I drink my whole cup of coffee in the morning now. All of it. Before I even reach for email. And when I go to bed at night – I sleep. I’m not lying there staring at the ceiling running through the list of things I didn’t cross off my to-do list, like I did for decades. I can spend an entire day with my granddaughter and my mind doesn’t drift back to work. I said yes to an art class my daughter invited me to – the kind of thing I would have said no to for twenty years. Every single day looks different now. My feet feel like they’re planted on the ground.
Truth bomb: I have ADHD. I’m not blushing, you’re blushing.
I’m saying it out loud because over half the clients I’ve worked with have told me they suspected the same thing about themselves. Usually when they’re explaining what a typical day looks like. And there’s something very relieving when you hear someone else name the thing you’ve been secretly managing alone. I want to be that for someone today.
Google and Understood.org recently mapped out how AI can help with that. I might have cried a little when I read it. If you want the full guide, it’s worth the read.
Of course my mind still wanders. That hasn’t changed. It wanders in meetings, in the middle of a task, and mid-sentence sometimes. What has changed is the cost. It used to mean twenty minutes gone finding my way back to wherever I was, and another twenty carrying anxiety for the twenty I’d just lost. Now when my mind wanders, I just ask Gemini wherever I am. Same brain. Less cost.
I used to hold my breath when I opened my inbox, or procrastinate it entirely for hours (sometimes days). Missed opportunities. Missed deadlines. My daily briefing fixed that. One notification prioritized, and I’m done deciding what needs me and what doesn’t. No more inbox dread.
And my bookkeeping hat has never fit right. Not because I’m not capable. But because numbers on a page make my eyes roll back. I’d let it pile up and procrastinate that too. Workspace Studio runs it in the background now: invoices filed, expenses tracked, my inbox on autopilot. There’s nothing left to avoid.
I can now sit in meetings and be fully present because Gemini is taking my notes. It sends them to me without me asking. I don’t have to hold two conversations at once anymore – the one in the room and the one in my head… reminding me not to forget anything.
New clients enjoy a premium onboarding experience while I sleep. Consistent, professional, repeatable, with real data. Something I can measure and improve instead of reinvent it every time.
Gemini is now in the rooms I used to dread and put off: the admin console, Google Analytics. Parts of my business that felt painful without a reward. I don’t dread them anymore. And when I need a clean place to think, I’m not falling down the Gmail rabbit hole seven tabs deep. I’m in one window and one conversation at a time.
I’ve burned out twice in twenty-five years of running my own businesses. It wasn’t pretty. Fall down seven times, get back up eight, right? But I want to be very clear about something… because you might hear this and think I’ve found a way to cram even more work in the hours I got back. That was never my goal. I am not interested in getting back on the hamster wheel, just faster this time. Been there, done that. It sucked.
So what do I do with the hours I got back? Put in a garden. From scratch. All of it. Clearing the land, burning the brush, building something with my hands that has nothing to do with a client or receivable. It’s taking a Wednesday off in the middle of a work week to help my daughter move, with a clear conscience. I mean, I haven’t gone soft… It’s not in my DNA. I still get up at 6am. The energy is still there; I just stopped spending it all on work.
I take weekends off now. And Friday afternoons too. That might be the single biggest gift I’ve given myself in twenty-five years of doing this alone. It’s not a reward for finishing the week. It’s just mine. To do the things I was born to do. And I look forward to it the way you look forward to something important to you.
None of this fixed my ADHD. Not a single bit of it. But I have stopped fighting my own mind long enough to build real things. Consistently and on time. If any of this sounds familiar: the tab-switching, the inbox dread, the twenty minutes you lose finding your way back – I’m here to talk about it. My door’s open.
Links:
Google Workspace Blog — “How AI can help make work more neuro-inclusive” — Google Workspace + Understood.org, published July 21, 2026
Understood.org / Google PDF Guide — “A Neurodiversity Guide to Effective Work” — referenced directly inside the blog post above, so the pairing is already Google-sanctioned
