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You are listening to the Navigating Adult ADHD Podcast with your ADHD coach and expert, Xena. Hello, my friend. Welcome back to Navigating Adult adhd, where I've had a morning. Tried to break into somebody's car this morning, but wait a minute. Let me give you some context, okay? I had to renew my driver's license, so I drove out to be there at 9am when they opened. And I was the first person in there. Did the thing, like, paid the fee. You have to do an eye test, get my eyes checked. And I passed, right? Passed the eye test. And I come out and I go to get in my car, and I'm like, oh, shit. Like, the automatic unlock won't work, okay? So I'm pushing the button, pushing the unlock. It won't work. Won't work. Now, we've had this before, so we know that if you, like, break into the key fob, there will be an actual key inside, okay? And if you break in, you can get the actual physical key and then stick it in the keyhole of your car to, like, open your car door and start your car. Okay? Now, it is starting to rain. So I'm standing there, it's starting to rain, and I'm breaking into this key fob. I break my nails to open this thing. I get the key out and I stick it in the door. And I'm turning it and it's not fucking moving. And so I'm starting to panic. I'm like, oh, my God, the car won't unlock. I can't get into the car. Like, I've got the key out. It's not working. Thinking, shit, I'm gonna have to ring my partner, like, see if he can drive out and bring a spare key. Anyway, this lady walks up and she's like, what are you doing? She stares at me, and then she stares back at another car. A white CX5 looks back at me, looks back at this other white CX5. And I look at her and I go, holy shit, I've got the wrong car, don't I? And she starts nodding, just staring at me. Friends. Omg. I'd had a coffee. I took my ADHD meds, passed the eye test, and still I tried to break into the wrong car. Oh, my God, so funny. So I walked. Like, literally, my car is parked two spaces away. I walk up to my car, and it unlocks with the beep. Mind you, the key is still in, like, 100 pieces. I think it's like five pieces. But, you know, hey, a Bit of drama makes it more fun. So the key is still in, like, the. The push button thingy is still in pieces. Right. I'm gonna deal with that later. But, yeah, that's how today has started. My brain has not brained that well. And that's okay. Some days are like that. But at least I passed the eye test, right? You wouldn't know it given this experience, but I did. But that's not what we're here to talk about. Let me ask you something. Have you ever started a task that felt so overwhelming you would rather pull out weeds or clean the oven than do the thing that you're supposed to do? Right. Me too. Hell, yes. So a few weeks ago, I was sitting at my desk and I was trying to work on a book. I've been wanting to write a book for ages now. I had scraps of paper, I've got notes everywhere. I've got a million tabs open, and there's this growing weight of overwhelm in the pit of my stomach. Right? You know that feeling when you've got so much to do and absolutely, like, no idea where the fuck to start? So instead of spiraling into avoidance, what I did is I opened ChatGPT and I typed in, I'm wanting to write a book, which is a simple start Here. Guide for late diagnosed adults with adhd. Where should I start? And just like that, I had a simple, clear first step. It actually broke it down beautifully. And it knew that I was overwhelmed. Right? I didn't even have to tell it, it just knew. And it said, you know, you can use your podcast, you can use this guide and this thing that you've done. You actually don't have to write a lot because you've got all of this information already. Right? It was so helpful. And that moment reminded me of something very powerful. AI is not here to replace our sparkly brains, but it's here to support them. So today I'm going to walk you through how you can use ChatGPT, as well as some other really cool AI tools to make ADHD life easier. Okay? We're going to explore how they can support our executive functions, helping with things like time blindness. Right? How they can help to reduce our cognitive overload, the mental overload that we experience, and even give you back some of that precious, like, brain fuel. Right? The dopamine for the fun things in life. Right. Does it sound good? I think so. Let's dive in. So let's talk about, first off, why AI can be so helpful for adhd. Brains specifically. Okay, first of all, let's talk about executive functions. Why does it take me 2 hours to write a business letter that other people can write in 10 minutes? Right? I can't seem to get my ideas to flow in this nice and orderly sequence and write down what it is that I want to say that, my friends, is executive dysfunction. So executive functions are the specific sort of self directed actions that we use to control ourselves. They kind of work like a GPS in your brain, giving you the step by step set of instructions that you need to get to your destination. So in the case of me writing a book, these executive functions need to work together to plan and prioritise and problem solve to be able to get me from where I am now to having the book written. Basically, they are the secret to successful adulting. So the six executive functions are