Volume IV

When people ask me how I use artificial intelligence, they're often surprised by my answer.

I don't use it to replace my thinking. I don't use it to avoid work. I don't use it because I want technology making important decisions for me.

I use it because I want to spend more of my time being present in the moments that deserve my full attention.

Like many professionals, I wear several hats throughout the day. I have responsibilities at work, personal commitments, financial goals, a home to manage, relationships to nurture, and a business I'm continuing to build. Every one of those roles requires decisions. Some are significant, while others seem almost insignificant on their own. Yet I've learned that it's rarely the major decisions that leave me mentally exhausted. It's the accumulation of hundreds of small ones.

What should I make for dinner this week? Do I have everything I need from the grocery store? What should I post on social media? Am I forgetting something on my calendar? How much should I budget for taxes? What's the best way to organize this project? Where do I even begin?

Individually, none of these questions are overwhelming. Together, they quietly compete for our attention throughout the day. Before we realize it, we've spent hours making decisions that, while necessary, don't necessarily require our highest level of thinking.

For years, I assumed this mental juggling was simply part of being a responsible adult. I prided myself on staying organized and managing multiple priorities at once. But somewhere along the way, I began noticing how much energy I was spending on tasks that could be simplified. Not eliminated, but streamlined. That's when I stopped thinking about artificial intelligence as a technology and started seeing it as something much more practical—a thoughtful assistant that helps reduce the noise.

One of the first changes I made was surprisingly simple. Every evening, I ask AI to help me create a menu for the week. It isn't because I don't know how to cook or because I can't decide what sounds good. It's because I no longer want to spend fifteen minutes every evening wondering what to make, realizing I'm missing ingredients, and making another unnecessary trip to the grocery store. Now I begin the week with a plan. I know exactly what I'm buying, what I'm cooking, and what my evenings will look like. It sounds like a small adjustment, but small adjustments have a remarkable way of creating calmer days.

I've taken the same approach with other parts of my life. Running Get Grounded requires creativity, and if I'm being honest, creativity has never been the challenge. Organizing my ideas into a cohesive content strategy has. My mind naturally gravitates toward numbers, systems, and structure. Visual storytelling on social media doesn't come as naturally to me. Rather than spending hours staring at a blank screen wondering how to arrange my thoughts, I now use AI as a brainstorming partner. It helps me organize ideas that already exist in my mind so I can focus on refining the message instead of wrestling with where to begin.

The same has been true for my calendar. Like many ambitious women, I used to believe productivity meant fitting as much as possible into every available hour. My calendar reflected that mindset. It was full, but it wasn't always intentional. AI has helped me step back and organize my schedule in a way that feels realistic rather than aspirational. Instead of planning perfect weeks that rarely unfolded as expected, I'm building weeks that honor both my ambitions and my capacity. There is a significant difference between being busy and being thoughtfully organized.

More recently, I've been using AI to help me prepare for meetings with my financial advisor. I deeply value having a trusted professional in my corner, and I would never view AI as a replacement for that relationship. Instead, I use it to organize my thoughts before we meet. Throughout the year, I'll ask it to summarize the financial decisions I've made, identify patterns in my spending and saving, and help me think through questions I want to discuss during our meeting. By the time I sit down with my advisor, I'm not trying to remember everything that's happened over the past several months. I'm prepared. The conversation becomes more strategic because we've already eliminated the time spent gathering information. AI helps me arrive informed, while my financial planner provides the experience, perspective, and guidance that ultimately shape the decisions I make.

What has surprised me most throughout this process is that AI hasn't made me less engaged. It has made me more intentional. By reducing the number of small decisions I have to make throughout the day, I've created more space for the decisions that truly deserve my attention. I have more mental energy for meaningful conversations. I find myself more present during meetings. I have greater capacity to think strategically instead of simply reacting to whatever appears next on my to-do list.

I think that's an important distinction. We often hear conversations about artificial intelligence framed around efficiency. While efficiency certainly matters, I believe the more meaningful conversation is about stewardship. How are we stewarding our attention? Our creativity? Our emotional energy? Every unnecessary decision we make quietly consumes a resource that cannot be replenished by working harder. Mental bandwidth is finite. Once it has been spent, the quality of our thinking inevitably changes.

For high-performing women, this may be one of the greatest opportunities AI presents. We are often balancing careers, relationships, families, personal growth, financial planning, and countless invisible responsibilities that rarely appear on a résumé. The goal isn't to automate our lives. The goal is to remove enough friction that we can be fully present for the moments that matter most. Technology should support our humanity, not compete with it.

Of course, discernment still matters. Artificial intelligence should never replace wisdom, intuition, or human connection. It cannot make our values-based decisions. It cannot have difficult conversations on our behalf. It cannot build trust, deepen relationships, or define our purpose. Those responsibilities will always belong to us. But if it can eliminate unnecessary friction along the way, perhaps we should welcome it as one more tool that allows us to live with greater intention.

When I think about the role AI plays in my life today, I don't think about algorithms or software. I think about margin. Margin to sit down for dinner without wondering what's in the refrigerator. Margin to spend more time writing and less time formatting. Margin to approach my finances with confidence instead of avoidance. Margin to be fully present with the people I love because I haven't spent the entire day making hundreds of tiny decisions that quietly depleted my energy.

At the end of the day, artificial intelligence isn't giving me a better life because it's doing my work for me. It's giving me a better life because it's giving me something far more valuable.

It's giving me my time back.

A Question to Carry With You This Week

If you could eliminate just five unnecessary decisions from your week, what would you create space for instead?