159. AI for a Hijacked Day: 5 Ways I Use It (Without Spiraling)

When my day gets hijacked (sick kid, surprise meeting, total schedule chaos), the hardest part isn’t “fixing the calendar.” It’s the executive-function load of holding everything in my head while I try to make decisions, communicate clearly, and not melt down. 

In this episode, I walk you through the 5 concrete ways I use AI as executive-function scaffolding on a hijacked day so I can externalize the chaos, clarify what actually matters, and sequence my next steps without getting stuck in analysis paralysis. 

In This Episode, You’ll Learn: 

• The 3 roles AI plays for me on chaotic days: externalize, clarify, sequence
• How I use a voice-memo brain dump + AI summary to get the mess out of my head fast
• How I ask for a “minimum viable” definition of done when I’m operating at 20% capacity 
• How I use AI to generate 2–3 decision options 
• How I use AI to draft clear reschedule messages (and avoid over-explaining) 

Resources Mentioned:

Ep. 157. Scheduling Curveballs (Without the Mom Guilt)

Ep. 158. Rescheduling Isn’t “Just Moving Things”: It’s an Executive Function Nightmare

To find out how I can help you improve your work-life balance, click here.

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Learn more about Theresa Harp Coaching here.

Transcript

Hello, podcast listeners. Welcome back to the show. This is an episode, I don't know actually if it's going, which number it's going to be, 159 or 160. I'm sort of batch recording and then arranging things. But regardless of which number it is, I do know that the topic is about how I use AI when my day gets hijacked, when the schedule just goes to , pardon my French, right? So if you have been following along, you might have listened to a couple of episodes prior where I was talking about a day that my schedule just went up in flames. And in, I think it was episode 157, I talked about how I coached myself through that. Episode 158 was about why reschedule. is so taxing. It kind of broke it down through an executive functioning lens. And today is about how I use AI or used AI in that instance to reduce the cognitive load when it was happening. So if you are somebody who often gets sort of surprise schedule snafus, if you will, right? A sick kid, a snow day, a meeting you didn't know about, you're not feeling 100%, like whatever the circumstances. I know that we go through this so, so often, right? And for many of us, it can be, it can send us into a tailspin, right? So if that is you, and you want some practical support, and you want to reduce the mental clutter, then this episode is for you, okay? This episode is not for you if you are anti-AI. If you are totally against AI and you have no interest, or maybe you're not against it, but you have zero interest or desire to ever use any AI tool, that's sort of like saying you're never going to use the internet, by the way, just saying. But if that's you, that's fine. No judgment. It's just you can skip through this episode and move on, okay? Because this will not be very helpful. All right? I also want to let you know, or what I should say is, I am going to sort of walk you through the three major categories, the three major roles that AI serves, you know, how it helps me. Number one, externalizing. information. Number two, clarifying that information. And then number three, sequencing it. Okay. So I'm going to kind of walk you through how AI helps me with each one of those. Now, this is very specific to restructuring your day. However, a lot of what I talk about today could be applied in other contexts. Okay. So I'm talking about it through the lens of a scheduling snafu, if you will. But you can use the same sort of concepts and use AI in similar ways for other challenges that might come up for you, you know, depending upon what your work and personal life situation is. Okay. And then the last thing I'm going to say before I start talking you through this is that it's not about I'm going to talk about AI, but I'm not going to give you a whole bunch of information about different AI platforms and how to create a, you know, effective prompt for AI. Like, none of that. That is something totally separate. Might be worthwhile to do an episode on that at another point in time. But this is very much like, hey, here are like some really concrete, specific ways I use AI to support me. And you might want to try some of these, too. OK. All right. So I told you that I essentially used AI for three roles, externalizing the information, clarifying it, and then helping me sequence my actions. OK, now I'm going to tell you what exactly I did when my day went awry. OK, and just. And I don't know if it's helpful for context. Basically, I had a full day, a full work day planned out with sessions and then admin stuff like, you know, coaching calls, whatever. But sick kid had to cancel them all and reschedule and move them around. OK, so that was what I was doing. All right. So the first thing that I did, and I do this for so in so many other contexts because I am a verbal processor, is a voice memo brain dump. If you know me, you know I love a good brain dump. I've talked about brain dumps all