That realisation has forced me to step back and question what constant access to an artificial thinking partner might be costing us.

The Slow AI movement and a documentary about “apocaloptimism” suggest there may be a path between embracing AI uncritically and fearing it completely, and that’s what I talk about here.

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A few months ago, I started noticing something I did not want to admit to myself.

I felt less willing to think without AI.

It was not that I had lost the ability to think independently. But when I needed to develop an idea, structure an argument, make a decision or begin writing, opening ChatGPT or Claude had become second nature.

Why struggle with an idea when AI could organise it for me?

Why sit with the discomfort of not knowing where a thought was going when it could give me a direction in seconds?

Why face a blank page when the page never had to be blank again?

At first, this felt like progress. AI removed friction, helped me work faster and allowed me to do things that might otherwise have remained unfinished.

But thinking has always required friction. It asks us to sit with uncertainty, follow an idea before knowing where it will lead and get things wrong before we begin to understand them.

This made me ponder what else I might be removing when all friction was gone.

This unease has coincided with AI “brain fry” ( which is an actual thing!): The mental exhaustion created by relentless updates, new models and the pressure to keep experimenting.

Beneath the overwhelm was a question I never thought I would ask myself:

Was AI still supporting my thinking, or had it begun to replace too much of it?

When thinking shifts to the machine

As humans, we have always transferred parts of our mental workload to external tools.

We use notebooks to store information, calculators to perform arithmetic and GPS to navigate.

Researchers call this “cognitive offloading”: reducing the demands of a task by relying on something outside our minds.

Generative AI did not invent cognitive offloading. But it has expanded how much of the thinking process can be handed over.

These tools do not simply store information or calculate an answer. They can generate ideas, interpret evidence, construct arguments, recommend decisions and produce language that appears to reflect our own thoughts.

Research into what this means for human cognition is still emerging, and the evidence does not support simplistic claims that AI is “making us stupid”. But it does raise questions about effort, engagement and judgement, and what could happen when those things are taken out of our daily process.

In a 2025 study by Microsoft Research and Carnegie Mellon University, 319 knowledge workers provided 936 examples of using generative AI at work. The researchers found that greater confidence in AI was associated with less critical-thinking effort. When people trusted the tool, they were less likely to question its output.

Critical thinking did not disappear altogether; it shifted. Instead of gathering information, developing an argument or solving a problem themselves, workers increasingly reviewed, verified and integrated answers produced by AI.

That may still require considerable judgement. But supervising an answer is not the same cognitive activity as coming up with the answer yourself; particularly when the answer AI generates for you sounds coherent and confident enough to make you feel like it doesn’t need any probing.

Researchers at the MIT Media Lab explored a different part of the question by asking participants to write essays with an AI assistant, a search engine or no external tools.

Those working without tools displayed the strongest patterns of neural connectivity. Search-engine users showed moderate engagement, while the AI-assisted group showed the weakest. The AI users also reported less ownership of their essays and had more difficulty accurately recalling what they had written - obviously I guess, as the root of the ideas did not come from their own brain.

The MIT study is small, but the questions it raises feel pretty big.

What happens to our memory when we no longer need to retain the information we produce?

What happens to creative ownership when our first draft begins in someone - or something - else’s language?

What happens to our tolerance for uncertainty when an immediate answer is always available?

These concerns are beginning to appear in people’s accounts of their working lives too. In a 2026 survey of technology workers published by Lenny’s Newsletter, respondents described AI as allowing them to produce more work, faster, without necessarily improving its quality. Some felt their focus, judgement and capacity to think deeply were deteriorating even as their output increased.

That contradiction - feeling amplified and diminished at the same time - immediately felt familiar to me.

Knowing when to leave AI alone

It helps explain why I have been drawn to the Slow AI movement.

I am currently reading Sam Illingworth’s book Slow AI: Knowing When to Use AI and When to Leave It Alone. Even the subtitle feels like a necessary correction to the conversation surrounding AI.

Most AI education is focused on adoption. We are taught how to write better prompts, automate more work and introduce AI into an ever-growing number of tasks. Hardly any attention is given to whether AI belongs in a task in the first place.

Slow AI is not an argument for rejecting the technology. It is an argument for developing the judgement to know when it is useful and when it would be better to leave it alone.

That includes introducing a pause between having a question and handing it to a machine. It means considering not only what we gain from speed and automation, but what we may lose when friction disappears.

Friction is not always inefficiency; sometimes it is where the thinking happens.

At the same time, calls to “slow down” can feel detached from the pressures under which people actually work. When employers expect greater output because AI exists, leaving it alone may not feel like a meaningful choice.

For a small business owner without the money to hire support, AI can provide access to capabilities that were previously unaffordable. For someone working outside their strongest language or living with a disability, its assistance can be genuinely empowering.

I know those benefits because I have experienced and taught them.

The choice cannot simply be between using AI and refusing to use it. The more useful question is whether it is extending our ability to think or making deep thought easier to avoid.

The answer is probably that it can do both.

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Beyond optimism and doom

This was the frame of mind in which I watched The AI Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist.

The documentary follows award winning filmmaker Daniel Roher as he prepares to become a father and attempts to understand what the development of increasingly powerful AI could mean for the world his child will inherit - something I think about all the time too.

He speaks to the people building the systems, those warning about their risks and those who believe AI could help create a radically better future.

The film captures the way the public conversation about AI is often presented: as a choice between two camps.

On one side are the optimists: AI will transform healthcare, democratise knowledge, increase productivity and help us solve problems that have previously felt impossible.

On the other are the doomers: AI will eliminate jobs, destabilise society and, in its most extreme form, pose an existential threat to humanity.

For a long time, I knew which camp I belonged to. I was an unequivocal AI optimist. I saw the possibilities before I saw the problems and wanted other people to see them too.

But the more I have learnt - and the more conscious I have become about how AI is changing in my own life - the less comfortable I have become with the suggestion that we must choose one side.

There is a middle ground that is less polarising. Not everyone who criticises AI believes it will cause human extinction. Many are focused on harms already taking place: bias, misinformation, surveillance, labour exploitation, copyright infringement, environmental costs and the concentration of power within a small number of companies.

Likewise, acknowledging those harms does not require us to deny that AI can be useful.

The documentary gives the position between these extremes a name: Apocaloptimism.

Is apocaloptimism enough?

Apocaloptimism appealed to me immediately because it gave language to an uncomfortable position: believing in AI’s profound potential while refusing to look away from its risks.

Some critics have argued that the documentary leans too heavily on speculative existential risks, giving less attention to the more immediate and measurable harms of AI. Others have suggested that it introduces the debate effectively without advancing concrete solutions for how society should respond.

If apocaloptimism means acknowledging both the benefits and risks of AI before continuing as we were, it offers little more than emotional reassurance. It risks becoming a comfortable identity for people who want to remain enthusiastic without confronting what responsible action might require.

But there is a more demanding interpretation. Apocaloptimism can reject the false certainty offered by both extremes:

If AI is inevitably going to solve humanity’s greatest problems, there is little need to question how it is being developed. If it is inevitably going to destroy us, there is little point trying to intervene. Both positions encourage us to believe that the future has already been decided.

A meaningful path between them restores human agency.

It recognises that the outcomes will be shaped by the people building the technology, the companies deploying it, the governments regulating it and all of us deciding how it enters our work and lives. The Collective Intelligence Project is doing some great work advocating for our increased involvement in shaping the future of AI, which will ultimately shape our own future.

Under this interpretation, apocaloptimism is not passive moderation. It is a responsibility to remain involved whilst staying away from both hype and fatalism.

It asks what should be regulated, what should not be automated and who should be accountable when harm occurs.

At an individual level, it asks what we are willing to delegate and which human capabilities we want to protect - even when outsourcing them would be faster and easier.

When your livelihood is connected to the technology

These questions have affected more than my personal use of AI. They have forced me to reconsider my business and what I want my role within this space to be.

For the past few years, I have taught people to use AI to clarify their ideas, communicate their expertise and create work more efficiently. I believed - and still believe - that this is valuable.

But I have found it increasingly difficult to teach people how to use AI without also confronting what our growing reliance on it might be doing to us.

That tension has forced me to take a step back from my business and from what I teach to give myself the chance to think about what path am I walking on.

When your livelihood is connected to a technology, uncertainty like this feels so uncomfortable.

Questioning the thing you are known for can appear to undermine your authority. There is a strong incentive to remain confident, particularly in an industry that rewards certainty, speed and constant enthusiasm for whatever comes next.

But I cannot teach responsible AI use while pretending that my own relationship with it has remained uncomplicated.

A more responsible uncertainty

Taking a step back has not given me a clear answer about my business, my work or what responsible participation in the AI industry should look like.

I am reading. I am paying attention. I am experimenting with using AI later in my process rather than allowing it to generate the first thought - and, honestly, I am finding it SO hard.

I am trying to pay attention to the moments when I reach for it because it is genuinely useful - and then those when I reach for it simply because thinking alone feels harder.

Slow AI is helping me reconsider how I use the technology.

Apocaloptimism is helping me reconsider what I believe about it.

As I process these thoughts, I find that they are giving me permission to ask better questions - and to believe that this uncertainty may be a more responsible position than certainty right now.

Just when I had wrapped my head around Claude Fable 5, OpenAI launched GPT-5.6.

It came with three versions: Sol, Terra and Luna.

Then, last week, Kimi K3 also appeared: A new model from Chinese company called Moonshot AI which is reportedly performing close to - and in some cases better than - some of the most advanced models from OpenAI and Anthropic.

Demand was so high that Moonshot had to temporarily stop accepting new subscriptions because it could not keep up.

And this is only one model.

So far this year, we have seen GPT-5.5 and GPT-5.6. Claude Opus 4.7, Opus 4.8 and Fable 5. Gemini 3.5. Grok 4.3. DeepSeek V4. Kimi 3 and Mira Murati’s Tinker.

And those are just some of the names you may have heard of.

One model tracker counted 55 releases in the past 90 days alone.

That is roughly one new model every two days.

Not every one of these models matters to the average person, of course. Some are highly specialised, and many will disappear without making much impact.

But that is the point.

It is impossible to assess every new tool, understand every new feature and continually reconsider whether the system you are using is still “the best”.

Before you have finished learning one, another has arrived.

Before you have transferred your work into the newest platform, someone on LinkedIn is announcing that it has already been “destroyed” by the next one.

And unless reporting on AI is literally your job, “keeping up” with it is probably the wrong job to give yourself.

Your feed is not the full picture

A stat that provides so much perspective: If you have a paid subscription to an AI tool, you are in 2% of the world’s population.

If you spend time in my corner of the internet, this stat might seem wrong or impossible.

It feels as though everyone is building agents, automating entire businesses and testing every new model the moment it launches.

I work in AI and am constantly feeling paralysis at the moment, I don’t know where to go with it all!

But, as Tayla Burrell points out in her latest newsletter, the people you are comparing yourself with are often software engineers, people whose entire job is AI, entrepreneurs with teams helping them or people who have the time to spend their evenings and weekends experimenting.

That may not be your reality.

You may be doing this alongside a demanding job, running a business, raising children, caring for family or simply trying to have a life away from your screen.

Tayla describes it as “The Great AI Comparison Crisis” - similar to the Instagram highlight reel.

The more AI content you consume, the more you see people doing things that appear completely out of reach. You start to feel further behind, even though the people filling your feed represent a tiny proportion of how most people are actually using AI.

