How AI changed my Neurodivergent life (I've been avoiding this episode!!)

I mention my ADHD and autism in almost every episode. But I've never actually sat down and talked about it properly — what it actually looks like, what AI does for a brain that works like mine, and the parts that aren't all sunshine and productivity hacks.

This is that episode. The one I've been putting off. I was diagnosed ADHD at 35 and autistic shortly after, and it rewired how I understood everything about myself. I built Wright Mode because of how my brain works, not despite it — and AI gave me access to running a business my brain wouldn't have let me run without it.

In this episode: 

— Why I built Wright Mode around my neurodivergent brain 

— How AI acts as an external executive function system 

— Body doubling with AI (sounds weird, works incredibly) 

— Why "just be consistent" doesn't work for ADHD brains — and what does 

— Banking energy: using hyperfocus windows to build systems for low-energy days 

— The dark side: hyperfocus + AI = no off switch 

— Why AI is about access, not productivity hacks — Building boundaries when your brain doesn't have an "enough" signal

Links: 🔗 Join the Wright Mode Membership: https://www.skool.com/wright-mode-membership

Connect with me: Instagram: @wright_mode YouTube: Not Another AI Girl

• Want to work together? Check out my offerings at Wright Mode
• Connect with me on Instagram → @wright_mode

Transcript

Speaker 0:00

Welcome back to not another AI girl. if you are watching the YouTube at the moment, you will notice my eyebrows. I feel like I just need to address this. I've just had them done. We are going on holidays next week. And yeah. Yeah, Gail. Looks like she has some painted eyebrows on. That's nice. All right, let's jump into this episode now that I've got that out of the way. So, this is an episode I guess I've been putting off for a little while. If you've listened to my other episodes, you've probably heard me mention about being neurodivergent. I drop it in improve. Pretty casually. You know, my A DHD brain loves this, or as someone whose autistic systems just makes sense to me. But I've never actually sat down and talked about it properly. And I just sent my mom this hilarious meme from Instagram where it's like, come at the frog in the backseat of a car. And the text overlay is like, what do you mean? There were signs and it's like Kermit the Frog is just like singing stimming. And I sent that to her and had a little laugh about this. So it is time to talk about it what it actually looks like, what AI actually does for a brain that works like mine. Because there's parts that aren't all sunshine and productivity hacks. And my husband is in the next room and I'm sure he will be listening to this and nodding along at times. So this is that episode, the one I've been avoiding. And I think it's gonna resonate with a lot of you because I know that there are a lot of A DHD women, autistic women in my audience, I work with a lot of you and. Yeah. So I know that this will resonate. And so for a little bit of context for anyone who's new here, I was diagnosed with a DHD as a 30 5-year-old. Which if you know, you know, that diagnosis was, yeah, like someone turning on a light in a room. I'd been kind of stumbling on for the last 30 years. All the things that I thought were like horrible personality flaws. The inability to start things like just getting stuck in a DHD paralysis, the hyper focus on random things and the absolute chaos. Of my internal experience suddenly had a name and it wasn't a deep personality or character flaw of mine. And then about a month later, my autism diagnosis came and that one was, yeah, that wasn't surprising actually at all. but it helped me understand everything about myself, why I need systems, why I am like. An asshole. Sometimes there's no better word for it when the plans change and while why? Small talk literally drains my life force unless my social battery is high. All right. So I built right mode because of how my brain works, not despite it. So the whole reason I'm obsessed with AI systems and automation is because my brain physically needs that external structure to function. I can't just remember to follow up or I do, but it's at inappropriate times and then the time, like 9:00 PM at night. And then the time when I do need to remember and follow up just doesn't exist. I can't keep a mental todo to-do list. I do, and it's exhausting, but it's really hard to action on that, and I just forget things. I, I find it hard to prioritise things, so that's why I've built. Automations. That's where I started. And then when AI tools started getting really good, like genuinely useful, not just a novelty of chat GBT, that is when something shifted for me. And my business has grown exponentially since that too, and I don't think I've ever really articulated what that shift was. So let's get into that today. All right, so for anyone who doesn't have a neurodivergent brain or doesn't know they do yet, because. Honestly, late diagnosis in women