inhibition, emotional regulation, self awareness, working memory, self motivation, planning, and problem solving. Now we have episodes on executive functioning. I will link to those in the show notes if you want to go and explore that a little bit more. All right, the other area where AI can be so helpful, and when I say AI, we're talking about artificial intelligence, right? Is when it comes to cognitive overload, right? Taking away some of the mental and even some of the emotional overload that our brains can experience. And cognitive overload, it's a lot like if you think of a bathtub, it can only hold so much before it starts to overflow, right? And our brains are the same, they can only hold so much and do so much before they start to overflow. So AI can really support that cognitive overload. So I like to think it as kind of reducing the friction. Okay, so here are some of the ways that it can help. It can support breaking down tasks, right? Breaking down, for example, like how to write a book, how to write a report, how to complete an assignment, and putting them into order to help you with prioritizing. You can literally just give it your to do list and your deadlines and ask it to help you break these things down, put them in order, et cetera. It also supports time blindness, right? For us with adhd, time is either now or not now. We can really struggle to know how long things are going to take and, you know, include buffer time or time to, you know, potentially go over so it can really support when it support us when it comes to scheduling and planning things and breaking them down. Okay, for me, timeliness is for real, a thing. I always underestimate how long a task is going to take me, even when I've done that thing before. So again, I find using ChatGPT specifically really, really helpful for this. AI also reduces the friction in terms of communication. So if you need to reply to an email, I will use it to help me reply to emails all of the time. I'll say, hey, I've got this email, I'll share it with you here. I want to include this, this and this. Can you help me write a kind but short reply? Right? Or it could be, I want to say no to this event in a really loving way. Can you help me write a short reply to this message to do that? So again, with communication, it can be really, really helpful. Again, those things that can take like I could stare at a screen. This was me for so long when it came to replying to emails, overanalyzing it, rewording it, tweaking it, spell checking, all of the things, right? It could take me hours to reply to a single email or write a single email. But now, because ChatGPT has got to know me and my tone of voice so well, I will say, hey, here's the email. These are the things I want to include. It'll spit it out and I'll tweak a few things, right? It loves to put in lots of emojis. I'll probably take some of those out and then I can send it. And it's just so quick and easy, right? So again, it's like taking some of that overload and really reducing the time that activities like that take. It can also support with emotional regulation. You can say to it, you know, can you give me a three minute calming exercise? The other day I went through, I was really curious what it would do with eft tapping and I said to it, hey, I'm feeling really anxious today. Can you walk me through a 5 minute EFT tapping script? And it did a beautiful job of that. So again, it can support us with emotional regulation and giving us different ideas like breathing techniques and ways to help us calm ourselves in the moment. It's great with generating ideas too, like super fun to generate ideas with and help us to generate dopamine. So if you're feeling really stuck, if you are, you know, lacking motivation and you're not getting started on this thing, you need to get started on it can really help you with creative ideas. One of my tips when somebody is new to AI or specifically ChatGPT is I always say you've got to tell it about you. You've got to teach it to get to know you. Let it know you've got adhd. You know, tell it you struggle with low motivation or you struggle with estimating how long things will take. Tell it more and more and more about you and it will be more and more and more supportive towards you. Okay? So it also can support everyday adulting things like, you know, getting the washing done, right? Coming up with a fun way to help you do that. It can help with recipe and meal ideas. I'm going to give you some prompts and I'm going to tell you about some ways in which I have used it recently and other people in my community have used it recently. Okay? So I want you to think of it as like less wasted energy, more brain fuel left for the important stuff or the fun stuff in your life. Okay? So here's how I think about using ChatGPT specifically. I think of it as a tool to make my life easier. I think of it as a way to get more time back. And I think of it kind of like sometimes I think of it like Sheldon Cooper, like just a wealth of knowledge, but like a knowledgeable librarian who has read every single book in the world, right? And has the most extensive library you would ever see. So I think of ChatGPT as my executive functioning assistant. Okay? It doesn't replace me in the work that I do, but it does help to assist me and take some of the more mundane things off my plate. So I want