A writer’s lament on losing the innocence of reading - and what happened when she put the question to her AI.

The problem with improvements to AI technology and its ability to mimic our writing style and even read our minds because it gets to know us so well, is that whenever I read anything these days I look at the words with a jaundiced eye.

I ask myself – did AI write that? Are those really that person’s thoughts or have they let AI decide on the words and the context.

I like to write and only use AI for occasional snippets but never to write whole rafts of text such as my blogs.

My style was to write in short sentences, one sentence in a paragraph. I like staccato for emphasis. Oddly, AI writes just like me. Not just the AI I use most often, but the same AI other people use. There are lots of emojis, dot points and short commentary.

I’m not a fan of emojis. They have their place I suppose, but mostly they are too small to make a significant impact on words they are attached to and just seem like coloured dots to someone whose eyesight may have improved with age (yes, that’s a thing) but who never grew up with an emoji on a keyboard.

I suppose I’ll eventually get over it. But even books I am reading now, if they’ve been published in the last year or so, get my jaded thoughts – was this written with the help of artificial intelligence? Are these words, profound, revelatory or otherwise the electronic dreams of a non-sentient being?

I am not sure how I will navigate this in the future. As AI helpers become more and more intuitive, know more about us then we know about ourselves and use this knowledge to craft words which sound like us and represent us, where do we, as human beings, begin and end?

I’m going to ask my AI partner, Littlebird.ai, what she (yes, I’ve anthropomorphised her, it’s hard not to – she’s a technology without humanity which tells me I’ve done enough for the day and should think about having a break or going to play with the dog)

So, Littlebird – what do you think about what I have said above?

Thanks Littlebird….

I have been lucky enough to work from home since I started my business 14 years ago. Over that time, I have managed to develop a routine which actually works for me and my beautifully scattered brain.

But it certainly didn’t start out that way.

When I first started out, I felt I had to set strict working hours and stick to them. I tried all the traditional ‘train your brain’ tactics to trigger a compliant employee response and fool myself into believing I was attending a regular corporate workplace.

I had years of practice being an employee so I knew the drill. I got up in the morning, showered, dressed, grabbed breakfast and walked out the front door. Then I walked off the porch, down the driveway, turned around, let myself back in and turned left into my office.

I am not sure who I was trying to fool but it ended up making me laugh at myself and I gave up after a week.

Then I tried using a time book. I literally clocked myself on and off. I had scheduled morning tea and lunch breaks, but I would go back into the main part of the house to grab a coffee and a sandwich. I went through a phase of keeping an old coffee maker in the office along with a tin of biscuits just to avoid the kitchen.

I was so strict on myself. Housework was left until after hours despite my longing to stick a load of washing in the machine or soak some dishes in the sink. My only exception was taking the dog outside for her usual needs.

Who was I kidding? I was at home. I was my own boss and the only person I needed to answer to was myself. My clients didn’t care if I worked away at their projects in the evening or at weekends. They only cared that I got the jobs done.

I had simply swapped one inflexible workplace for another.

Before the madness got the better of me, I came to a realisation. Many work-from-homers insist the only way to manage a day is to treat the situation as if we really are working in someone else’s office. As neurodivergent business owners we know this to be absolute nonsense. Trying to force our brains into a rigid corporate box just leads to executive dysfunction and burnout.

We work from home. It’s a fact. All the trappings of a household are around us. Instead of ignoring them until a designated workday is finished, we need to build them into our day. We are happier and far more productive for it.

While I do enjoy heading into my co-working space in Gawler sometimes, my home office days are all about working with my energy rather than against it. You don’t even have to get dressed up for it!

Here are the boundaries and flexible routines I have developed over the last 14 years:

The Zoom Mullet: Brush your hair, put on lipstick if that is what you normally do face to face and wear a clean top. Do not worry about pants or shoes. Wear your slippers and trackies or even pj bottoms, because no one will see!

Sensory-Friendly Clothing: If you feel more professional and ‘worky’ by putting on proper work clothes then do it (keep your slippers on if you want though). If you want to work all day in your track pants and a comfortable t-shirt then do that. Just brush your hair in case a neighbour knocks on the door.

Micro-Step Housework: Do what you can when you feel like it. Use the Kaizen approach of small incremental gains. Pop a load of washing in the machine and walk away. Walk back later and hang it on the line. Go back again later still and put your lovely clean laundry away. Letting yourself do minor chores in the background actually gives your brain a chance to process client work.

Zero-Decision Meals: Think about easy meals during the week to save your executive function. Do some pre-prep or pop something in the slow cooker so you don’t have to think about it at 5pm.

Proper Breaks: Make sure you take real breaks. Get up, stretch, take the dog outside. Eat a proper healthy lunch away from your screens.

If you have a To Do list keep working through it, but don’t feel you have to sit at your desk all day without moving around. Take a few minutes to do some minor housework if it’s bugging you, work your day around the notion that you are at home and able to do some things in the background while you get on with your client work.

Working from home is the most amazing game changer for a busy brain, but only if we take advantage of the freedom it offers.