and late diagnosis in general is wildly common. Let me explain something. So executive function is basically your brain's project manager. So it's the thing that helps you start task. Switch between tasks, organise information, manage time, prioritise things, and follow through on intentions. And for a lot of neurodivergent people, that project manager is on a permanent lunch break, shall we say. So I'm not being dramatic, like I can have the best idea in the world, know exactly what needs to happen. Like I can spend all of this mental energy planning it out and still sit there for three hours. Just unable to start. And that is not because I'm lazy, although for a very long time, that was the story that I told myself. And it's also not because I don't care. It's because the bridge between I know what to do or I know what I need to do and I'm doing it is just non-existent. And this is where AI became a game changer. Lull, overused. But anyways, I digress. For me, because AI is basically an external executive function system, so I can voice note my thoughts into chat or clawed and it can organise them for me. I have built automations that. I send a voice note from my phone and then it goes out and can create social media for me. I can dump a chaotic brain dump into Claude and it turns it into a structured plan. And now with cowork and code, it can help execute on that plan. I can tell my AI. Here's what I need to do today. Break it down into small enough steps that I can actually start. And I actually, that was my very first custom GPT that I built was Brain Buddy, which you just voice note everything into it and it acts as an executive function code. And so that's not a productivity hack for me. That's the difference between a functional day and a day where I doom scroll until 3:00 PM wondering why I can't do the thing. And then the kids get home and I'm like, shit. I like, I've lost that time. Okay, now the next one is body doubling. And so I, there's research now that suggests that that's one of the most effective tools for A DHD is. and these one's gonna sound weird, I guess, if you're neurotypical. But if you are neurodivergent, you're gonna feel this one in your bones because. Body doubling is this thing where neurodivergent people can suddenly function when someone else is present in the room not helping. We don't like that. Doesn't have to even be talking to you. Just present that presence is enough to like, get us going. It's like, I don't know. Someone's existence gives your. Brain permission to start. I, it's hard to explain. It just works. I know that sounds ridiculous. But when I open up Claude and just start talking through what I'm working on, not asking it to do the work, either just thinking out loud, it's like my brain activates and it helps me process. So then that task initiation barrier drops also cause Claude or chat can hold that brain dump and then just. Spit out like that one thing that you need to start, that's when I can start. And voice mode has made this even more powerful because now I can literally talk to. It like I'm talking to a colleague, and my brain goes, oh, we're in work mode now. Like, okay, cool, let's go. and I do genuinely think that voice mode is the way of the future. I'm definitely typing less and less. And I use a tool called Whisper Flow. I love it, but there's heaps out there. And I genuinely believe that this is one of the most underrated applications of AI for neurodivergent people because it's not necessarily about the output, it's about like the activation and allowing us to kind of brain dump and then get started. Alright, so next up is another one. Consistency. So. Consistency. This is like the very thing that every business coach tells you that you need, and every A DHD person wants to. Fucking ate something at a wall. When they hear this. Just be consistent. Cool. Okay. My brain literally doesn't do that. Like I have three weeks of hyper focus jammed into a day, followed by a day of absolute like nothing. And that is not a discipline problem. That's how my brain is wired. I don't know how to control that. And so. When you say be consistent, I'm like, sweet. So now I feel like a failure. Here's where automation and AI kind of change that for me so I don't have to be consistent anymore. I don't have to remember everything anymore. My systems are consistent. So my N eight N automations run when I'm hyper focusing or when I'm not. And that is just such the best support that I've given myself. So I can record this podcast, but then my systems take care of the rest. Like I literally have descrip API connected and I like my content gets repurposed. I've got like. When you do my consult intake form, that is all automatically sent out. I get pinged in Slack when you've completed that, so it's ready there for me. None of this requires me to show up in the same way every single day. But I built these systems to do that for me and like that has been. Such a blessing. Anyone who is neurodivergent can understand that. Like some days you just wake up and I just feel