.

The more I realized that I really had kind of built this prism for myself rather than a business.

And I knew at that point that I want to say something had to change, but actually everything had to change.

And going through that process myself and the stark difference between the way I used to run my business and the way I run my Business now is really the.

The motivation for helping other people because it's so painful to see people, and I see it every day, who are just, you know, this phrase of, like, pushing through living improve mode, just kind of, oh, if I can just get past this week, if I can just get past the week after, if I can just make this money, then I can, you know, drop the mask or rest or.

And it's heartbreaking.

You know, we have this one life and we have this incredible business brain, but there is so much about business that we are excellent entrepreneurs.

But the actual business of business can be really tricky for us.

Starting the business, getting the, you know, coming up with the name and the ideas and all of that stuff.

But then we get to our first tax return or we realize that we should have kept these records.

All of this stuff is such an obstacle to neurodivergent brains.

Even starting businesses, let alone growing them.

That really has to change because we have.

There's too much talent out there that isn't being exposed because of these silly kind of arbitrary rules that just completely overwhelm us.

Yeah, I mean, it's so validating to hear that.

I mean, I can totally resonate on so much of that.

And it's like you say it's the nitty gritty.

It's like our brains kind of pushing us 100 miles an hour.

And then it's like a slam, isn't it?

It's like that emergency break off, but how do I do that?

And there's like loads of steps and.

And then we've sort of.

All of a sudden we're sort of like two years ahead in our brains and thinking, well, there's no way I can do that.

And we shut the whole thing down.

And like you say, we've got incredible brains, but we do need support, we do need help.

And it's not a weakness.

It's not anything bad.

It's just that we are brilliant at what we do.

And then we do have challenges as well.

But there's no shame in saying, right, we need support, we need help.

Is a va. That is someone there that is kind of like helping us write copy.

Or now we have this.

This tool, AI, which, if I'm honest, I was so naive about and I pushed back, I was like, no, it's cheating.

AI is cheating.

And I don't want to be a cheat.

And I don't want to be missing steps I should learn because I'm an adult human and I should know these things, like the amount of self Talk that I said I pushed back and then I just thought I'm just going to give it a little test run and oh my God, I think I saved myself about five working days in about an hour.

And that is where my eyes were opened.

And I've had to reprogram this mindset of it's not cheating, it's okay, you're allowed.

And maybe we can break down a little bit about maybe what you use AI for, what I do it for and how it can help us as neurodivergent business owners.

Definitely, yeah, I think there is this narrative, isn't there, about AI.

There's kind of the fear mongering of it's going to steal our jobs, it's killing the environment, it's all the copyright issues around the creative industries and there's definitely all of that going on.

But when we look on a micro level, when we look at our individual businesses and where we're best using these limited spoons or brain energy that we as neurodivergent people have and how we can best set our businesses up to grow, to hit our goals, to succeed in the way we want them to, AI is without a doubt like we cannot ignore this anymore.

The problem that I see happening is that people are kind of picking and choosing bits and they're seeing things online.

Use this prompt or try this and they'll try it and it's amazing but it's the actual implementing of like how to, how to put that into their day to day business.

And that's where the trick is for me it's the AI automations.

So one of the things that ADHD brains struggle with a lot.

This is kind of a generalization but I do see it a lot is just working with other people.

The exhaustion of delegation or following up with people or you know, we often have this mindset of it's just quicker to do it myself or it's easier to do it myself.

And that is where AI for our brains is just an absolute game changer because we're essentially doing it ourselves.

We're just shortcutting time by using a machine that doesn't need, we don't need to delegate, we don't need to follow up, we don't need to check that they've done their work.

That's where we can really start to leverage this technology.

Yeah, yeah, I think you've hit, you've hit.

Something there for me is that my brain works so fast.

If I've got an idea and I want something implementing and it's a Saturday morning.

Like, I know my team's not working, I don't want to disturb them, but if I don't get it out, it's kind of like it's just there and all I can do is think about that one idea and I can't do anything else.

So I kind of, I've used it now.

I've just put it into AI and said, you know, can you blend this with this and add this and change this and for this type of audience?

And it kind of feels like a bit of a purge.

So it's out on, on paper in this document.

It's like, okay, I can move on with my day now because it's out of my head.

I've come up with the concept of whatever it is, and whether I use it tomorrow or in six months, at least it's there.

And that for me has been a game changer because otherwise, as you know, with adhd, it just goes.

It's like a loop.

And you want to be present and you want to be mindful, but sometimes we just want to get this idea out.

Yeah.

Especially are you using projects inside of ChatGPT, you putting them into.

So there's a.

On the left hand side, you can actually set up projects now.