the time. I think about brain dumps or I will execute a brain dump in two different ways, both ways. I find both valuable. One, I will actually sit down and write. And then number two, I can do a voice brain dump, like voice vomit. OK, that's what I did in this situation. I basically went on my phone, did a did a voice. You could also do this within AI tools, like if you used if you use a tool like ChatGPT or Claude or Gemini, you know, you could probably for many of those platforms, you can just do this right within the platform itself. But basically the point here being capturing that information in a way that is simple, quick and and doesn't require you to, you know, jump through a lot of hoops in order to do it. OK, so like imagine you are working on the go or maybe in this case, I was working from the couch with a kid with a stomach bug. Right. So not really the scenario where you can like sit down at your computer and set up your workspace and open up the right programs. Right. No, no, no, no. That is not what this scenario was. This was me holding a throw up bucket in one hand. Sorry for the graphic description. And then holding my phone in the other hand and having my headphones in and voice recording. OK, so basically what I did was I recorded a messy voice memo. Right. And then I pasted that transcript into AI and I asked it for a summary. And I said, OK, tell me. What is the real problem here and what are the decisions that I need to make? OK, so there are lots of ways that you could, you know, refine this step of the process, depending upon how comfortable and familiar you are with AI. But one sort of simple generic way that would basically work for any AI platform would be take this voice memo transcript and. Summarize it in five bullet points and then tell me what are the three decisions that I need to make right now, okay? Or tell me, like, what are the three next decisions? What are my three next steps? Something like that, okay? So that's what I did. I was like, okay, I got to cancel or reschedule. These are the coaching clients I need to reschedule. These are the meetings I need to reschedule. You know, gave it all out of my brain. Into AI and had AI do the organization and synthesis for me. Then what happens is when I start to execute on the next steps, I, as someone with ADHD, as someone who is a high achiever or perfectionist, I've got those tendencies. I could think and rethink. And over... Analyze forever, right? And so I used AI to help me avoid doing that. So I said to my AI bot, give me a minimum viable product. My clients know, we talk about this all the time, the MVP, which is a little counterintuitive, minimum viable product. The lowest, simplest level, like quality of a product that can be considered done, that just gets it out there into the world. Okay? Like this is not where we are like creating something, refining it, improving it, analyzing it, formatting. No, no, no, no, no. This is like, take this, give me the simplest, messy, good enough version and let me go. Okay? So here is a prompt that you could use if you were looking for... If you were looking to sort of implement this in your own work life or maybe home life, I would ask AI, okay, now that we have these steps, tell me what does done look like for these steps? If I only have 20% capacity today, give me the smallest acceptable version or give me a very low level definition of done. So then it just takes what in my head seems like a really big, messy, complicated thing and spits it back out in simple, doable steps. Okay, so now I have solved for my tendency to overwork, overperform, overanalyze, perfect. Okay. All right. So thanks, AI. I've got these steps. Now tell me what does done look like for these steps? What is the bare minimum that I need to do? What is the simplest or smallest acceptable version, right? There's lots of different ways that you could word it, but hopefully you get the idea. And again, as I said before, this is something that I used it in the context of rescheduling my day, but you can use this in lots of different contexts, right? Imagine if you have a report that you're trying to write or maybe a Facebook post or does anyone else use Facebook? I'm old. Like a social media post that you're trying to create, right? And it's something that you know you could overthink or get lost in. You can ask AI to give you a definition of done, right? Or maybe you have a big project that you're working on and you want to break it up into smaller chunks, asking AI to help. You do that and to give you a very clear stopping point for those steps. Okay, the third thing that I had AI support me with was, and now we're at the, we're still in the clarification section of this, or clarification category, if you will, of this process is to basically identify what decisions I need to make and support me with making those decisions easily. Because if you are a human with a human brain who has ever been in a busy or chaotic environment, or even not, even in just regular day-to-day stuff, we get stuck and hit with decision fatigue, right? Especially on a hijack day. There were like. 30 micro decisions that I was thinking through. And that's kind of what I was