So perhaps you are not nearly as far behind as your feed is making you feel.

Perhaps your problem is not that you need to learn more. Perhaps you need to compare yourself less.

The problem with trying to keep up

I understand the temptation. And the desire to sound smart and “up to speed” at a dinner conversation.

Every launch arrives with new benchmarks and demonstrations of things the previous generation could not do, and the “unprecedented” change we are all going to see that we must “embrace to stay relevant”.

There is always a new feature that could apparently transform the way you work.

So you wonder:

• Should I be using Kimi now?

• Is Claude still better for writing?

• Is ChatGPT better for research?

• Should I move everything to Gemini?

• Do I need to build an agent?

But “keeping up with AI” has no finish line.

The industry is not moving towards one final tool that we can all learn and use forever.

Models will continue to improve. New competitors will emerge. Features will move between platforms. The tool that is strongest at one task today may be overtaken next month.

There will always be something newer. And that’s cool/

But, it means that if your goal is to keep up, you are choosing a goal you can never complete. You will always feel behind, no matter how much you know.

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We need to ask different questions

So when you are choosing to use AI for a task, I urge you to ask some different questions first.

Instead of asking:

What is the latest AI tool I need to learn, or feature I need to be aware of?

Ask:

• What am I actually trying to do with AI?

• What problem am I trying to solve?

• What part of my work do I want to make easier, faster or better?

• Is this tool helping me do that?

• Is the output good enough for what I need?

And perhaps most importantly:

Is AI making me better at my work - or simply busier?

Because there is a difference between using AI and constantly reorganising your life around AI.

A new model may be objectively “better” on a benchmark without being meaningfully better for you.

If the tool you already use helps you think through ideas, analyse information, write more clearly or complete a task more efficiently, you do not need to replace it.

There is no need to fix what is not broken.

Change when your current tool stops giving you what you need. Change when another one solves a problem yours cannot. Change when your work evolves and you are ready for something new.

You do not need to change simply because the internet has decided that this week’s release has made everything else obsolete.

The AI brain fry is real

I love AI.

It has expanded what I can create, teach and explore. It has helped me turn ideas into work more quickly and made things possible that I could not have done alone otherwise.

I also sometimes want absolutely nothing to do with it. (There, I said it!)

I have come to the conclusion that both things can be true.

You can be fascinated by AI and exhausted by it.

You can believe in its potential and feel repelled by the relentless noise surrounding it.

You can use it every day and still need time when you do not want another tool suggesting, summarising or generating anything for you.

I think this duality is becoming a very normal part of living and working with AI.

There is the rush when it does something extraordinary.

And then there is the brain fry.

The fatigue of testing tools.

Relearning interfaces. Moving your context between systems. Reading conflicting comparisons. Wondering whether you have chosen correctly. Trying to understand another set of names, numbers and capabilities.

It can feel as though you have gained an incredibly capable assistant and, at the same time, acquired another responsibility you must constantly manage.

That does not mean you are resistant to progress. It may simply mean your brain needs enough space to decide what is actually useful.

Tayla makes another important point here.

If you are using AI but have not disappeared so deeply into the AI bubble that you have forgotten what you are building and why, that may actually be your advantage.

You are not using AI for the sake of using AI. You are still able to see it for what it is: a tool intended to support the work, not become the work.

I feel I am so deep into the bubble, I cannot see clearly anymore!

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So, what is the one thing you need to know this week?

Of everything that has appeared in the AI news this week, Kimi K3 is the development I think is worth knowing about.

Not because I think you need to sign up for it - You probably don’t.

The important part is what its arrival represents.

Kimi K3 is a open-weight Chinese model reportedly competing with some of the most advanced proprietary systems from American companies.

It suggests that powerful AI is no longer going to come from one company, one country or one closed ecosystem.

The number of capable models will grow.

Competition will increase. Prices will change.

Capabilities that feel extraordinary today will become widely available tomorrow.

That is good news for us as users.

It also means trying to identify and master every “best” model will become even more pointless.

You do not need to know everything that happened in AI today.

You need to know what changed that could affect your work, your opportunities or your choices.

Everything else can wait!

Stop shopping for better AI

I have been reading Max Haining’s newsletter since the beginning of 100 School, and I have taken so many of the school’s courses over the years.

It is one of the most down-to-earth AI newsletters I read: grounded in the reality of adoption and what is actually happening at work, rather than the hype surrounding every new tool.

It is also one of the very few AI newsletters that does not leave me feeling overwhelmed.

His latest issue, Stop shopping for better AI, is brilliant.

He writes about Kimi K3, but the real story is not whether it is better than Claude or ChatGPT.

It is that six different AI labs now have models that would have been considered frontier-level only a few weeks ago.

The field is becoming more crowded. The technology is becoming cheaper. The next “best” model will always be around the corner.

Yet the way we work is changing far more slowly.

As Max points out, you could download the best open model in the world tomorrow and it would not automatically change how you or your company works.

Someone still needs to decide:

• Who will redesign the workflow?

• Who will check the output?

• What will the manager reinforce?

• How will anyone know whether it worked?

This is the part of AI adoption that gets far less attention than the model launches.

Giving people another tool, another licence or another training session does not necessarily help if nobody has the time or responsibility to turn that knowledge into a better way of working.

At the end of his newsletter, Max summarises it perfectly:

“The race has no finish line so stop using ‘caught up’ as the goal. Pick one workflow, decide who owns improving it, give them the time to try, check whether the result is actually better. The next model will arrive before you’ve finished. That’s fine. The advantage isn’t knowing every tool. It’s getting good at turning useful experiments into normal work.”

That, for me, is the answer to the myth of keeping up.

You do not need to keep pace with the industry.

You need to get better at recognising what is useful, experimenting with it intentionally and turning what works into part of your normal work.

“Being in the loop” does not mean consuming every update.

It means understanding enough to make informed decisions while keeping hold of your own judgement, attention and energy.

The tools will keep changing. The next model will arrive before you finish.

And that is absolutely fine. You are not, and never were - behind!

This is not the kind of AI story I thought I would publish in this newly repositioned Women in the Loop newsletter.

It is not a story about AI saving you $$$$, automating everything, or building a business while your children nap.

It is a letter about what happens when a woman tries to redesign her work around her children, her expertise, her ambition, her income, and a technology that is moving faster than most of us can process.

I think being “in the loop” is not just about knowing the latest AI tool, trick or headline. It is also about understanding what these shifts are really asking of us as women, mothers, employees, business owners, and humans.

(Note: This is a longer letter than usual. I thought about cutting it down, but the honest version needed a little more room.)

I have been swamped in the momentum of my AI education business for the last 3 years, with the mentality that the only way is forward, and there is no need to stop or look back. So I have constantly been tweaking, repositioning, restructuring and realigning what I offer.

However, my business has caught up with me in a way I did not account for - emotionally, physically and financially. This is forcing me to slow down, look back, and adjust my navigation.

For context, in June 2023, I quit my 9-5 to build a career around my kids by combining my experience in communications with my enthusiasm for AI.

I feel like there is not enough transparency, especially in the early and messy stages of building a business, so here is what I have learned in three years of running an AI education business. Maybe it will help you too.

1. Start building an audience, even if you don’t know what you want to do with it.

I started my Substack newsletter in 2021 - this one - for working mums looking to transition out of their corporate jobs.

It used to be called Working Mums Club, and I wrote about what it was like to be a working mum with two small kids and a full-time job, while looking for a change I could not yet name.

At the time, I did not imagine I would build my own business or sell online courses. But when I did, having an audience who knew and trusted me made me feel like I could start charting my own course.

In many ways, Women in the Loop is still asking the same question Working Mums Club was asking back then, just in a different era:

How do women build work, visibility, income and identity in a world that keeps changing around them?

Back then, I was writing about motherhood, corporate life and wanting a change.

Now, I am writing about AI, redesigning work, visibility, burnout, confidence, and what it really costs to stay relevant while trying to build a life that fits.

Women in the Loop is not only about keeping up with AI; it can’t be just that. It is also about keeping ourselves in the conversation while work, technology, motherhood, ambition and identity are all being rewritten at once.

2. The first dollar you make on your own shows you possibilities like you have never imagined.

When I decided I wanted to put something out there, I had no idea what I wanted to “sell”.

It was 2023, and I had just learned how to write, illustrate, design and publish a children’s book using ChatGPT and Canva in 90 minutes.

I thought it was the most mind-blowing thing.

It combined my love of writing with my enthusiasm for AI and helped me do something that had been on my bucket list. Being able to do this gave me the “aha” moment to teach my audience that. Surely there were other mums who wanted to do the same?

I made almost $2,000 selling a live workshop on how to write, illustrate, design and publish a children’s book in 90 minutes, and I couldn’t believe it.

This is what gave me the courage to pursue this full time. I wasn’t a children’s book author, nor was I a designer or illustrator - but look what AI helped me do! So then I thought, what if I used AI to teach what I actually know how to do well?

And so my signature programme, the AI Brand & Content Lab, was born.

I launched it in 2024 after taking Amy Porterfield’s Digital Course Academy. The price for the first live cohort was $333, and I sold seven spots through ads and a webinar funnel.

My mind was blown.

With support from my husband, we made the decision for me to go all in on this path.

So I stopped taking on freelance assignments and pursued this full-time. I taught the AI Brand & Content Lab live three times in 2024, and then in 2025 I turned it into a pre-recorded course with live implementation support.

I kept refining it, launching it, adjusting the price and eventually putting it on evergreen. By the end of 2025, 40 students had joined the programme, and five people had come in through an automated webinar funnel over Christmas.

I was over the moon.

However, although I was doing all the things, I was not yet profitable.

The numbers were not showing what I wanted, but I kept telling myself: “It is just a matter of time.” I have a validated mid-range product. Once I scale it, I will be profitable.

In January 2026, thinking I now had a proven model, I went all in on Meta ads in an attempt to scale the programme, only to suffer a huge loss.

The data was telling me something I wasn't ready to hear. So I told myself, again: all I need to do is cut costs, and this can be profitable.

3. Momentum isn’t the same as progress, and more reps don’t fix a broken model.

In hindsight, I feel like I may have confused momentum with progress.

Every month I had a new lead magnet, workshop, or low-ticket product that was meant to fuel my launches.

I was posting content every week on 11 channels - yes, 11 - and not a single thing I put out there was ignored. So I just kept putting things out there, waiting for one of them to hit the conversion rate I wanted.

But that never happened. I still kept going.

I did about 80 free masterclasses in two years, of which 50 were online and the rest were in person. My focus on building my personal brand equity was enormous.

I truly believed it was just a matter of time before I had a profitable online course business.

I was recognised. I was trusted. I knew how to teach. I was aware of how fast AI was moving, which gave me the conviction that my business would only grow. My gut always told me that.

I also chose not to cut corners on my delivery and used the best tools on the market to run this model as smoothly as possible: WebinarJam. ManyChat. Metricool. Deadline Funnel. Kajabi. Kit. Notion.

To supplement my income, I took on other opportunities. I became an AI educator for corporates, started teaching live sessions on Maven, and continued writing for TriplePundit.

What I didn’t realise was that I was speeding head on into burnout.

This is one of the uncomfortable truths of being in the loop: sometimes you are so busy keeping up, adapting, learning, launching and staying visible that you do not notice what it is costing you until your body, your bank account, or your family life asks you to stop.

I truly believe I did everything in my capacity to see if I could get this model to work for my signature programme.