to share with you a bunch of ways that either I myself or my clients and the people in my community have used it recently. So first off, replying to emails all the time. Replying to emails, I use it all the time spell checking documents. I get it to spell check shit for me all the time. I'm a notoriously shocking when it comes to spelling, I don't mind this too much. Like it doesn't bother me. I think it just makes me human and other people can rel it is very helpful when I do want something to be spell checked. I used it recently to simplify and explain a legal document. I think it was about a five or six page legal document and I didn't understand what the fuck it was trying to say. So I asked chap GPT I fed the document in and I said to it, can you help me to understand this? Is there anything that you should flag that I should know about? What are the key points in here? What are the things I need to reply with? And like I asked it some very specific I wanted to know and understand and it really helped me to understand that document and break it down into simple and easy to use language. Like, I love me a word picture. If you can paint me a word picture like I just shared with you before, like, cognitive overload is like a bathtub, right? It can only hold so much water. I love that. And so I will get ChatGPT to do that for me all the time. When it comes to me understanding things or even teaching concepts, like when I am teaching a workshop or a class or doing some coaching and there's something I want to teach and I don't have a word picture or a way to explain that yet, I will ask CHAT GPT to give me ideas because I know that that helps us to understand so much easier. Right. I had a client recently use it to practice for a job interview. Genius, right? This is the job that I'm going for. Here is the job description. Could you act like the HR person or the hiring manager in this company and ask me questions that they could ask me? Right. Brilliant way to practice for a job interview. I also had somebody else use it to practice small talk and conversational skills. Okay. That is something that, man, I can so relate to. Like, as ADHDers often, we hate small talk. Oh, how about that weather? Yeah, yeah. Rainy and windy lately. Yeah. Yeah. Spring weather, huh? Yeah. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. No. Right? So somebody who was really wanting to practice their conversational skills and was really struggling with that element, like the small talk of meeting people and having something to say. This was a goal that they were working on. They used ChatGPT to help them with that. Brilliant. Somebody else I know used it to brainstorm business names and decide on a name. Fantastic, right? I have used it recently. I've been playing with it to take meeting notes during coaching sessions so that I've got, like, a recap if people like to have a decent recap. Okay. And it does a pretty good job at that. Sometimes I'll go through and edit the odd thing, but for the most part, it's pretty excellent. Right. Again, I shared with you breaking down how to write a book into simple and easy doable steps. And it told me, like, one of the things I hadn't necessarily thought of or hadn't thought about for a while was what is, like, the purpose of this book? Like, what is your key takeaway or message? Like, it asked me. I can't remember exactly the question now, but a really good, kind of like, your mission, right? What is your mission in this? Like, what is the overarching goal that you want to keep coming back to? And I Love the way that it worded it and shared with me based on what it knows about me already, some of the things that that might be. And I was like, yeah, actually having that at the top to always come back to and send to me is such a great thing to have in mind. I also used it the other day, right, to open my fridge, write down a few things that we had and say, can you give me some simple, easy, tasty meal ideas based on having these ingredients? And it did a great job. I've done, done that a few times actually, like, especially when I can't think of anything different to make. Like, I love to have some high protein meal ideas, but I don't like spending hours in the kitchen. I like things to be simple and easy and really quick and it just helps me think outside the box, which I love, especially when my brain at the end of the night is in that kind of cognitive overload place and I'm like, I don't have a lot of brain power left to make food at the end of day. So I'm going to give you some prompts to play with. Okay, here we go. First one, I have ADHD and struggle with prioritising. Here is my to do list. Which should I do first? Now, one of the things I often like to say to it is let me know if you need more information or ask me questions to help us achieve this goal. Right? Because the more you give it, the better its answers are going to be. Okay, here's another prompt. Break down this task into five tiny steps and tell me which one to start with. Okay, so that could be decluttering your kitchen pantry, for example. Or it could be you're wanting to write a report for work or do an assignment for university. Right. Break down this task into five tiny steps and tell me which one to start with. Right. Another one. Another prompt you could play with. Make me a simple meal plan with these