it. My brain is just like, Nope, not today. Like it's a feeling. It's almost like fuzzy or itchy. I don't know how to describe it apart from that. And so the AI piece that has helped me build those systems faster. So it helps me create templates when I'm in a hyper-focused window. And that allows me to then. Get these systems like working for those low energy windows. It's like banking energy. So storing your good days so your bad days don't wreck everything. And that is such a big leverage layer. And it was designed by a neurodivergent brain for neurodivergent brains, but. I'm not gonna pretend that it's all rainbows and sunshines and productivity hacks because there is a dark side to this. Well, dark, a hard side I should say. and that's something that I've actively had to manage. And so that's when you combine a DHD hyper focus with a tool that never gets. Tired never says maybe we should stop. Never says like, it's midnight. Hey, you've been building automations for six hours, you're gonna burn out. It is hard to manage that. So I've had weeks where AI has made me so productive that I've lost the plot. There's stuff that I've created that would've taken weeks, if not months, and it's taken me like a day or those big projects maybe take me a week instead of a month. Oh my God. And. Then I'll just get started on another one instead of resting because I could, because AI is just there, ready to go, and my hyper focus brain is like, sweet, let's follow that dopamine. and then, you know, you crash hard. Like the mental exhaustion of that is it's a lot because you are going and we finally have this tool that can keep up with our brains. and so I talked about that in the last episode, but I've had to start building in some boundaries around this. And they are very new because yeah, it's really hard. so I brick my phone now of an evening. Yeah, but that line is definitely blurred. I'm getting there. So if you are neurodivergent and using ai, please hear me on this. The tool doesn't have boundaries. You are responsible to. Build those boundaries in for yourself. And that's harder for us than it is for neurotypical people because our brains don't come with, that's enough signal. You have to kind of like, I wish I didn't have to buy a brick for my phone. But that's just the way my brain works, so that's what I have to do. So it's building in those boundary systems to support us as well. All right. And last thing, and I guess this is the part that I really wanna talk about or say in this episode and that's when I talk about AI helping neurodivergent people, I'm not talking about it being like this cute productivity hack I'm talking about like access to. So this tool has given me access. To running a business that my brain would've not let me run without it like full stop. The organisational load alone would have just crushed me and the admin and the follow ups and the content calendar, all of that. Without AI and automation, I would've. Probably just walked away. It would've got too hard for me. I know that about myself, like when that weight of just that admin load got too heavy, I could do that for clients. But for my own business, I was just too much. So like when someone says AI is just a tool like. Yeah, glasses are just a tool, like a wheelchair is just a tool, but they give people access to a world that wasn't designed for them, and I think that's why so many neurodivergent people are loving ai. Because it's what it does for our brains. It's not about being lazy. It's not about cutting corners. It's about finally having a system that works with your brain and can go as fast as your brain or can support your brain when you're feeling low, when you don't know how to articulate an email. And so that's why I. Built right mode the way that I did so that I can help other women founders use these tools in a way that, actually supports their business and brains. And yeah, that's not a tagline that is literally like my whole life and it's something that I've built for myself. And so that's why I'm so passionate about teaching other women how to use this. All right. So that's it. That's the episode. if any of this resonated, if you're sitting there going, oh my God, I thought that was just me. I just want you to know it's not you. You are not broken. Your brain just works differently. And we do have these tools that support it, but also those boundaries around those tools are very, very tricky for us to navigate. So I see you in that. I am with you in that. and if you wanna talk about building AI systems that work for your. Specific brain or your business. That's what I do. DM me. I love having these conversations. and if you know someone who's neurodivergent and either curious about how, how AI can help them or they're struggling with the overwhelm of it all, send them this episode because I think it's a really valuable one. And if you're not already, please subscribe to, the podcast wherever you're listening to this, 'cause it really helps me get this work out there and I appreciate you, see you on the next one.