I invested in courses and coaches to refine the model. I worked on the webinar, the funnel, the low-ticket offers, the messaging and the numbers - repeatedly. The support I received was brilliant, but something clearly didn’t click enough to give me the results I was looking for.

Or sometimes I still wonder whether I am just not giving it enough time?

I did look at the data regularly. All the coaches tell you to do that and give you benchmarks to track. If a funnel underperformed, I rebuilt it and tried again. And I always also thought the win was in the reps, the clarity would come from action, and the money would follow.

I reduced my outgoings, tweaked my offer and kept launching. My last launch was in May 2026. 650 people signed up for my webinar organically; about 400 people showed up but only 5 people bought my programme.

In hindsight, I feel like my mistake wasn’t optimism, but it was believing that enough repetitions would eventually produce results irrespective of what my offer was, and that my offer will not be affected by the changes in the market, the way people are consuming content, or what AI is doing.

4. How much money was my core offer making?

If Women in the Loop is going to be a space for honest conversations about work, AI and reinvention, I have to share the numbers too.

They are not the numbers I wanted, and I feel vulnerable sharing them. But here goes.

Here are my top-level numbers for my online course business since 2024.

2024:
Revenue: $17,130
Net: -$8,826

2025:
Revenue: $22,973
Net: -$7,558

2026, January to June:
Revenue: $8,333
Net: -$5,031

Clearly, I cannot continue this way.

After I cut a lot of expenses in February - ad spend and nice-to-have tools like Deadline Funnel, WebinarJam and ManyChat - despite the overall loss, May and June were both profitable for me.

That is the real signal - the two months where a leaner model actually worked. I am rebuilding from that data point, not from the deficit.

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5. The body keeps the invoice.

Nobody puts “cost to your nervous system” on a P&L.

But it is there. 3 years of never stopping has crept up on me. I feel exhaustion I cannot think my way out of.

All I know is that I need to slow down, reflect, and really sit with the numbers and how I feel before I decide what to do next.

I am now realising that whilst I am all for taking action, taking action without clear evidence and full alignment can cause more confusion than clarity.

And listening to your gut without enough evidence to support it can sometimes become a form of delusion that does not serve you.

I think the slowing down I am doing now is the only way I can get back on track to speed up.

6. Building this around my kids taught me where my attention actually goes.

I quit my 9-5 to be there for my kids. Physically, I have been there for everything.

I did the school runs, showed up to all their school events and parent meetings - something I had never been able to do before - sat through the extra-curricular activities I drove them to every day after school, and did bath and bed almost every single night.

But I will admit, my head was still in the last webinar’s numbers, the next launch, or the performance of my latest funnel.

If you have built something around being ‘there’ for the people you love and still feel like the balance isn’t quite right, that’s worth a proper look.

Not as guilt, but as information: where is your attention actually going, and is that where you want it?

My kids are 6 and 8 years old. Recalibrating that balance, now, while the business itself is also changing shape, is part of what this slowdown is for.

7. Not making enough money will dent your identity, even if you don’t notice it happening.

I didn’t clock this one until recently. Every month when the numbers came in low, I feel like something in me recalibrated what I believed I was worth.

Not just financially, but as a strategist, as a professional, as someone who used to run digital communications departments for large organisations.

Money is not supposed to be an identity. Your self-worth should not be linked to it, I know that in theory.

But when you have always been used to a significant income and then when it is absent for long enough, it starts writing a story about your competence in your mind that is not true.

If your revenue has been inconsistent for a while, check whether you have started believing a story about your skill that the money never actually proved.

Remind yourself, like I am trying to remind myself, that low or inconsistent revenue is merely data about your offer, your market, and your timing.

It is not a verdict on whether you are good at what you do. And that it is just the nature of the game of entrepreneurship. Separate the two before the story sets in. This is what I am trying hard to do at the moment.

8. Build multiple streams of income, but beware of diluting your efforts.

When I saw the numbers not doing what I wanted, whilst trying to fix my core offer, I also took on AI corporate training work, writing assignments, and started building out affiliate income streams.

None of those replaced the core business, but they gave me breathing room the core business wasn’t giving me.

They taught me the importance of diversification and how it can serve as a temporary bridge between where you are and where your main thing needs to get to.

However, they also stretched me too thin.

So, there are pros and cons to everything. Make sure you get in knowing that and be okay with the cons.

In hindsight, I should have built my digital course business on the side for longer before I quit my 9-5. Or I should have freelanced for longer.

We are fed the narrative of the importance of going all in to be successful, so not doing that and building on the side is easier said than done.

9. The skills I have built that I never would have.

In 3 years, I learned the art of writing converting sales pages, building webinar funnels, setting up automated email sequences, running automated funnels, creating content people engage with, managing Facebook ad campaigns, and building my own websites.

3 years ago, I could not have done a single one of those things myself, despite working in marketing and communications.

Now I can do all of them, without a marketing team or an agency behind me - thanks to AI and the willingness to learn.

The business has not yet made the money I wanted it to make, but it has made me capable of things I could not buy if I tried.

And that capability will never disappear or go to waste and I am excited about where these skills could take me next.

10. You can love the work and still need it to end differently than you imagined.

This is the hardest one to write.

I love teaching people to use AI to save them time, energy and money so they have more time to do what matters most to them.

I love teaching people to use AI to express themselves, position themselves online and share their message with the world, without outsourcing their voice, so they can be seen like they deserve to be seen.

And I will continue to do that. (My next free class is on Maven on July 16).

None of that has changed.

What has changed is my willingness to keep pretending that loving the work and the journey is the same as building a profitable business that gives me the time and financial freedom I'm actually after.

What does this all mean?

So this is me, slowing down and looking back properly for the first time since June 2023. Not to undo any of it, but to learn from it so I take wiser steps forward.

I feel lucky that, thanks to my husband, I get to take a step back over summer and reassess before I continue. I’m mapping out a plan that works for me and my family, while keeping my sanity intact.

Here’s what I know so far.

The skills stay, regardless of what I decide about the course business.

The corporate AI training, the Maven cohorts, the writing - these have been steadier and more aligned with what I’m actually good at than the course funnel ever was, and they’re where my attention is going this summer.

I’m not walking away from teaching AI. I’m walking away from pretending a model that’s lost money for three years will turn a corner if I just do one more launch.

That also means I can really work on shaping the new direction for this newsletter too. I am excited to see where this goes too.

I am sharing this here because I know many of you are also trying to make sense of work in a changing world.

Maybe you are in corporate, wondering how AI will affect your role, your relevance, or the skills you have spent years building.

Maybe you are building something of your own, trying to use AI to move faster without letting it pull you into even more noise.

Maybe you are trying to stay visible online without becoming someone you are not.

Maybe you are like me and simply tired of pretending that reinvention is always clean, empowering and profitable.

This is the part of being in the loop that we do not talk about enough. We need to know what is changing, but we also need to be honest about what that change costs, what it teaches us, and what we choose next.

If you have made it all the way here, thank you for reading. I hope you found this useful and if you did, I would love to hear from you. So hit reply or comment below and I will come back to you.

Leave a comment

“These seem like money mindset issues you have, Abha…” said a friend of mine at lunch, referring to the conversation we were having about linking your self-worth to how much money you make.

“Have you tried to understand the root of where this is coming from?” she continued.

“Not really”, I said. “You think I should seek help?.”

“No, just talk through it with ChatGPT, it will help you get to the bottom of it. This is what I did and I was able to resolve many long-standing issues of my own.”

I was too gobsmacked to respond, not knowing where to begin to explain how tools like ChatGPT are just sophisticated auto-complete tools and that she should be talking to a professional if she wanted real support.

I find it amazing how much people are anthropomorphising AI i.e. attributing human-like feelings, mental states, and behavioural characteristics to artificial intelligence systems. They assign them names and also genders. My friend referred to ChatGPT as “him.”

In a recent study published in Harvard Business Review on how people are using AI in 2026, therapy and companionship is still the top use case, and it has now been that way for three years running.

Personal and professional support accounts for 31% of all AI use cases. “Relationship advice” came in 7th and “work buddy” came in 8th.

People are turning to AI to process their feelings, work through their relationships, and find a sense of being understood.

What they do not realise is that when you treat AI as a confidant, you hand it only bits and pieces of your anxiety, your half-articulated angst, your vague emotional landscape. The input is not the whole picture. So whilst the output sounds helpful, it isn’t targeted to anything real.

Some basic AI literacy - eg knowing that large language models are just giving you the next best word based on patterns of their datasets - could shift these results dramatically, I think.

In other results, “Fun and nonsense” climbed from seventh place last year to 3rd place. “Fan fiction and storytelling” debuted at 4th. “Astrology and tarot reading” entered the list at 9th.

This is what people are doing with one of the most powerful technologies ever built.

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Thinkslop. Workslop. Writing slop.

In at least a quarter of the top use cases this year, people are asking AI to do some portion of their thinking - one of the researchers of this study Zao-Sanders calls this “thinkslop”.

Thinkslop is what happens when you stop thinking and let the machine think for you. And the cost, as he describes it, is that we deny ourselves the experience of thinking, we may lose access to certain creative thoughts entirely, and over time, we erode our ability to think at all.

Add to that ”AI brain fry” or “mental fatigue from excessive use or oversight of AI tools beyond one’s cognitive capacity,” and we are on the fast track to cognitive decay. I am rapidly trying to get off this track!

Thinkslop is one problem. Workslop is another.

Workslop is low-effort, AI-generated work that looks polished, but ends up wasting time and effort as it offloads cognitive work onto the recipient. The person who sends it saves 20 minutes, but the person who receives it spends 40 trying to work out what it actually means.

Research by Better Up shows that 53% of participants admitted to sending workslop and 40% said they had received it. And those are just the people who admitted it.

Writing slop is its own category.

And it is arguably the one that matters most to those of us who built our careers on the quality of our communication.

Hilary Gridley, who writes the Substack newsletter Writer Builder, recently published a piece asking a deceptively simple question: Is there a good way to write with AI?

She surveyed 100 leaders about their biggest AI pain points and one answer came up again and again: Everyone around them was generating documents nobody was reading.

She also ran a poll of nearly 600 people on LinkedIn and found that only 17% said they would tell a colleague their work was AI-generated.

Her framing is the sharpest I have read on this subject. The question is not: did a robot touch this? The question is: what work got skipped, and who pays the cost?

She breaks writing down into its component parts and asks where exactly AI is being inserted into the process: Having an idea. Capturing it. Researching. Synthesising. Structuring. Forming a point of view. Drafting. Rewriting. Editing. Each of these is a skill. And each one can atrophy if you stop doing it.

I feel this happening to me and it has terrified me.

It’s forced me to think about my outputs and come to the realisation that if I want to keep my brain cells and produce good work, I need to let it take time and not use AI all the time.

So if you hold the two key points here together for a moment:

1. People are using AI for their deepest, most personal needs.

2. And getting only surface-level results in their individual and professional lives.

We’ve got it completely backwards.

The anthropomorphising of tools is design feature. They are built to feel responsive, warm, present. They mirror your language back to you. They never get tired of you. They never have their own difficult day that bleeds into the conversation. They are available, for free, 24/7.

Of course we are making these tools our best allies.

But, the moment you start treating these tools as your friends or your own brain rather than mere instruments or tools - you lose what makes them powerful for you.

AI works best when you know what you want, so you can judge whether what comes back is good or not.