So for you, a really good way to do that would be to set up an actual project in there, which is Future Ideas.

So on that Saturday morning, you've put everything into ChatGPT.

You've gone back and forth, had your little chat.

Don't like that, come back with a better idea and you can actually put that into your Future Ideas project.

So I don't know if you've ever done this.

I'm sure you have, where you're looking back through your Google Drive and you're like, who did that?

That's a really good idea.

Where did that?

And it's something you've created, just completely forgotten about.

You could have a project inside of ChatGPT that, you know, is all this stuff that's kind of fully formed, ready to go ideas, they're just not for now and, and you can keep them in so you know that you can't forget it.

It's in there for, for a future date.

I love that.

Yeah, absolutely.

And that's happened many a time when I've gone, yeah, how did, when did I do that?

But I'm gonna use it with us and our brains, like we ebb and flow.

And I know you've had times where, where this has happened where you just kind of almost Want to retreat from your business and other things, take over family life commitments.

When we've navigated cycles of burnout before perimenopause, like, we're not robots, we're not machines, and a lot of us before our diagnoses have just thought we just have to keep pushing and pushing, just have to push through.

And then health problems come up and like, like I said, burnout.

And I've started recognizing now I do have seasons of productivity and seasons where I'm in love with my business, and seasons where I literally just want to do the bare minimum to get through and deliver.

Probably the podcast is always my, like, the thing is, like, whatever happens, I have to get the podcast out because I. I love it.

But there's other things where I'm like, I don't want to present workshops.

I'm not really in the mood to be like, super, you know, promotional or write loads of copy or be visible on socials.

So it kind of.

That, I think, is also very helpful to bring in that support when we are feeling exhausted and depleted and knowing that it's okay, like, there's no judgment around that.

Would you.

Have you found that for yourself?

Yeah, totally.

I think, you know, just to overshare a little bit, I've.

I've just started coming into the realization that it's definitely perimenopause.

You know, you know, when you start and you're like, oh, maybe this is it.

No, I feel all right now.

No, this is definitely perimenopause.

And I.

So perimenopause combined with being a fairly new mum of the last couple of years has just hit me like a brick in terms of the people that I've worked with in the past, where I've just said, like, come on, we can do this.

Let's just push through.

Or let's just, you know, let's just like, work a bit harder.

And it's so real, the distraction between being distracted by a toddler dealing with perimenopause stuff and just the confusion of, like, the brain fog and memory loss and just that kind of disconnection from your.

Your life or your former, you know, the identity that you formed with.

With your business or with your working style.

One of the ways that I use AI to support with that and actually, I don't know if you're using this.

Are you using chatgpt?

T asks@ all?

No.

Oh, my God, Kate.

Oh, you're gonna love it down as well.

Okay, tell her.

Okay, so in ChatGPT, where you in the drop down where you have all the different models.

If you go to ChatGPT 4.0040 tasks, you can ask it to remind you.

Where I found a real sweet spot with, with tasks is, is that you can set a repeatable task for ChatGPT to perform.

So for example, on a Monday morning, ChatGPT sends me a seven day content plan for the week.

On every morning, ChatGPT rounds up the ADHD business headlines of the day, things I need to know about and sends it to my inbox 9am every day.

Various things like that.

I'm trying to have a few others set up, but those kind of things.

And this is like that semi automation, you know, it's not, it's not an automation in the background that's running your whole business, but it's just these, these tiny little things that we can put in place that AI can do just to make our lives easier to outsource our brain.

So we're not sat there every morning going, what am I going to post about today?

You know, my brain, I'm in my lute phase.

My brain has just left the building, I haven't got a clue, I don't want to be present, I don't even want to think about my business.

But just having those things set up where it can do it for you and it just shows up in your inbox, that's such a, such a key to, I hate the word consistency, but to find some kind of consistency in our entirely inconsistent brains.

Yeah, and that is it, isn't it?

It's like we've lived for so long with, you know, working memory issues, executive functioning differences, this fast paced world.

Throw in the patriarchy and women working and all these expectations that are on us and like you said, we just, we've got such tired brains.

And I'm kind of like coming from a devil's advocate perspective of when do you think AI then turns also into like a bit of a, a monster?

Are we going to morph into kind of people that can't think for themselves and we can't come up with, you know, problem solving and resolution and how do we find that balance of it being ethical in our business and almost know that we're not just kind of like handing over the reins to a computer to do all the thinking for us?

I actually think that something really interesting is emerging right now, which is that for the last year, maybe even a couple of years, we're all so obsessed with finding this efficiency in our business and automating the Hell, out of everything that what has happened over the last couple of years is we've just seen this deluge of just content coming from AI, really clearly coming from AI, that A means that everything's kind of become really boring, and B, means that there's just so much of it.