ingredients. Right. Or make me a simple meal plan that is high protein. Right. Protein helps produce dopamine. It's great for those of us with ADHD with, you know, these ingredients or these dietary requirements in mind. Another one that I love. Another prompt I love. Can you write a kind but firm way to say no to this email or this request? Right. And then you paste it in there. Right. Like these are just some of the many prompts that you can use. And when I say prompt, it's just asking it a question, Right? A question. You ask ChatGPT a question and it gives you some answers. Another one. Give me three fun ideas that are under $20 for things I could do this weekend. I love that. I was like, oh, that's a great idea for like a date day, right? It sounds super fun. Now, if you're new to using AI and ChatGPT, guess what? You can't do it wrong. Play with it, my friend, experiment with it. The learning is in the doing and the more it gets to know you, the better it's going to be. So one of the things I'm actually running a workshop on this soon in my membership. One of the things I'm going to have them do is I'm giving them like this really long script where I'm getting them to fill in information about themselves to help ChatGPT get to know them so that it can give them better answers and better responses. Okay. So again, the more it gets to know you and you can say to it, hey, I want you to really know and understand me and you know the things I struggle with, the things I'm really good at, et cetera, who I am, what I do, you could even say to it. Now ask me about bunch of questions. Right? Again, think of it like an assistant there to help you, work for you. Now I want to share some of the things to be mindful of when it comes to using specifically ChatGPT. Okay. First off is accuracy. It gets shit wrong. It is geared towards telling you what you want to hear. So one of my friends, he asked it, his name's Jay Carter and he asked it, has Jay Carter ever been in the New Zealand All Blacks? And it came back with yes, in 1993 Jay Carter played on the wing of blah blah blah blah blah. And that was bullshit. He has never played in the All Blacks. Right. And I don't know if it's gotten probably more accuracy since then. This was in the early days. But even I have asked it some ADHD related things that I know know it's come back with inaccurate information or not up to date information. So just be mindful of taking every single thing it says as accurate data. One of the things I like to do when I'm using it to help me research and I've actually since found some better research platforms for, for AI based research which I'll share with you in a minute. But one of the things I'll use do in ChatGPT is say I want you to link to any research publications, articles that you can find that talk about this, this and this. Right? So I will, and it will, it will provide links to the articles and give you that information so that you can actually fact check it. Okay. So accuracy, definitely be mindful of that. Also be careful with over reliance. So there is a relatively new study that has come out of MIT, which is a pretty prestigious university in the U.S. but MIT, they did a study on people using chat GPT and how it can create atrophy. Should we say? Now atrophy is a fancy ass way of saying if you don't use it, you lose it. Right? If you don't use your muscles, if you don't use your. I'll give you a great example. I have not done triceps for a while. You know when somebody waves in the bottom of their arm, waves like, like I've got that going on a little bit, I've got to say. So I haven't used my triceps for a while so I've lost the definition in the muscle that I had. So again this can happen when we are relying heavily on ChatGPT to replace our brain and do things like, you know, if I relied on it to write my book that would be, you know, not working so well for me because I'm not getting my brain to think, to write, to create. Okay. So again if you're not, if you're not using it, you can lose it. So again just being mindful of not replacing your brain and your creativity and your ideas and your thinking, but again using it as like an assistant alongside. So I'm going to link to that study in the show notes. Like it goes into detail of how they had people like write out essays and one, one group used Chat GPT, one group used just, just Google like generally googling different things and then the other one did none of those. And it was really interesting to see that those who use Chat GBT were really struggled to tell you what they'd written and recall, you know, what was in their, their essay, et cetera. So it was very interesting. That's just something just to be mindful of. Like if we, if we over rely on, can definitely impact our brain's ability to light up and do the things that our brain needs to do. Okay, the next one is boundaries. So I have seen that some people have gone down many rabbit holes and lost hours and hours and hours because they go down just, you know, this whole what about this, what about this, what about this? And especially when we love learning things and we, we get a lot of dopamine from learning and from ideas and creativity and Chat GBT can be so supportive in that realm it can lead us to losing a lot of time and we can use it as busy work, but not productive work. Okay? So just be mindful of that. So, boundaries, again, a