brain dumping in my initial verbal brain dump was like, you know, while I could offer this client these days, but then that means I'd have to move this around or, you know, should I offer them times that I know they generally can't do, even though it's the only time I can do and I want them to know that I'm offering, you know, that I'm that I'm trying to give them options and blah, blah, blah. Right. So it's like all these things. So we're going to get to in another episode, by the way, how to work through some of that overanalyzing when it comes to wording your messages. But that is in another episode. For right now, though, I then had AI generate two max three options to help me choose and make decisions. Okay, AI. Give me three options for how I can approach this day, one option that protects my deadlines, one option that protects my rest and family time, and then one option that really protects the client's experience, that protects my coaching clients' needs and their experience, right? And so for each one, just let me know if I was going to do it this way, here's how I'm going to operate, right? Here's what I would do. What do I move? What do I keep? What do I drop? Okay. Now, move number four with AI. And I mentioned this a minute ago, email wording. Okay. So again, this is going to be its own podcast episode. So just keep in mind if you are somebody who struggles with how to word things. How to word an email, how to word a text message, how to word a... You fill in the blanks, right? You know who you are. Stay tuned because I've got an episode that talks and does a deep dive about that topic. But for the purposes of this topic and specifically how AI helps me, because I know that that is a time suck, right? Email wording or message wording is I used AI to support me with crafting the message, right? So I would say, okay, based on these decisions, here's what I wanted, you know, these options that you offered me, here's what I want to do. Now I want you to draft the email to this client and here's what I want you to say. And then take that message and... And clean it up so that it's clear and coherent and organized and still sounds like me. Okay? And I love, by the way, this is one of the reasons why I love using the voice option with AI. Because it hears your voice. It hears your words, your tone, the way that you speak. And it can learn from that. I mean, certain AI models for sure. Again, I don't know. There's lots of AI options out there. But the tools that I use, the AI tools that I use, I love to use that voice dictate option because of that. Because then I know that I have found that the results, the output that AI generates are me. They sound like me. They are in my wording, my vocabulary, my style, my tone. Okay? So I have found. And that to be very helpful. But I might also give AI some direction here, okay? So I might say something like, write a short reschedule message that's friendly, kind, and direct. No over-explaining, no apologies that are unnecessary. And give them a very simple call to action with two options that they can choose for a rescheduled session. And then you could even say, give me three different versions of this message. A warm version, a neutral version, and a very direct version, okay? And then I would read through what those options are and choose one. Now, I'm giving you, like, lots of, you know, I don't, I don't do, go to this level of. So I have found that to be helpful. Give me the warm version. Give me the direct version. Give me the classic Teresa. Teresa Harp. It's a vocabulary version or something like that. Right? And there you go. It gives me that message. I can tweak it as needed and send it out. Okay? And then the fifth way that I will use AI in a situation like this is to give me a revised to-do list or a revised Plan with my new tasks or my new activities and things that I have to do based on the change in my schedule. So I would say to AI, okay, now that you have this information about my day, look at my calendar or look at my list of what was on the schedule for today for non-client facing time and tell me which ones are priorities for today, if any, and which ones can wait. Right. So a simple prompt. I know that was kind of messy, but here's maybe a more clear, coherent prompt. Here's everything on my plate. And for me, I use AI like in my planning and platforms as my like dashboard for work. So it knows. What I'm doing that day. It knows what's on my plate. You might not be in that. You might not be in that category. And that's OK. You can give them your verbal brain dump. You can take a picture of your of your list. Right. You can type in some of the things that were on your list, whatever, however it works and makes sense for you. But I would say to AI, here's everything on my plate. Sort it into what absolutely has to get done today. What could get moved to later in the week. What I can delete and what I can delegate. Right. Then give me the next action. The one next action for each must do task for today. Make sure it's realistic for the scenario that I'm in of a sick kid and I'm working from home. OK. OK. And so I talk. to AI and have, and I direct it in what I want it to do for