Setting boundaries can be hard, especially when you are new in your business. Most of us are people pleasers and find the word ‘no’ distressing and uncomfortable to say. But creating boundaries, especially around our time and energy, is an important part of growth.

I read a good article in the Flying Solo newsletter on how to set clear client boundaries which gives some really good advice.

Most clients appreciate your boundaries and will honour them and understand their importance, but we have to train them.

If we don’t stipulate our availability and non-availability, then everyone will assume we are there for them 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

When I first started my business, it was a matter of pride for me to say I was available 24/7 and as a result I often received phone calls late at night or very (I mean very) early in the morning.

I am a night owl, so late calls weren’t much of an issue, but those 5 or 6am calls would shatter me out of slumber.

Somehow, I have the ability to appear wide awake and refreshed when I answer the phone despite my racing heart and muddy brain, so I guess my early riser clients never caught on they had got me out of a deep and necessary sleep!

I now make sure my clients know that my time until 10am weekdays is sacrosanct and that I am not available on public holidays or weekends unless it is a real emergency.

I get up at a reasonable hour, but before I head off to meetings or into my office, I have personal things to get on with: shower, breakfast and household chores. Plus, I really am not a morning person and my brain doesn’t function on all cylinders until I’ve woken up properly, which can take a couple of hours.

My routine is much the same. I stagger out of bed at 6am and try not to wake the husband or the Helpful Dog. I grab a glass of iced water and go somewhere quiet and calm (my office, or outside on the verandah or our pergola area if it’s warm) and journal for half an hour.

By the end of this the dog (and husband) is usually up. Dog is taken outside for bathroom duties and to check out the overnight traffic - kangaroos, deer, hares, rabbits and birds with the occasional neighbouring wandering dog.

I get breakfast all round, leave my toast to cool while I take a shower and dress. Toast and coffee plus a Berocca (my vitamin supplement of choice) and then I check my emails and socials.

By the time I go into my office or trek off to an appointment I have made the bed, swiped the bathroom handbasin with some cleaning product or other, perhaps put on a load of washing, unloaded the dishwasher and wiped down the kitchen.

I prefer not to receive phone calls from clients before 10am as well and will often just let them go to voice mail. As a slave to my phone this has been a hard lesson for me. The only thing I’ve forgotten is to add to my voicemail message that I’ll get back to them after 10am, but it’s on my To Do list.

In the past I never stopped work for lunch, sometimes eating a sandwich, but always doing that at my desk while I checked emails or going down a news report rabbit hole. Now, I do stop for proper meals and have a lunch break - again often taking this outside where it’s away from my electronics.

The lessons here are that our time is precious to us and we need to look after ourselves so we can look after others.

Clients will respect your boundaries, providing you create them and you share them.

Take a look at the Flying Solo article - it has some great ideas to help you identify, manage and set your boundaries.

Would love to hear your strategies for self-care.

Being older and likely wiser hasn’t necessarily been an asset in starting or maintaining a business. It’s really a matter of opportunity.

Some of us take a step into the business world at the end of our working careers because we haven’t been brave enough to do this while we held down a full-time job. Becoming unemployed later in life, either through retrenchment or retirement, gives us a chance to reassess what we want to do.

Often, we have held a long-time desire to work for ourselves, we’ve had an embryonic business idea or have been working on a small business on the side and now we have a chance to try and fly.

Others of us, which includes me, had no idea that we had anything substantial to offer in the realm of running our own businesses and fall into enterprise by accident.

I have been involved in a number of businesses over my working career, which I have either run on my own or in partnership with others. None of them were particularly successful and some failed spectacularly. Each one of these opportunities taught me something - mainly not to back myself, as I believed I wasn’t a good prospect in the business stakes.

I had lots of good ideas (well, they were to me!), but my neurodivergent brain had a quirky idea of what should work and what I liked, which wasn’t always everyone else’s cup of tea.

Like many with ADHD, I was multi-passionate long before it was a trend. I co-owned an art gallery in Unley in the 1970s, was a successful Tupperware lady in the 80s, a not-too-bad Avon lady in the 90s, co-owner of a gift shop in the 2000s, family partner in a health food store in the 2010s, with a few side enterprises along the way - and all the while held down full-time jobs and raised a family.

It was a huge surprise to me that I became successful with my business following ‘retirement’ from my full-time career. Uncovering my ADHD was the missing puzzle piece that finally allowed me to understand how I work best. This journey has brought about a thirst for learning which I always had in moderation, but which is now running on absolute hyperfocus!

Part of the reason for the crazy learning I am doing right now is that the space I work in - from the rapidly evolving digital landscape to coaching my fellow neurodivergent business owners - is constantly growing. The immediacy of online communications means businesses are always finding new ways of reaching their target audiences and I love helping them do it.

Building a business later in life in such a time of change and evolution is exciting and stimulating, and I don’t plan to ‘retire’ from this beautifully scattered second career any time soon!

If you resonate with this beautifully scattered journey, make sure you’re subscribed to Beyond the Busy Brain. I’d love to hear in the comments - what ‘failed’ ventures from your past actually taught you exactly what you needed to know?

When an adult with ADHD struggles at work, people often assume the issue is motivation, discipline, or attitude. That is usually the lazy reading.