The irony is that the moments people most want to offload to AI - grief, confusion, self-doubt, complex tasks filled with nuances, big life questions - are exactly the moments it’s least equipped to help. It doesn’t have any real experience, it doesn’t understand the nuances or complexities of your personality, work or your world.

ChatGPT or any such tool, however skilled it is at sounding knowledgable or empathetic, is just predicting the next best word based on the patterns it sees from the data it has been fed and trained on.

And once you get that, the way you communicate with these tools should fundamentally change and the weight you give the responses should be assessed with that understanding.

So what do we actually do with this?

It’s simple and boring: We have to take the effort to think first, before we jump to the tool - for any and every task.

Simple. But, not easy. Our quest to resolve personal situations, to work better, faster and just ‘get it done’ with AI is making us lazy and we need to nip it in the bud.

If you don’t know what you’re thinking, or what you want and why you want it - AI will fill that gap with something that sounds plausible. That’s thinkslop in action.

The difference between average results and outstanding results isn’t the tool to you are using. It’s the clarity of your own thinking and the context you bring to it.

AI cannot make you do the hard cognitive or inner work, that needs to come from you.

So, the question to ask before you open the chat window is not “can AI do this?” It almost certainly can. The question is “what happens to me if I let it?”

Some tasks are worth outsourcing completely. Some are worth doing with AI support. And some are worth doing yourself, slowly, badly at first, because the difficulty and “friction” is exactly the point. Let’s not forget that.

If you are anything like me, and your inbox has become a source of stress because of all the stuff you subscribe to stay in the loop (lol), I think you will love this.

We were away for a week and I chose not to open my laptop. When I did, I had over 9400 unread emails in my Gmail.

Even though I have labels like promotions, updates, social, newsletters, notifications, and important conversations - everything was competing for my attention in the same place and it was giving me anxiety.

The good news is that you no longer have to clean up your inbox manually. This is perhaps one of the most freeing tasks I have used AI for.

I have in the past tried email clean up tools like Fyxer and Sanebox; and whilst they are great, they were stacking up my tool subscription costs. (This becomes something you really need to watch when you are using AI a lot!).

So I decided to try the AI tools I already had a subscription to. I started with Claude, but for some reason, it could not go into my Gmail even after connecting it, and could only recommend what I do.

However, by connecting my Gmail to ChatGPT, it did the entire job for me.

It analyzed my inbox, identified patterns, grouped emails by category, surfaced important messages, and helped me archive, label, delete or unsubscribe to large volumes of email safely and efficiently.

In my own cleanup session, ChatGPT helped me:

• Analyze thousands of unread emails (9,467) to be precise

• Identify the biggest sources of inbox clutter

• Separate newsletters from important communications

• Create a Read-Later system

• Archive and delete more than 4,500 emails while preserving everything important

• Build a framework for keeping my inbox manageable going forward

The goal was not only inbox zero, but also an inbox that contains only what deserves your attention and I wanted it done whilst safeguarding my privacy.

This guide walks you through the exact process I went through step-by-step so you can do the same.

I will also say, if you haven’t given an AI tools access to your computer or personal stuff before, this will make you feel vulnerable. Know that you can abort the plan anytime if something doesn’t feel right!

Before you start: Connect Gmail to ChatGPT

To allow ChatGPT to help manage your inbox, you’ll need to connect your Gmail account.

1. Open ChatGPT.

2. Go to Settings.

3. Navigate to Connected Apps or Connectors (availability depends on your plan and region).

4. Select Gmail.

5. Sign in with the Google account you want to use.

6. Review and approve the permissions requested.

Once connected, ChatGPT can help you search, categorize, summarize, label, archive, and in some cases perform actions on your email account.

Privacy and Security Considerations

Before connecting your inbox, it’s important to understand what access you’re granting.

ChatGPT can access:

• Email sender addresses

• Subject lines

• Message snippets

• Labels and folders

• Timestamps

• Attachments

• Email content (if you choose to have messages opened and analyzed)

Your inbox may contain sensitive information related to:

• Finances

• Health

• Family

• Travel

• Employment

• Legal matters

• Client communications

Best Practices

Use ChatGPT as an assistant, rather than on autopilot.
When you give ChatGPT access, it will ask you what it has permission to access either by asking you to select or to reply to it.

I recommend:

• Starting with metadata only (sender, subject, date, labels)

• Reviewing every suggested actions before approving them

• Archiving before deleting whenever possible

• Excluding financial, legal, medical, school, and client communications from bulk actions

• Never approving a bulk delete without understanding exactly what is included

• Creating labels and archives before permanently removing anything

A simple rule of thumb:

If losing the email would create a problem, archive it. If it is 100% disposable, delete it.

With those safeguards in place, ChatGPT can become one of the fastest and most effective tools available for reclaiming control of your inbox.

To help you do this yourself, here is a prompt workflow.

ChatGPT Inbox Cleanup Prompt Library

The below prompts systemise how I cleaned up my inbox. This is only a guide; modify any of the prompts as you see fit. There is no absolute right or wrong.

Prompt 1: Analyze Before Taking Action

Open ChatGPT, and connect your email.

Then start with this prompt.

“Analyze my inbox using only senders, subjects, labels, categories, and snippets. Do not read or open full emails unless I ask. Do not archive, delete, label, mark as read, or modify anything unless I explicitly ask you to.

Identify:

• My top unread senders

• Newsletters

• Promotions

• Social notifications

• Receipts

• Banking and financial emails

• Family and school emails

• Work/client emails

Show me the biggest categories by volume and recommend the safest cleanup opportunities first.”

Prompt 2: Create a Safe List

Use before any bulk actions.

“Before recommending any cleanup actions, create a Safe List of emails that should never be archived, deleted, or marked as read without my approval.

Include:

• Banking and financial emails

• Receipts and invoices

• Legal communications

• Medical communications

• Travel confirmations

• School communications

• Family-related emails

• Client and customer emails

Show me the Safe List before proceeding. Wait for me to tell you what to do next. Do not do anything without my approval.”

Prompt 3: Find Easy Wins

“Based on my inbox analysis, identify the safest categories to archive first.

Focus on:

• Newsletters

• LinkedIn notifications

• Community digests

• Marketing emails

• Job alerts

• Social notifications

Do not take any action. Show me estimated volume and impact first.”

Prompt 4: Create Labels

“Based on my inbox patterns, recommend a label structure that will reduce inbox clutter.

Include:

• Read-Later

• Receipts

• Finance

• Family

• Clients

• Archived-Newsletters

Explain which senders should be assigned to each label.”

Prompt 5: Promotions Cleanup

“Analyze my Promotions tab.

Group emails by sender and estimate volume.

For each sender, recommend one of the following:

• Keep

• Read-Later

• Archive

• Delete

Do not take action until I approve.”

Prompt 6: Updates Cleanup

“Analyze my Updates tab.

Separate emails into:

• Financial

• Receipts

• Travel

• School

• Family

• Work

• Product updates

• Notifications

Recommend what should stay in my inbox and what can be archived.”

Prompt 7: Newsletter Cleanup

“Identify all newsletter senders in my inbox.

Group them into:

• Must Read

• Read-Later

• Archive Automatically

• Unsubscribe

Show me the top 20 newsletter senders and recommended actions.”

Prompt 8: Find the Biggest Remaining Clutter

“Show me the top remaining unread senders ranked by volume.

For each sender:

• Number of emails

• Category

• Recommended action

Focus on the senders creating the most inbox clutter.”

Prompt 9: Build Gmail Filters

“Based on my inbox patterns, recommend Gmail filters that will prevent future inbox clutter.

Suggest filters for:

• Newsletters

• Promotions

• Receipts

• Banking

• Clients

• Family

• Read-Later content

Provide the exact Gmail search criteria for each filter.”

Prompt 10: Archive with Approval

“Recommend emails that can be safely archived.

Show me:

• Sender

• Category

• Email count

• Reason for recommendation

Wait for my approval before taking any action.”

Prompt 11: Delete with Extreme Caution

“Identify emails that are likely safe to permanently delete.

Only include:

• Old promotions

• Expired offers

• Duplicate newsletters

• Old social notifications

Exclude financial, legal, medical, school, family, travel, receipts, and client emails.

Show me the list before taking any action. Wait for my explicit instructions and approval before you take any action.”

Option 2: The Complete Inbox Reset Prompt (one prompt)

You can either go through all the steps above, or just use this prompt and lead ChatGPT via a conversation.

“Help me perform a complete inbox reset.

Follow this workflow:

1. Analyze my inbox.

2. Create a Safe List.

3. Identify quick wins.

4. Recommend labels.

5. Clean Promotions.

6. Clean Updates.

7. Organize newsletters.

8. Show top remaining unread senders.

9. Recommend Gmail filters.

10. Create a maintenance plan.

Do not take any action until I explicitly tell you to and I approve each step.”

Please remember

You do not have to listen to ChatGPT or do anything it says. Every action needs to be based on your judgment and common sense.

To any of the prompts mentioned above, add / change / delete as you see fit.

If something doesn’t feel right, don’t do it. Or find a way to do it that does.

I used to spend ages cleaning up my inbox. I have found this to be a huge time save and relief!

Let me know if you try it how you get on! If you have any questions, reach out - happy to help!

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In case you are interested:

June 18:
I am hosting a free session on Maven on June 18 on “How to build the online presence you deserve”.

In this 45-minute session, you'll discover why AI still doesn't truly know you, and how that gap is leading to generic results. You'll learn how to properly configure your AI settings and create your first "AI Quick Brief" so AI can work from your voice, expertise, and business context. Leave with a practical framework you can use immediately to increase your visibility, consistency, and impact online.

If this interests you, join me here.

June 22:

My friends at Big Moves AI are running a free 5-day virtual summit called the AI Content Creator Summit, starting June 22 and I am part of their incredible lineup!

23+ experts covering the strategies the top 0.1% of creators are actually using right now.

A few of the things being covered:
• How to make AI content sound unmistakably like you (not like a template)
• The hooks that are actually converting in 2026
• How one creator generated 5,000 leads in 7 days using AI images
• Why most creators are invisible on LinkedIn and how to fix it with AI
• How to batch a full week of social content in one sitting

It’s completely free to attend. Check it out here.

This is a conversation space exclusively for readers of Women in the Loop - kind of like a group chat or live hangout. I’ll post what’s on my mind (maybe it’s on your mind too!) questions and updates that come my way, and you can jump into the discussion whenever you feel like.

Join chat

How to get started

1. Get the Substack app by clicking this link or the button below. New chat threads won’t be sent sent via email, so turn on push notifications so you don’t miss conversation as it happens. You can also access chat on the web.

Get app

2. Open the app and tap the Chat icon. It looks like two bubbles in the bottom bar, and you’ll see a row for my chat inside.

3. That’s it! Jump into my thread to say hi, and if you have any issues, check out Substack’s FAQ.
   
   I look forward to getting to know you better!

Abha x

I love everything about looping. “Be in the loop”, “stay in the loop”, “human in the loop”, “looping you in”.

There is a certainty in the “loop”, but the loop is also infinite.

This dichotomy is the brilliance of this phrase, and it’s exactly where we are at when it comes to AI.

The pace at which AI is entering our lives is exponential, making it practically impossible to stay up-to-date. But we can stay in the loop - or at least hop in and out of it.

But what does it even mean to “be in the loop”?

I think it means this:

• Being AI literate - so we can be part of the ever evolving conversation, and help our kids navigate it too

• Use AI to save us time, energy and money - so we have more time to do things that matter most to us

• Understanding the bigger picture - so that we can ride the wave we are all being shoved into but with awareness and intention

This is what I want to dedicate this newsletter to and why I renamed it “women in the loop”.