big one. Privacy, okay? Don't share information you would not want shared online. That's it, right? Privacy. Be mindful of that. And the last one, and this is probably one of the biggest, is the environmental impact. Okay? So every time we type a prompt, like a question into ChatGPT, it's not just, you know, text magically appearing on the screen. It is thousands of servers, right? Giant computers, giant data centers running all of these complex calculations at laser speed. So having this ChatGPT AI model uses a lot of electricity. It can use as much electricity as hundreds of households would consume in a year. So even like everyday use, it really adds up the more we ask it a question. The booger. The booger, the bigger the footprint. Okay, so another thing here is like these data centers and all of these computers, they need to stay cool, they need to be cooled down. So many of them are using like water cooling systems, which means that AI is also consuming a lot of fresh water. Most of this energy still comes from non renewable sources. So AI does actually have a noticeable carbon footprint. Now, of course, tech companies are working behind the scenes to shift to renewable energy, but we're not actually there yet. Now, I don't say all of this to put you off using it. I just want to remind us to be intentional and aware of our usage and how we're using it. So if you can use AI to lighten your load, to save time or reduce stress, fantastic. Like, I truly believe it is an incredible tool. It has given me hours of time back and reduced my own cognitive load hugely. It helps with my executive function hugely. But again, it's not an unlimited resource. We just want to be using it wisely at this stage and not outsourcing every single tiny little decision. And I must admit, since doing my own research on the environmental impact, I have been using it less and less to reply to emails, especially short ones that I really don't need to use it for. Okay? I've just been a little more mindful. So I'm now going to share with you some of the other fun AI tools that have been very useful. The first one, which is really pretty big in the ADHD and neurodivergent community at the moment, is something called Goblin Tools. Okay? Goblin Tools. Now, this can break down overwhelming tasks into small steps. It can help you prioritize. It can take estimates of how Long things take. I love when you look, when you go into it and you open it up and it's got these. These cute little, like, graphics of different images. And it will give you, I think, about maybe 10 different ways that it could help you, like, prioritizing, estimating how long things will take, coming up with a to do list, breaking tasks down like it gives. It's very much designed for the ADH brain in mind, Literally built for neurodivergent brains. It's simple, playful, and it does the executive function. Heavy lifting for you. Right, so again, that's Goblin Tools. Now, if you want to get a quick little recap on what I share in this episode today, and links to all of the things I recommend, including the prompts that I shared with you, these other useful AI tools, this is one of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, I think I'm going to share with you. You can head to navigatingadultadhd.com cheat cheat sheet. Okay, so navigating adult adhd.com cheat sheet, and you can get a free recap, links to all of these cool AI tools, the prompts I shared with you, all of the things. Okay, again, I'll link it in the show notes. Wherever you're listening, you can click a little button. Okay, the next one, and this is one I use quite a lot, is Otter AI. Now, Fathom is another version of this. Okay, so what this does is it can record audio, right? Like this podcast right here. It can record it, or I can give it this podcast audio, and it will literally transcribe it word for word. So you can do that with lectures, you can do that with any audio, any meetings that you've been in, if you need to take meeting notes. And it can literally summarize key points for you as well. This is so helpful and saves so much time. There's no more scrambling to take notes, forgetting what was said, what action items need to be you know, done, et cetera. It does it all for you and very fast, too. So again, Otter AI is the one that I use, and I pay for that. You can get a certain amount for free, but because I go over that, I pay for it. And Fathom is another one Grammarly. Grammarly is the third one here on my list. All right, so if you're somebody like me who, you know, if you have dyslexia. Oh, my gosh. Fantastic, right? And I definitely have some of that happening. I have difficulty with spelling sometimes. The tone I'm trying to get across with grammar, like, does this Have a comma? Does it have an apostrophe? Oh my God, I can get so lost in all of that. And Grammarly is fantastic at doing that. It's suggesting clearer, kinder or more professional wording. It is so good. It takes the stress out of writing, right? Whether it's an email that you've got to send to your boss, a school essay, or even a text message, it can be so useful. So that's Grammarly. You can check it out for free. Many of these you have to pay for like the upgraded version or like regular use, but you can use Grammarly and check it out for free to start with. Now, I'm not affiliated to any of these by the