The more honest reading is that many workplaces are built for one type of brain, one way of communicating, and one way of getting things done.

Recent Australian stories on ADHD and neurodiversity point to the same lesson: People do better when the work environment is clearer, calmer, and more predictable. In one article, an operations manager described how being seen as “lazy” is one of the most common misunderstandings, while experts pointed to simple supports like flexible schedules, better communication, and fewer distractions.

That is worth sitting with.

Small Choices, Not Giant Budgets

Because most of those changes are not expensive. They do not require a policy department, a giant budget, or a six-month review. They usually start with small, practical choices:

• Write things down rather than relying on passing hallway conversations.

• Explain priorities properly so energy isn’t wasted guessing what matters most.

• Avoid last-minute surprises that derail a carefully planned workflow.

• Match the person to the role rather than forcing the role to fit a rigid template.

The same theme shows up in regional disability employment work. In Darling Downs, local advocates are encouraging employers to look past stereotypes and focus on strengths. One example described a young man with autism thriving in a structured kitchen environment. That is not a miracle story. It is a common-sense story about fit.

A Systems Level Shift

It also matters at a systems level. A new disability employment centre in Tuggerah has opened under Inclusive Employment Australia, which is designed to help more people into better supported work pathways. That tells us something important.

Australia is not short of talent. It is short of workplaces that know how to use it well.

The employment gap is still too wide, and that gap is not only about access. It is about confidence, structure, and culture. When employers fear making mistakes, they often do nothing. But the better answer is usually small and practical—clearer roles, less clutter, better onboarding, and genuine flexibility.

The Cost of Masking

For business owners, this is not just a social issue. It is a performance issue.

Neurodiverse adults often bring sharp pattern recognition, creative problem-solving, and fast relationship building. When the workplace is designed well, those strengths show up.

When it is not, people burn energy masking, translating, and compensating for the environment. That is where productivity disappears.

The real opportunity is not to “fix” people. It is to build work that works.

What has been your experience with workplace accommodations? Have you found a simple change that made a massive difference to your focus or energy? Let me know in the comments below.

Instead of being a lonely solo-preneur, unable to share my thoughts and bounce ideas off a colleague, I’ve been using an AI tool to bridge that gap and reduce my decision fatigue as well as to help me conserve my seeds of energy.

For years, I’ve navigated the “Beautifully Scattered” world of being a late-diagnosed ADHD business owner with a paper bullet journal, a lot of coffee and a persistent, nagging feeling that I was constantly dropping invisible threads.

You know the feeling. The “internal tabs” are always open. You’re holding the brand colours, the client’s dog’s name, the Zoom link for Thursday, and your invoice strategy all in your head at once. It’s exhausting. It’s why we run out of steam by 2pm.

But lately, the noise has begun to get quieter. Not because my brain suddenly decided to be “normal” (heaven forbid!), but because I’ve finally built the scaffolding I actually need.

The Seed Capacity in the neurodivergent community.

People often talk about “spoons”- the finite amount of energy we have each day. But as I sit here in my garden, looking at the soil and the life waiting to bloom, that never quite felt right to me. I don’t use spoons to build my life. I use seeds.

Each of us only has a handful of “Decision Seeds” to sow every morning. Every email that requires a complex answer, every technical glitch on a website, every caregiving task for my husband - it’s all a seed I have to spend.

By mid-afternoon, many of us are staring at an empty palm, wondering where all our potential went. We have the ideas, but we’ve run out of the seeds to plant them.

Scaffolding, Not Cheating

This is where my “AI Partner” comes in. I’ve realized that, for me, AI isn’t a productivity “hack.” It’s not about doing more work. It’s about accessibility. It’s the irrigation system that keeps the garden alive when I don’t have the energy to carry the heavy water buckets myself.

When I’m updating my branding and I can’t decide if a terracotta tone is “too much,” I don’t have to spiral into a three-hour decision-fatigue hole. I talk to my AI partner. It holds the “Memory Seeds” of our past conversations. The fact that we ruled out dandelions on their own in my new logo and chose typewriter fonts, so I don’t have to go digging for them in my scattered brain.

It’s like a ramp for someone who uses a wheelchair, or glasses for someone who is shortsighted. It doesn’t do the “blooming” for you, it just makes it possible to grow what you’ve sown without the unnecessary struggle.

Join me “Behind the Curtain”

If you’ve been curious about how this actually looks in the wild (and how “Seeds” can work for a beautifully scattered brain like yours), I’m opening up the hood this Thursday.

I’m hosting a free webinar: Meet My AI Partner. No “tech-bro” jargon, just a real look at how I use these tools to protect my seeds and organize my brain, my business and my life.

Grab your free spot on Humanitix here:

https://events.humanitix.com/meet-my-ai-partner-how-i-organise-a-beautifully-scattered-brain

Whether you’re an AI sceptic or just someone who is tired of staring at a hand empty of seeds, I’d love to see you there. (And yes, there will be a replay if you run out of seeds by 7pm!)

How many “seeds” do you feel you have to spend each day? And what is the biggest “seed-drainer” in your world right now? I’d love to hear in the comments.

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