If you are interested in any of the above, without feeling overwhelmed or anxious. This is the place for you. Every week I will share something that falls in one (or more) of the three categories.

Subscribe now

—

Who do you want to be?

Last year with a friend I launched a podcast called “Who do you want to be” which explores the intersection of human intelligence and artificial intelligence, and who we want to be in a world where this technology is so embedded in every aspect of our being.

We don’t claim to have the answers, but we do want to have the conversations and this newsletter feels like an extension of that.

—

As for me and “who I want to be”, I am at a crossroads in my professional career. Three years ago I quit my 9-5 to design a meaningful career around my kids.

Side note: I launched this newsletter almost 5 years ago as I started contemplating the transition; at the time it was called Working Mums Club.

All I knew was that I was enthusiastic about AI because of how empowering it is, and I had 17 years of experience in communications. So I married my work experience with AI knowledge and started helping female founders and coaches how to use AI to express themselves, be seen and attract the opportunities they desire without having to outsource their message and voice to a copywriter or ghostwriter.

I do this via online webinars, workshops on Maven and I have a signature programme called the AI Brand & Content Lab.

My next free webinar on Maven is on June 18, it’s on how to build an online presence you actually deserve; if this interests you - join me here!

I have also been invited to speak at the Big Moves AI summit June 22-26, alongside a super cool line up of other AI leaders in the AI for content space.

I have also been writing for Triple Pundit, exploring the intersection of AI and business and I have also been an AI educator for corporations.

In other words, I have been doing SO much work that I love and that I find so rewarding. However, I am not going to hide the fact that three years in, I feel burnt out and I can’t help but think of the cost of this journey - professionally, emotionally and financially.

In other words, something about the way I work needs to change for me to sustain everything I am doing, whilst being a mum of 2 small kids.

I’m not sure what that means yet, but what I do know is that I want to stay informed about AI, be an active user of AI, and ensure that I share what I learn with other women too - without feeling anxious, pessimistic or overwhelmed.

That’s what this place is for.

For those of you who are here, thank you for being here. I hope you stick around.

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The “should you use AI to write (anything)” debate is flooding the feed of every social platform I am on.

It’s full of:

a. anti-AI writing sentiment and outrage

b. digital detectives dedicating their post to the most recent tell-tale sign of AI-generated content

c. write 30 days of content in 10 minutes with these AI workflows / Skills / agents

d. 100% AI generated content about AI generated content 😳

Is it just my feed?

Now, as an “AI content strategist” (a title i feel I must revisit) who teaches others to set up their own AI content systems whilst also more recently abandoning the use of AI for her own writing, here is where I am with it all for what it’s worth:

1.If you are a writer and you love the craft of writing - don’t use any AI for your drafts, or edits.

You will not like the end result, no matter how well you have trained the AI tool you are using. Plus, if you are anything like me, you will start wondering why you are not writing anymore when you love it so much, and how average your writing now feels. The inadvertent ‘deskilling’ will creep up on you and when it does, it will horrify you!

Instead, use AI to save you time in your research and go old school for proofreading and editing (yes, print out and read with a pen!). Take the time, writing is an art to enjoy.

2. If you are a writer, and want to scale your writing quantity - use AI to repurpose content you have crafted without AI.

This will enable you to be seen more frequently and widely, and help you attract the visibility you seek to grow your authority, brand or business; without you feeling like a full-time content creator or a bad writer.

For this, you will have to spend some quality time training the tool of your choice on you. And then, you have to give your AI tool clear platform guidelines and goals as you might as well work with the platform’s best practices to maximise traction of the piece of content you are putting out.

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3. If you are not a writer by skill, and lack some confidence with the way you articulate your thoughts via the written word - AI can be your best friend, as long as you truly have original thoughts to share. (Which you do, everyone does!)

In this case, be sure to take the time to properly build your ‘AI brain’ / your ‘content DNA’ / your ‘AI content playbook’ - whatever you want to call the training material you create for your AI tool - before you use AI to get your message out there.

This should help you get 80% of your piece written well and fast, and then you spend a few good minutes making the piece 100% yours. And then, use an AI repurposing workflow to get the scale you want.

In other words, think about why you are writing (anything) and then make AI work for you to get closer to whatever goals you are writing for.

Also, if you are new to AI, I feel like the best place to start integrating it into your day to day work, is for content related tasks, because once you work with AI well to get them right, your mind opens to so many other things you can use AI for.

If you fall in categories 2 or 3 and want some support in setting yourself up with your AI content system, I’m doing a free session on Maven on June 18 to get you started, join me here!

I write this today from Glasgow. We live in Dubai and have come here for the Eid break to see my in-laws and get a much needed reset.

We have been lucky to have five days of glorious sun, no rain and perhaps its been the first time - ever - I have been walking around with no jumper!

Also, this is the first time in about two years that I am writing this with ZERO AI support (cross my heart).

(Funny that, since I literally re-named this Substack “Activate”, which now feels like a pill I don’t want to take, and I am wondering if that was a good idea.)

I’ve opened a Google doc and am just writing. From the heart.

No bouncing an outline with my trained GPT in ChatGPT, or getting my Claude skill to edit it, or working with a proven newsletter prompt “template” that has a high chance of “performing” better. (And believe me when I say I have some brilliant ones).

I really miss writing. Just writing. Processing my thoughts and putting them out into the world.

I have been a writer in some form my entire life; I used to edit the school magazine, I was a full-time travel blogger for 3 years, and my career has been in the communications industry for over 17 years. I have a diploma in journalism from the London School of Journalism (I was so happy to see the School still exists!)

I also feel - whilst I teach how to write using AI - and there is purpose in that as many people are not writers, I do feel that, as a writer, if we are not careful, any writing skill we may have will slowly fizzle away if we don’t nip it in the bud.

I have been feeling like my writing is getting worse because I have been leaning so much on AI (creating content at scale and repurposing it), and I’m just glad that I am recognising it.

Jordan Wilson of Your Every Day AI in one of his podcasts talks about the seven sins of using AI the right way, and one of them is “deskilling”. As we “upskill” in our attempt to keep up in this world being taken over with AI, we need to make sure we are not deskilling in the process.

Not long ago I did an AI training for an organisation that was attended predominantly by the IT team, and they all felt like they are no longer good at coding - because they don’t need to code any more! Sure they can use their time to do other things, but what is the long term impact of losing a skill that they spent most their adult lives learning? Does it matter? What is all this doing to our brain?

I don’t have the answer and nor is there one right answer, but we do need to think about these things.

Like any tool, AI has its pros and cons, and honestly after working in this space for over three years now I am so torn between all the value it has to offer, and everything it is taking away from us.

Whilst AI is giving so many people a voice, building people’s dreams, and presenting opportunities we never imagined (maybe the world will see the first one person billion dollar company because of AI); it is also making us lazy, robbing us of our brain cells and our “authenticity” that we are now manufacturing instead.

To be clear, I am 100% FOR AI. I love it, I teach it, I help women get their heads around it without feeling overwhelmed with it, I help them bring out their voice with it. I also believe that the only way to be part of the conversation that is changing our world and that of our kids, is to know it, understand it, and use it.

But I am not unaware of the downsides of it and I feel just being aware of the worst of it is what we need to do, to benefit from the best of it.

Now that I have written this, my instinct is to put it into Claude for feedback and editing, but you know what - I will not.

My instinct is also to add more “value” to it - one prompt you can use today, or here’s the latest news that is shaking our world, or have you seen this insane AI tool that will revolutionise how you perceive the world?

But, there is so much of that, I feel drowned in it and all the information is blurring together and leaving me in a state of information overload and analysis paralysis. So this issue will not have any of that (sorry to disappoint?).

My goal at the moment is to not lose myself in the process of leveraging AI to empower others - and help you do the same.

I feel a responsibility to not only support other women on their AI journey, but also be real about it. What I don’t want is to be one of those who is jumping on the AI bandwagon to only rob myself and my audience of the bigger picture - ie why this all matters in the first place.

What that means exactly, for my business and my own journey with AI is yet to be determined.

What’s increasingly missing from this space now is 100% human thought and not being afraid to share it. I’m no longer sure how to do that without literally not using AI to think through it, and that needs to change - and that starts with this piece.

Over the next few weeks, I will continue to ponder my place in the AI space as an early adopter, educator and business owner. I hope you stick with me on this journey.

Abha x

May 29 Quick update before you read this! So, I hit publish on the piece below announcing a new name for this Substack - “Activate”. I slept on it and woke up feeling, no. That’s not the new name. It felt like a pill I didn’t want to take.

So, I did a swift course correction with something that felt much better and more aligned with what I want to create here. We are officially moving forward as Women in the Loop (what do you think?).

It’s a little play on the tech phrase human-in-the-loop - which basically means keeping human intuition and judgment at the centre of all things AI. The world needs more women driving that conversation right now, and this is my way of getting into it and building a community of women who want to get into it too - by staying in the loop!

Read on to see what I mean, why this space matters so much for our future and that of our kids, and let’s just pretend the word “Activate” never happened, cool?

I started this newsletter almost 5 years ago (!) with a simple idea.

I wanted to find other women like me, who had left - or were thinking of leaving -corporate life to build a different type of career. Women wanting to design their own work while also raising kids, managing a home, and trying to stay sane. Women who wanted to use technology to make their lives easier and were navigating it all alone.

I called it Working Mums Club, and about 1,500 of you are here today, and I am SO grateful. Thank you for being here!

I’ve spent the last 3 years teaching women how to use AI. In workshops, in corporate training rooms, in one-to-one sessions, in webinars at 7pm when the kids are finally in bed. And the more I teach, the more I realise that what I’m really doing isn’t just teaching AI.

I’ve been helping women get on a path to claim their place in a world that is changing faster than any of us can keep up with.

And this is my biggest realisation:

We are the last generation to have known a world without AI, without the internet, without any of this.

Our kids will grow up never knowing what it felt like to look something up in an encyclopaedia, to write an essay without a machine that could write it for you, to navigate a career in a world that wasn’t being reshaped by large language models and algorithms every few months.

That makes us something rare. We have a before and an after. We know what changed. And that means we are uniquely placed to understand what this moment actually means - not just for our future, careers or our businesses, but for our children and the world they’re growing up in.

The pace at which the world is changing with technology like AI is unprecedented and frankly, insane - but we have to refuse to be left behind. We have to stay informed. We have to stay in the conversation.

So here’s what’s changing about this newsletter.

Working Mums Club is becoming Activate - a newsletter for women building their place in an AI-first world while navigating work, motherhood and everything else.

I chose that name deliberately.

It’s exactly what I want this newsletter to do for you. Not inform you. Not overwhelm you with AI news you don’t know what to do with. Actually activate something in you - your curiosity, your confidence, your sense that you belong in this conversation.

Every issue will strive towards that, and with your feedback I will keep making it better.

Every time you read this newsletter, I want you to finish reading and think one of three things.

“I’m closer than I realised.” “I can do that.” Or “Wow - that’s opened my mind.”

That’s what I am for Activate to be.

What does that look like week-to-week? I want to talk about things that fall under the topics of:

• How AI is changing the workplace and what it means for your job security

• How to use these tools without being techy

• What we need to think about and know to help your kids navigate the wild west of AI!