me. Okay. And then once I get those responses back, I can give some more feedback. I can, you know, adjust as needed and essentially work together with AI to give me a final output that feels like a really realistic and aligned fit for me and my business and my family. Okay. Now I want to offer a couple of thoughts here about AI and ADHD. Okay. I mentioned ADHD a few times in this episode. And if you listen to this podcast before, or you're in the Work-Life Balance for Speech Pathologists Facebook group, then channel You know, a lot of the content that I create, a lot of the work that I do with the women who I coach is around supporting a neurodivergent brain. Like what do we need to do differently or tweak because of the ADHD, right? And I could do a whole episode on ADHD and AI. In fact, maybe I will at some point, okay? But a few little things that I feel like I have to mention here in this episode, otherwise I might be setting you up for failure, are the following. Number one, AI is a goldmine for hyperfocus and rabbit holes. So if you are somebody who struggles with executive functioning skills, you're, And maybe you have some, for example, time blindness, have trouble starting or ending tasks, transitioning from something that's fun and creative into something that's less fun or creative, AI can be your downfall. OK, so a few things that I have found to be very helpful when it comes to using AI as somebody with ADHD is number one, setting timers like I will put a timer on in multiple places when that timer goes off in 10 minutes. I need to come out of that rabbit hole no matter what, like I need to check, see where I'm at and take an action step, because otherwise I could go, I could get lost for sure. I could go down lots of different. I also use, I tweak my prompts, I tweak my messaging to AI so that it understands how my executive functioning breaks down and it gives me responses that set my neurodivergent brain up for success. So instead of giving me a three-page outline of my day with every detail listed, I need to know what is the one next step. Tell me the one next step in simple, clear language, right? Or tell me how to, you know, what's the starting point and end point for this task, right? So I'm crafting my prompts and my information. so that it understands where my executive functioning breakdowns happen, and it can give me responses that are going to be the most supportive for my neurotype. This is the stuff that I have learned that has been so helpful with making AI work for me. And this is the stuff that I love helping my coaching clients do, whether it's in the way that they use AI or in the way that they approach their work life or their home life. Because let's face it, ADHD is going to play a role in just about everything that you do. And that's not necessarily a problem, okay? It just is. It just is what it is. And so I love to help my clients figure out what role is ADHD playing here? What are some of the little traps where you might get stuck? How can we look out for them and how can we adjust as needed, right? So this is hopefully an example of a few things that... you can do specifically within your use of AI so that you don't get stuck or lost within it. And it actually is something that is useful and helpful, not just another time suck. Okay? All right. So to wrap up, I have shown you today some of the ways that I have used AI to support me, specifically with when my day, or my plan for my day rather, goes awry, what to do. I've walked you through how AI can help me to extract ideas and thoughts, how AI can help me organize those thoughts, and how AI can support me in executing in clear action. So that I'm not. Stuck in analysis paralysis and I'm able to move through what I need to move through in my work buckets so that I can focus on what matters most to me, which is being present there to take care of a sick kid. That was the scenario on this day, but so that I can still show up as mom. I can still show up as the human, the mom, the woman who created this business for this very reason so that I can enjoy and pivot when I need to, right? So I can take the day to take care of my son when he's sick and not feel guilty about it and not panic and stress about what it's going to mean for my work day and feel like I'm letting people down and never going to catch up. Because that is truly, that is the opposite of why I do what I do and that's the opposite of what I help my clients do. So I hope that this was helpful. I also hope that if you are struggling with things like this, you know, schedule changes, neurodivergence, and executive functioning skills, overthinking, that you go back and listen to the past two episodes. And like I said, keep an eye out for the upcoming episode about how to work through wording of your messages so that you can write quick, clear messages to your clients, to your colleagues, whoever it might be, without getting stuck in analysis paralysis. And if you ever want help doing this work for yourself, book a consult. I would be happy to walk you through it. The link is always in the show notes. All right. That's it for today's episode. I hope you guys have a good week and I will talk with you soon.