We're so overwhelmed, overwhelmed with just the sheer volume of content that's being thrown at us because so many people are just getting it from AI.

So for me, the.

The magic of this is knowing how to use it in your business.

And personally, for me and for anyone that I work with, that is not about outsourcing your whole brain to AI.

It's about understanding your strengths and weaknesses and where you need that support.

So for a lot of people, it's about, you know, idea generation.

We have millions of ideas, but it's about the actual formulating that into a plan.

So give me a content plan based on my ideas.

Here's all the tasks I need to do.

Put them into an order that actually makes sense so that I can get them done.

Because of our executive function issues, making sure that, you know, we're fully breaking a task down.

I need to achieve this, break it down into tiny, tiny micro steps so that I can get through them one by one.

And for me, that's where the ethical bit really comes in.

You know, we're not.

We're not asking ChatGPT to write a book that we're then going to say we've written ourselves.

We're not even using it for content that we're just going to copy and paste and put out onto the Internet.

You know, we're using it in the places that we need it to be used to make up for the weaknesses that we have in business, which for me is the right way to use it.

Yeah, it's about leveraging, isn't it?

Isn't it just saying.

And I think what you said then is like, we can input all our ideas and it's just like, can you help make an order of this?

And I've used that for quite a few things of this is how I want something to look.

These are all the ideas.

This is what I want to talk about.

Can you break this down into five workshops, say?

And I was like, oh, my God, this is amazing because these are all my ideas.

But they're just.

Instead of just doing everything, like, you know, I think our brains just want to do everything all in one go and just give everybody everything we have.

I've used it to plan holidays, I've used it for recipes, for meal planning.

Yeah, meal plan is a brilliant one.

Yeah, I think it's, you know, people might be listening here.

Go.

Well, I don't run a business.

This is not relevant to me.

But I do, you know, have a busy household and I've got kids and I've got a lot of commitments and, you know, even just remind me to change the beds once a week.

Give me a way that I can keep on top of my.

My cleaning.

Help me remember to take the supplements every day for my adhd.

These are the little things.

And now I know it's not cheating.

And now I know that it's okay to not do life the hard way the whole time.

Like we've been.

We kind of miss sold something.

I think growing up maybe around, you know, the same era of you're not doing well unless you're absolutely grafting.

And you don't deserve the things that, you know, you get unless you.

What is like blood, sweat and tears.

The way that we use AI, the way that we see anything like that, any shortcuts, we can see as a failing, can't we?

We can see it as, oh, I should be able to do this myself.

And I think that's what stops a lot of people from using it.

Once, you know, the amount of people that say to me, oh, I don't.

I'm not really into all of that.

And once you say, why don't you just.

Why don't you just try?

Like, just try.

And then they're like, oh, my God.

I have just, you know, as you say, I've just saved five days work and, you know, and it's taken me an hour.

And I think that's where the magic is, isn't it?

Once we realize how much time and brain energy we can save ourselves, that's what we really need to be doing for our businesses.

Because we owe it to ourselves.

We're starting from a deficit, aren't we?

We owe it to ourselves to kind of do whatever we can to make that up.

Yeah, yeah.

And I'm sort of just thinking, you know, back, I don't know when it was maybe 10 years ago when Nigella Lawson came out and she started using all these shortcut hacks.

And it was like all over the papers and it was like a PR dream for all these brands that she sort of saying, I use these frozen roast potatoes and this jarred gravy or whatever it was, and everyone was like, oh, my God, like, you know, she cheating.

Is it this?

Is she a real cook and There was just so much controversy around Nigella Lawson basically turning around and going, well, I use all these shortcuts and all these hacks because life's too short.

And what am I doing, like grafting, you know, chopping onions when I can buy a bag of frozen onions.

And that kind of like just revolutionized is the way especially busy working women can be like, you know what?

I can make a curry in five minutes by using frozen veg, jarred curry sauce.

Put it all together and they've still got a home cooked meal.

And I just wonder that AI is just going to be this sort of version where maybe in five years time we'll be like, can you believe that we used to do it like this and we used to sit and now we've got like opportunities to thrive and to rest more or be productive in other places or thrive in the areas that we're really, really good at.

If this episode has been helpful for you and you're looking for more tools and more guidance, my brand new book, the ADHD Women's Wellbeing Toolkit is out now.

You can find it wherever you buy your books from.

You can also check out the audiobook if you do prefer to listen to me.

I have narrated it all myself.

Thank you so much for being here and I will see you for the next episode.