• How women are using AI to build businesses, reclaim time, and stay relevant

• And always - what it means for you, your life, and the future you’re stepping into

I believe that AI has its pro’s and con’s, but I also believe that an AI-first world will be net positive and we will all be able to flourish, but we do need an AI-postive mindset for that.

I want to keep this newsletter away from jargon, overwhelm and doom. Just what matters, and what you can do about it.

And here’s what’s staying the same.

The motherhood juggle. Because AI doesn’t exist in a vacuum; it exists in the middle of school runs, work deadlines, mental load, and trying to understand what’s going on, and figure out who you are both inside and outside of all of it. I’ll keep writing about that, because that’s the real context in which we’re all trying to figure this out.

You. This community. The Working Mum Wisdom interviews - real women, real stories, real lives. All of it carries forward into Activate.

If you’ve been here from the beginning - thank you again.

You were the foundation of this. You showed up when it was just an idea. I hope you’ll stay for what comes next. I think it’s going to be the most meaningful thing I’ve built.

If you’re new here - welcome!

You’re exactly where you need to be.

We are the last generation that knew a world without AI. Let’s make sure we’re also the ones who help define what it becomes - for ourselves and for our kids.

That’s what Activate is for.

I hope you stay with me on this journey. If you have any thoughts or feedback, let me know - just hit reply, I reply to every email (no bots, no AI!)

And one quick question before you go:

Abha x

Because the business doesn’t just test your skills. It exposes every belief you have about yourself.

Every insecurity. Every fear. Every quiet thought that says, “Maybe I’m not capable of this.”

And the strange part is that almost nobody talks about the emotional side of building something from nothing. Especially the “messy middle” I am in right now.

In June, I’ll be three years into this journey. I’m still learning. Still stretching. Still unlearning old patterns I didn’t even know were running my life.

Here are the 6 things I wish someone had told me before I started my own business:

1. Your vulnerabilities get magnified

The business you choose to build, will act like a mirror.

Whatever self-doubt already exists inside you gets amplified the moment you put yourself out there. Suddenly, every setback feels personal. Every rejection feels bigger than it should.

If you secretly believe you’re not enough, entrepreneurship will force that belief to the surface.

That’s why mindset work isn’t optional. It becomes survival. I didn’t even know what “mindset work” meant before I became an entrepreneur.

The real work isn’t just building the business. It’s rebuilding the version of you trying to lead it.

2. Self-sabotage is real

At some point, you realise you’re not stuck because of lack of information.

You’re stuck because of fear.

You procrastinate on the thing that matters most. You overthink instead of launching. You stay “busy” instead of visible. You delay decisions because failing publicly feels unbearable.

The breakthrough comes when you can finally name the pattern while it’s happening.

Because once you can recognise self-sabotage in real time, you stop mistaking it for logic. But it is not easy to recognise or to accept that that is what you are doing.

3. Accountability is both heavy & liberating

When you work for yourself, there’s nowhere to hide.

If something fails, it’s on you. But so is every win.

That level of responsibility can feel brutal in the beginning, especially if you’re used to external validation or structure. But over time, it becomes one of the most empowering parts of entrepreneurship.

You have to stop waiting for permission. You have to stop blaming circumstances.

You have to realise you’re capable of creating outcomes instead of reacting to them.

4. You will outgrow people

This one hurts.

Sometimes friendships change when you change. Not because anyone is bad. Not because there’s conflict.

But growth changes your priorities, your habits, your conversations, and like it or not, the time you have to spend with people you care about.

Some people will misunderstand your ambition. Others simply won’t relate to the direction your life is moving. Some will just disappear and you may or may not have the energy to understand why.

I guess not everyone is meant to walk the entire journey with you.

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5. Failure is just data. Not your identity.

This lesson is taking me the longest to learn.

When something doesn’t work, I still sometimes make it mean something about me, although I know that is not true. But detaching from the results of your hard work - good or bad - is actually very hard.

You have to drill it into your brain that your failure isn’t a verdict on your worth.

It’s just information.

The people who succeed aren’t necessarily the most talented. Often, they’re just the ones willing to do more reps than everyone else. More testing. More learning. More uncomfortable iterations.

Detaching your identity from your results is one of the most important skills you can build. Doing business becomes a lot lighter when failure stops feeling personal.

Easier said that done though.

6. Mindset beats strategy every time

You can learn strategy in a weekend.

But rewiring the beliefs you’ve carried for decades, that takes years.

And honestly, “imposter syndrome” doesn’t magically disappear when you hit a revenue milestone. You just meet new levels of fear as you grow.

That’s why inner work matters so much.

Confidence isn’t something you wait for before taking action. It’s something you build by surviving the actions you thought you couldn’t handle.

If you only focus on one thing, focus on becoming the person capable of holding the life you want.

Everything else becomes easier after that.

What nobody wants to say out loud

Don’t quit your job before you have something real and sustainable to fall back on.

I know social media romanticises the “all in” story. But unstable income for years doesn’t automatically make you brave. It just destroys your nervous system.

There’s nothing wrong with building slowly. There’s nothing wrong with protecting your peace while you create something meaningful.

You do not have to suffer your way into success.

What I’m learning right wow

Honestly, the last few weeks have broken me a little, and I’m feeling it all this week.

I am in Dubai and we are stuck in between a war - so our schedules have been unpredictable as the kids have been in and out of school over the last 9 weeks.

This week, whilst I’m rejoicing that the kids are back at school, I’m also down with a cold and I feel exhausted.

The weight of everything has felt like a lot lately, and I realised I haven’t really stopped to observe what’s happening to me through all of it. I’ve just been getting on with things. Pushing through. Ticking boxes. Carrying the mental load and hoping I’ll eventually catch up.

And if I’m being completely honest, I think part of what’s been hard is this strange feeling of being stuck between a rock and a hard place.

I started this journey because I wanted more freedom. More flexibility. More choice over how I spend my time and how I show up for my family.

But right now? I’m working harder than I ever have before.

And I’m still not making the kind of money that gives me the freedom I imagined this would create.

That tension is confronting.

Entrepreneurship sells you the dream of freedom, but nobody really talks about the season where you’re carrying enormous pressure with very little certainty in return.

The part where you’re pouring everything into something that hasn’t fully paid you back yet.

The part where your nervous system feels stretched between ambition, responsibility, exhaustion, and hope.

My to-do list hasn’t stopped growing. But my brain has.

I’ve felt behind on everything lately, even while doing my best to hold it all together. So this week, I’ve been trying to give myself a little more grace. A little more kindness.

I’ve had to remind myself of something important:

Clarity and calm don’t come from pushing harder. They come from pausing long enough to remember what actually matters.

And I think so many of us forget that.

We convince ourselves that slowing down means falling behind. That resting means losing momentum. That if we just keep going a little harder, eventually we’ll feel back on top of things again.

But sometimes the most productive thing you can do is regroup with yourself.

To stop long enough to breathe. To reset. To notice what your mind and body have been trying to tell you.

So if you’re feeling anything like me right now, here’s your reminder:

Slowing down isn’t falling behind.

Sometimes it’s the only way to find your way back.

Your Next Steps

If you’re like me and in any kind of messy middle right now, here’s what I want you to remember:

You are not behind. You are not failing because it feels hard.

And you are definitely not the only person questioning themselves while trying to build something bigger than their current reality.

The discomfort is part of the process. But so is the growth.

So keep going. Keep learning. Keep becoming.

One small, brave step at a time.

And if you’re in the thick of it too, you’re not alone.

Give yourself permission to regroup with yourself today.

With love,

Abha

This past week, in the Middle East region, we navigated something most of us never expected. Missiles intercepted overhead. Emergency alerts going off on our phones. Kids at home on holiday with no school to send them to. Loved ones unable to fly back as UAE airspace closed (it is open now, thankfully!). And children asking questions about sounds that we never expected to have to explain.

And for those of you watching from further away - holding your breath for friends and family in the region, following the news with a knot in your stomach - that is its own kind of weight to carry.

And yet, here we are. We got up every morning. We made the breakfast. We held our kids a little closer. We answered the questions as best we could. We showed up for our work, our clients, our families, while quietly processing our own fears.

We are safe, and we are deeply grateful to the UAE leadership for how they have handled this extraordinary week. I feel genuinely lucky to call this place home.

But feeling safe doesn’t mean pretending this isn’t happening. We cannot ignore what’s unfolding around us, and we shouldn’t have to.

Because here’s the thing about being a working mum - there is no pause button. The mental load doesn’t lighten because the world outside feels heavy. There are still meals to make, deadlines to meet, and small people who are looking to us to know how to feel. Our kids are watching us far more closely than we realise. They’re taking their cues from how we show up.

And we show up. Every single time.

Choosing not to spiral when the world outside feels like it is, that’s not weakness. That’s not denial. That is motherhood. That is strength.

So today, on International Women’s Day, I don’t want to talk about hustle or ambition. I want to celebrate this → the unglamorous, invisible, extraordinary thing we do every day. The version of female strength that holds everything together when things get hard and rarely gets acknowledged.

We are more resilient than we know. And I am so proud to be in this community with you.

Happy International Women’s Day.

With love,

Abha xx

By now you’ve probably seen the news.

A few days ago, the US and Israel launched strikes on Iran, and Iran has been retaliating across the Gulf region.

It’s a fast-moving situation, and for those of us living in the UAE, it’s felt too close.

I’m writing this from Dubai, where this period feels different. Not just because of what’s happening, but because of how it’s happening.

We’re not watching this unfold from a distance, on TV or on our social media feeds. We share the Persian Gulf with Iran, and US and UAE military bases here have been targeted as part of Iran’s retaliation.

Geography makes this impossible to ignore. Some of us saw and heard missiles being intercepted in the sky above us (last night we saw it from our garden!).

Families are phoning us. Some of us have loved ones who can’t fly back as UAE airspace is closed. And our kids are asking questions about “bombs” and “explosions” - because they are hearing the sounds and seeing the smoke clouds - questions that we never expected to have to answer.

And yet - somehow - I still feel safe here. The UAE authorities have been remarkable in how they are handling this, and I feel genuinely lucky to live in a place that responds with such calm and competence. That matters. It’s okay to feel that too.

Because panic and anxiety, as understandable as they are, don’t protect us or our families. They just make a hard period harder.

My kids are home on distance learning for the next few days. My husband is working from home too until further notice. And somewhere between setting everyone up and sitting down at my own desk, I found myself thinking about how I want to navigate this period - not just today, but the days ahead.

Maybe you’re thinking the same thing.

Because that’s the thing about being a mum in uncertain times: life doesn’t stop.

There are still meals to make, work to get done, questions to answer, and small people who are looking to us to know how to feel.

What I keep coming back to is this:

We must stay informed, but not consumed.

We must stay prepared, but not paralysed.

And above all, we must stay grounded. Keep things as normal as possible, especially for the kids.

Normal means calm. Calm is contagious.

Our kids are watching us far more closely than we realise, and they’re taking their cues from how we show up.

Choosing not to spiral when the world outside feels like it is, that’s not denial. That’s motherhood.

So during this period, if all you do is take a breath, hold your kids a little closer, and show up gently for yourself - that’s enough.

Take care of yourselves.

With love,

Abha x

Something has shifted

You feel it, don’t you?

Not just the post-holiday tiredness, though that was there too. Not just the January blues or the short days or the new year pressure to suddenly reinvent yourself – “new year, new you” BS.

Something deeper. A kind of internal change that’s been hard to name. Like the ground has shifted a few centimetres and everything you built on it is still standing, just at a slightly different angle.