way. These are just things that I love and I think are very helpful for ADHD brains. My newest two that I am loving, the first one is Whisper Flow and that's Wisp R Wisp r Flow. So this is a voice first AI app. You literally talk to it and it turns your spoken thoughts into text messages, into lists, into emails or actions, steps. And the more you use it, the better it gets to know you. So I literally had it send a text to my partner this morning saying on my way home now, xx kissy face emoji, tried to break into a lady's car, have stories to tell you, and it literally got it perfect word for word, sent it to her to him, tended to my partner, right? I've been using it. I was already using like in the notes app of my phone. I was using the voice, the like, the voice to text thing in there. But this is way more accurate and it gets to know you and the things that you like to use, the type of, you know, whether it be bullet points or lists or you know, emojis, etc. And so I have found this to be way more accurate and a lot better than just using the like voice voice to text feature on my iPhone or other devices. Again, it's totally free or at least I've been using it for a while now and I haven't paid for it and I find it really helpful. Like no typing needed. Perfect if you're somebody who thinks out loud, right. If you get your ideas while out walking, cooking, driving, or struggle to sit down and write, which is so me, right? I found this to be so helpful. It like captures your thoughts before they fly away. Yeah, I'm loving it. So, so loving it. So that is Whisper Flow. Next one is Consensus. This one I have only recently been introduced to and I am really loving it because it is a search engine which is totally powered by AI, but it scans specific scientific papers, research and pulls out evidence based answers instead of like random Internet options. Okay. So it'll cut through like the overwhelm of Google the rabbit holes you go down. It gives you like a straight research back information in plain language. So I love this. I played with it a little more yesterday. Like I have found it so helpful for getting accurate up to date ADHD related studies. Right. So good. But I played with it yesterday and I asked it about doing a ketogenic diet for a woman who is age 39 and the impact it could have on hormones because I had tried fasting a few years ago and I felt amazing. When I was fasting, however, it impacted my hormones in a negative way and I felt pretty terrible and got really anxious and all of these things. And so I was curious about like ketogenic diet because I know mentally there are a lot of benefits and I was curious about is there any research out there about the impact that it can have both negatively or positively on a woman's hormones if they're in perimenopause. So I asked it this question and basically it came back and said there are no studies specifically targeting that. These are some ones kind of around that. So there was a study on people with pcos, polycystic ovary syndrome, there was a study on that and the impact of the ketogenic diet which showed positive results but there was nothing it it specific to my question. However, it was so good I didn't have to research it, I didn't have to go down, you know, rabbit holes. And I was a little unsure about what ChatGPT would say in that realm. I didn't actually ask it, but that would be interesting to kind of compare them. But I love with consensus it's just giving you this straight answer based on and it makes it super simple. Like it breaks it down very simply for you and then it links to all of the, the relevant research and the articles for you. It just gives it very plain. So if you're somebody like me who loves the science and the research, consensus is a game changer, my friend. Okay? Now, AI tools like ChatGPT, they're not magic, but they can feel like a bit of magic when you're stuck, when you're overwhelmed, or you're just needing a bit of extra functioning support in your pocket. Okay? So whether it's something like breaking down a big scary task, planning your day, drafting that tricky email, or even just helping you to brainstorm ideas for your weekend. It is here to help lighten the load. Okay, now remember, it's not about outsourcing your whole life to AI, obviously, like, keep in mind privacy. But it's about using it as a assistant, as support, right? So that your brain really does get the support that it needs without losing your spark. So, my friend, here is my challenge for this week. I invite you to open ChatGPT and if you haven't already had one of the prompts that I shared with you today, right, you can grab the link in the episode notes to get them all. Start small, see how it feels, and just play with it, okay? Progress beats perfection every single time. It's not about asking the correct thing the right prompt. Word vomit. I love me a word vomit. Just word vomit, right? The learning is in the doing when it comes to using AI. All right, my friend, if you have found this episode helpful, I invite you to share it with a fellow ADHDer who might need a little extra support. Huge, huge love. Take care. I'll speak to you soon. Hey, friend, if you want some more help navigating and thriving with ADHD and some help applying everything that you're learning here on the podcast, then head over to our website, navigating adultadhd.com.