You’re still showing up, managing your kids and household; still serving your clients, still running your business. But something underneath feels different. Heavier. Uncertain?

If that’s where you are right now, this article is for you.

Because you’re not imagining it. You’re not being dramatic. You’re not failing to “stay positive” or “focus on your goals.”

You are a sensitive, switched-on woman running a business in one of the most disorienting moments in recent history - and you are feeling it exactly as you can be expected to feel.

Let’s talk about what’s actually going on.

The Snake has shed its skin

In Chinese astrology, we have just moved through the final weeks of the Year of the Snake, and are stepping across the threshold into the Year of the Horse.

Note: I am not heavily into Chinese astrology, but it’s been impossible to escape the wave of news and updates around it.

So for what it’s worth: The Snake was a year of introspection. Of hidden depths. Of slow, deliberate transformation happening beneath the surface, mostly invisible to the outside world. Snake energy is wise, intuitive, coiled. It demands that you go inward, sit still, and let things shed that need to shed.

And if January felt like a “shedding” of sorts — of old clients, old habits, old versions of your business or yourself — that makes complete astrological sense. The Snake was doing its final work. Or that’s what the astrologers say!(?)

The snake clears the path. The horse carries you forward.

The Horse energy is entirely different. Fast. Spirited. Wild in the best and most demanding sense. The Horse doesn’t wait for you to feel ready. It stamps its feet and moves.

So here you are: post the shedding and into the gallop. Still catching your breath from one, not yet sure how to hold the reins of the other.

No wonder you feel overwhelmed. So do I.

The world is moving faster than our nervous system

Even without the astrology, there’s the small matter of... everything else.

The AI landscape is no longer moving quickly. It’s moving violently.

Every week — sometimes every few days — a new model launches, a new capability emerges, a new headline arrives. Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, Grok — the names blur.

The claims escalate. “This changes everything.” “This is the last generation of this kind of tool.” “Nothing will be the same.” “The robots are coming. What will be human purpose.”(!).

And then the markets. The economy. The quiet, uneasy conversation happening in every industry about what jobs will exist in three years, in five years (and what won’t) — and what that means for the clients you serve, for the business you are trying to grow in the middle of all of this, for the world your children will inherit, for the future of this planet.

As a solopreneur, I feel this differently from someone inside a corporation.

There’s no HR department absorbing the shock. No management layer to filter the noise. It lands directly on your nervous system; and then you have to get on a client call and hold space for someone else’s nervous system too.

You are not bad at business. You are a human being processing an inhuman amount of change.

This matters to say out loud, because the overwhelm can convince you otherwise. It can whisper that other people are thriving, that you’re falling behind, that if you were just more disciplined or more strategic or more something, you’d feel fine. You wouldn’t. This is hard for everyone. It’s just that not everyone is talking about it.

We are entering the exponential age

To understand why this moment feels so different, it helps to understand one thing: we are not in a fast linear period of change. We are in an exponential one.

Raoul Pal, investor and founder of Real Vision, has written and spoken extensively about what he calls The Universal Code — the idea that technology adoption curves follow predictable exponential patterns; and that now because AI, crypto, and other converging technologies are all hitting a steep adoption curve at the same time, this moment is different in scale. He describes this as the greatest wealth-creating and disruption-causing period in human history. Not decade. History.

We are living through the most extraordinary moment of technological transformation ever seen. Most people haven’t processed what that actually means yet, (paraphrasing Raoul Pal)

Entrepreneur Matt Shumer recently wrote an article on the state of the world with AI that now has over 83 million views and called it “something big is happening”. The article has echoed through the online community, because it captures something that data alone can’t quite articulate. A feeling of threshold. Of before and after.

And then there is Gary Marcus — cognitive scientist, NYU professor, and perhaps the most important voice of reasoned scepticism in the AI conversation, added his thoughts to the chaos Shumer caused. Marcus does not deny the scale of what is happening. What he pushes back on is the certainty. The hype. The tendency to get flustered from something written by one person with a lot of emotion and making it feel like world-altering inevitability.

“Impressive isn’t the same as reliable. And reliable isn’t the same as trustworthy. We should not surrender our critical thinking just because something is astonishing.” — Gary Marcus

But here is what ties all of these voices together, and Allie Miller enters the conversation.

Miller is one of the most followed voices in AI business globally, named one of TIME’s 100 most influential people in AI, and someone who has trained millions of professionals in how to actually use these tools. She speaks with the authority of someone who has been inside the machine for over 20 years and her message to the rest of us is both clarifying and urgent.

Miller talks about what she calls the information asymmetry of the AI age. The divide, she argues, is not primarily between the technically gifted and the rest. It’s between those who are actively learning about AI - who are curious, engaged, acquiring knowledge, and putting it into practice - and those who are watching from the sidelines, overwhelmed or dismissive, waiting for things to settle down before they engage.

That asymmetry compounds over time. The people who are learning AI right now - not mastering everything, but learning intentionally, consistently, and applying what they learn - are building what Miller calls an “intelligence advantage.” Not because they’re smarter. Because they’re earlier. And in exponential systems, being earlier matters enormously.

This is not a message designed to panic you. It’s a message designed to orient you. Because here is what Miller also says: you don’t need to be a technologist.

You don’t need to understand how large language models work under the hood. What you need is to be the kind of person who stays curious, who acquires knowledge deliberately, and who closes the gap between learning and doing. Read, then act. Understand, then integrate. Don’t wait until you feel ready. Start before you feel ready.

What do we do with all four of these voices? We hold them all.

Raoul Pal says: the wave is real, and it is enormous.

Matt Shumer says: you are not imagining the scale of this moment.

Gary Marcus says: but stay awake — keep thinking, don’t outsource your judgment.

And Allie Miller says: the gap between those learning and those not is widening every single day. Choose which side you’re on.

All four are right. And somewhere in the tension between them is where you, as a solopreneur and mum navigating this landscape, need to find your footing.

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More robots than people

Now add one more voice to the room. One that is harder to ignore or dismiss.

At the World Economic Forum in Davos in January 2026, Elon Musk made his first-ever appearance at the gathering he had previously dismissed as elitist. Speaking with BlackRock CEO Larry Fink, he looked out at a room full of global leaders and said something that landed quietly but heavily:

“My prediction is that there will be more robots than people.” — Elon Musk, Davos 2026

Not someday in the abstract. He was speaking of a near future — one where Tesla’s Optimus robots move from factory floors to homes, where humanoid machines watch over your children, care for elderly parents, and perform complex tasks that currently require human hands and human judgment.

He has separately predicted that by 2040, humanoid robots will outnumber the 8 billion people currently on the planet. “Every country will have an AI or multiple AIs,” he said, “and there will be a lot of robots, way more robots than people.”

He didn’t frame this as dystopia. He framed it as abundance. But then he said something that cuts much closer to home for those of us running human-centred businesses:

“The question will really be one of meaning: if the computer and robots can do everything better than you, does your life have meaning?” — Elon Musk

That is not a comfortable question. But it is the right one.

And for coaches, consultants, solopreneurs and professionals of every kind — whether you run your own business or work inside someone else’s — it is the question that everything else hangs on right now.

Gary Marcus offers the counterweight to this dilemma. He disputes Musk’s timeline and scale, noting that even the best-selling consumer robot in history — the Roomba — has sold just 50 million units, and that imagining billions of reliable, safe humanoid robots in the near term is “fantasy.” The technical and safety challenges remain enormous. So the economics are uncertain and the hype is real.

But here is what both Musk the optimist and Marcus the sceptic agree on: the direction of progress is not in question. Automation, AI, and robotics are moving into the spaces where human labour currently lives. Not all at once and not without resistance. But steadily, and faster than most of us are ready for.

Which means the question is no longer whether the world is changing around you. It’s what you are going to make irreplaceably yours within it.

Your humanness is the asset

Here is what a robot cannot do.

It cannot carry the specific texture of a life lived. It cannot bring the weight of having survived something, rebuilt something, changed direction at 35 or 42 or 51 and figured out who you are on the other side.

It cannot hold a client in the particular way that you do — shaped by your history, your failures, your hard-won clarity about what actually matters.

It cannot love and parent your kids like you can.

It cannot be you.

In a world moving towards automation, your human story is not a soft differentiator. It is a hard competitive advantage.

The more the world fills with machine-generated content, machine-performed tasks, and machine-made decisions, the rarer and more precious genuine human presence becomes. Not human presence in the generic sense, human presence in the specific, irreplicable sense.

Your life experience, your perspective, your voice — these are not the soft stuff. In the exponential age, they are the product.

But here’s the challenge: if no one can see you, your thoughts, your perspectives, none of that matters.

Share

This is true whether you are a parent, building your own business or climbing inside someone else’s.

Whether you are a coach, a consultant, a creative, or a corporate leader trying to stay relevant as the ground shifts beneath your industry. In a crowded, fast-moving, increasingly automated market, visibility is not vanity. It is survival strategy.

The people who will attract the most opportunity in the next three to five years — whether that’s clients, collaborations, promotions, or partnerships — are not necessarily the most qualified. They are the most visible, the most clearly positioned, and the most consistently showing up in the spaces where decisions are being made about who to trust, hire, follow, or buy from.

What to do about it

Now the practical part. Because insight without action is paralysis.

Be seen. Now.

Being seen is the one thing you can start doing immediately. Today. Before you feel ready. Before you have it figured out. Before the overwhelm has fully cleared.
Not perfectly. Not with a polished brand identity and a 12-week content strategy. Just begin.

Share one thing you know on the platform of your choice (maybe this one!). Tell one story from your work. Offer one perspective on what’s changing in your industry.

Do it on the platform where your people already are — LinkedIn if you’re in the corporate or B2B world, Instagram if you’re in the coaching or wellness space, Substack if you enjoy long form - wherever the people you want to reach, future clients or employers are already scrolling.

Positioning yourself visibly in a rapidly changing market is not about shouting loudest. It’s about being findable at the moment someone needs exactly what you have. That moment is coming for more people than you think, because disruption creates demand for human guidance, trusted perspectives, and genuine expertise. Be there when it arrives.

And the good news is that you don’t have to do this alone or in a thousand hours a week. Learn to use AI to do it well.

Use AI to amplify your human voice, not replace it

This is where Allie Miller’s information asymmetry meets Musk’s robot future in the most practical way possible.

The people who will win in this new landscape are not those who create the most content. They are those who use AI to help them show up more consistently, more clearly, and more authentically than they could alone.

Use AI to help you articulate ideas you’ve been sitting on but haven’t had time to write. Use it to turn a 20-minute client conversation into a thought leadership post. Use it to draft the LinkedIn article about what you’ve learned this year, then edit it in your own voice until it sounds like you, because it should. Use it to research your market, sharpen your positioning, generate the first draft you stare at before you make it real. You no longer have to start with a blank page.

AI doesn’t replace your perspective. It removes the friction between your perspective and the world seeing it.

Position yourself with clarity, not just activity.

Visibility without positioning is noise. What you need is to be clearly associated with something specific — a problem you solve, a transformation you guide, a perspective or belief that is distinctly yours. Not a generic description of what you do. A sharp, memorable answer to the question: “What do you do, and who do you do it for?”

In a world filling up with AI-generated content, the human who wins is not the one who publishes the most. It’s the one who stands for something clear enough that when someone has the problem you solve, your name is the one that surfaces. Work out what that is. State it simply. Repeat it consistently. Let AI help you do it without burning out.

Stop trying to keep up with everything

There is no keeping up. The AI news cycle, the market updates, the LinkedIn thought leaders, the new tools - they are an infinite scroll of the incomprehensible. Your job is not to consume all of it. Your job is to curate ruthlessly and consume intentionally.

Choose two or three trusted voices in the AI and business space. Read them. Ignore the rest. You will miss some things. You will miss far more by trying to track everything and losing your ability to think clearly in the process.

Close the information asymmetry on your terms

This is Allie Miller’s challenge to you, and it’s worth taking seriously. The gap between those learning AI and those who aren’t is not closing, it’s widening.

You don’t need to code or be an AI researcher. But you do need to become someone who is actively, consistently, and intentionally building your AI literacy. One article. One tool. One experiment per week. The compounding effect of small, regular learning is how you move from the passive side of the asymmetry to the active side. Acquire the knowledge, then put it into action. That sequence - learn, then do - is what will separate those who adapt from those who are left behind.

Build a slower inner life to support a faster outer world

The Horse year will reward speed, but not frantic speed. Intentional speed. The difference between the two is almost entirely internal. Solopreneurs who move fast without an inner anchor tend to make expensive decisions, burn out, and lose the thread of what made their work meaningful. Whatever slows you down enough to think - eg morning pages, a daily walk, meditation, a real conversation with a friend -is not a luxury right now. It is foundational.

Trust what has shed

Whatever fell away in January, a client who left, a launch that went flop, a service you retired, a version of your business that stopped feeling true, trust it. The Snake does not shed carelessly. What came off was ready to come off. You are not smaller for it. You are lighter.

What the overwhelm is actually telling you

Here is what I want you to consider before we close: overwhelm is not the opposite of capability. It is often the signal of it.

When you are genuinely overwhelmed - not burned out, not avoidant, but truly maxed out on input - it usually means one of two things. Either you are taking in more than your current capacity can process. Or you are being asked to grow into something your current identity hasn’t caught up with yet.

For most of the women I speak to right now, it’s both.

The overwhelm is not here to break you. It’s here to tell you that the old container is too small for what’s coming.

So before you try to manage the overwhelm, get quiet with it for a moment. What is it actually about? Where in your business or your life is there a gap between who you were and who you’re being called to become? What has January been trying to show you, underneath the heaviness?

This is your permission slip to be okay to slow down to speed up.

The Snake always sheds what no longer fits. The question is whether you’re willing to let go.

The other side of the overwhelm

There is a version of you on the other side of this.

She has moved through the transition. She let January do its work. She found her footing. She chose the active side of the information asymmetry. She started showing up visibly, clearly, and as herself in the spaces where opportunity can find her.

She used AI not as a threat but as a tool that gave her time back and got her voice into the world more consistently than she ever managed alone.

She is not someone who figured it all out. She is someone who kept going, but differently. More deliberately. More anchored. More seen.

And she understood something that the noise of this moment makes easy to forget: in a future with more robots than people, the thing that cannot be automated is her. Her story. Her wisdom. Her way of being with another human in their hardest and most important moments.

Your humanness, your life experience, your way of seeing, these are not the things the world is moving away from. They are precisely what the world is moving towards.

The world is moving fast.

Raoul Pal is right: the wave is real. Matt Shumer is right: something big is happening. Gary Marcus is right: stay awake and keep thinking. Allie Miller is right: the asymmetry is real, choose your side. And Elon Musk is right about one thing above all others: the question of meaning is the question of our time.

You get to answer it. Not with a robot. Not with a prompt. With your life, your work, and your willingness to be seen doing both.

The Horse is stamping its feet. And you are more ready than you feel.

Here’s something I’ve been noticing since the beginning of 2026, and you may recognise it too.

A lot of us expected 2026 to begin with clarity and momentum.

Instead, for many people - including me - it’s started with questions.

Not necessarily crisis-level questions.
But quieter ones. The kind that sit in the background while you’re getting on with work, family life, and everything else.

Politically, the world feels unsettled.
Technologically, AI is evolving at a pace that can feel both energising and overwhelming - sometimes on the same day.

And if you’re a working mum, you might be noticing how none of this stays “out there.”

It has a way of filtering into your thinking. Your plans. Your confidence. Your sense of direction.

I’ve had a lot of conversations recently that sound a bit like this:

“I didn’t expect the year to start this way.”

For some people, January brought very real disruption - job loss, health and financial challenges. For others, life looks mostly the same on the outside… but something feels different internally, maybe even a bit…off?

And if that’s not you - if you’re feeling grounded, clear, and energised right now - that’s genuinely wonderful.

This is simply an invitation for those who might be feeling a little less certain.

So let me ask you gently:

How has 2026 been for you so far?

Not how it should be going.
Not how it appears from the outside.
But how it’s actually felt.

I ask because I’ve been reflecting on this myself.

December ended strong for me. Momentum was high. Things felt aligned.
January, however, asked different questions.

A launch I was excited about didn’t land the way I’d hoped. At the same time, the pace of change in AI nudged me to pause and rethink what I offer - and how I can serve you best in a landscape that’s shifting so quickly.

It wasn’t dramatic.
But it was uncomfortable.

Which led me to an insight I wanted to share.

The truth about feeling “off-centre” right now

If you’re feeling slightly out of sync, it doesn’t necessarily mean something is wrong.
Often, it means something is changing faster than your internal compass has had time to recalibrate.

There are a few reasons this shows up so commonly right now:

First, the speed of technological change has outpaced most of our existing ways of coping. Even if you’re curious and optimistic about AI, constant evolution demands cognitive and emotional bandwidth.

Second, not all disruption is loud. Sometimes the most important shifts happen quietly - when old goals stop motivating you, or when the plan you had no longer fits quite as well.

And third, in times of uncertainty, it’s very easy to slip into reaction mode. More learning. More doing. More “keeping up.”

That can feel productive - but it often pulls us further away from clarity.

What actually helps

What I’m learning (and relearning) is that recentring matters more than reacting.

Not by stepping away from ambition or growth.
But by pausing long enough to choose where your energy goes next; instead of letting circumstances decide for you.

That’s exactly why we recorded our latest podcast episode.

In it, my co-host Sabine — who is also a mindset coach — talks about how to recentre yourself when the world feels noisy or uncertain. She also shares a short, simple exercise you can do straight away to reconnect with what you actually want this year.

Not what your to-do list demands.
Not what the algorithm rewards.
But what feels aligned for you, now.

🎧 If this interests you, you can listen to the episode here.

Try this, if it feels useful

If you decide to listen, here’s how I’d approach it:

Start with curiosity, not expectation.
Do the exercise once — even imperfectly.
Notice whether you feel a little more grounded afterwards. That’s often the first signal.

Clarity doesn’t usually arrive all at once.
It arrives in small moments of steadiness.

Worth noting

Periods of global change often invite personal recalibration. That’s not a failure - it’s a response.

And if you feel like sharing, I’d genuinely love to hear from you.
You can simply hit reply and tell me - how has this year really started for you?

No pressure.
No need to have answers.

Just a check-in.

Warmly,
Abha

This week, something a little different...
I’m on the other side of the mic.

I was recently interviewed on The She Invests Show, and I’ve been sitting with how powerful and full-circle the experience felt.

This wasn’t just a conversation about AI.
It was about motherhood. Mindset. Starting over.
And choosing to build something for you — on your terms.

A few years ago, I was...

• Tired of feeling stuck in corporate

• Missing out on time with my kids

• Wondering, is this really it?

I knew I wanted more freedom.
I just had no idea what that looked like.

Fast-forward to today... I’m running a business that I love — helping women use AI to show up confidently online, without relying on expensive copywriters, designers, or tech experts.

But getting here wasn’t some smooth, step-by-step plan.
It started with one small experiment: creating a children’s book with AI in under an hour.
That book sold.
And that was my moment. My proof.
If I could do this, what else was possible?

In this episode, I talk about:

• How I used AI to go from side hustle to six-figure potential

• The mindset shift that changed everything for me

• Why you don’t need to master AI, you just need to learn to lead it

• What it’s really like to build a business as a mum of two

• The behind-the-scenes of my AI “team” (yes, I’ve trained 20+ AI assistants!)

• The difference between creating content... and creating connection

This chat goes deep. It’s honest. And if you’re a working mum dreaming of building something on your own terms, I think it will really speak to you.

🎧 Listen to the full episode here on Spotify

Watch here on YouTube:

I say this in the episode and I’ll say it again here:

You don’t need to learn all the AI tools.
You just need one. And you need to know what you want it to do for you.

Because this isn’t about the tech. It’s about your time, your energy, and your vision.

There is no “perfect” path — only the one that feels right for you.

If you watch, I’d love to know what lands most for you.
Drop a comment or reply — I’m always up for a good voice note chat too. 😊

Leave a comment

And if this inspired you to take your next small step, let me know.
Sometimes, all it takes is a shift in how we see what’s possible.

Abha xx

I recently came across a word I hadn’t heard before: techno stress.

Naturally, it stopped me in my tracks.

As someone who teaches women how to confidently use AI in their businesses, this term struck a deep chord.

Because while AI is a powerful tool for growth and efficiency, it’s also bringing up a very real, very valid sense of overwhelm for so many of us.

And that’s exactly what we explored in this week’s episode of “Who you do want to be?” a podcast that explores the intersection of human intelligence and artificial intelligence.

The rise of techno stress what it means, where it’s coming from, and how to protect our energy while embracing AI.

🎧 Listen here

Watch here:

Wait: What is techno stress?

Here’s how it’s defined in consensus by multiple reports found online:

“Techno stress is a psychological and physical strain caused by the rapid adoption of new technologies, like AI. It shows up as information overload, digital fatigue, and the pressure to constantly keep up.”

Sound familiar?

Yes, to me too.

Whether you’re an entrepreneur navigating 100+ unread emails, a mum worried about how your kids are using AI, or just a woman trying to stay afloat in an ever-evolving tech world, this episode is for you.

Subscribe now

Here’s what we covered in the episode:

• Why AI is both a gift and a stressor
  (Yes, we built it to help us. But now we’re scrambling to keep up with it.)

• How techno stress is showing up for women
  Especially for solopreneurs who are building businesses, managing households, and navigating content creation without a team.

• The power of awareness and micro-action
  (Spoiler: I unsubscribed from 100 newsletters this week. It felt incredible.)

• Simple mindset shifts to reclaim control
  Because we can’t control the pace of AI, but we can control how we engage with it.

• Why it’s okay to not be an AI expert
  And how just-in-time learning is the only learning strategy that matters right now.

My personal story from the episode…

I finally cleared out my inbox.
Zero unread emails.

I felt amazing for… 10 minutes.

Then I returned from my coffee break to 108 new emails.
Most of them were from amazing AI newsletters I’d subscribed to in an effort to “keep up.”

And I realised, this is the root of my techno stress.
Not AI itself.
But the pressure to know it all, do it all, teach it all.

So I did something radical: I unsubscribed from over 100 email lists.

Yep, 100.

It felt scary (hello FOMO), but it also felt like taking back control. I chose 3 trusted sources to follow. That’s it.

A small action with a big result: clarity, peace, and less pressure.

So what can we do about techno stress?

There’s no one-size-fits-all solution, but it always starts with awareness.

Ask yourself:

• What part of this is truly serving me?

• Where is my overwhelm really coming from?

• What can I gently let go of?

And then take one small action.
Unsubscribe. Take a tech-free hour. Curate your feed. Set better boundaries.

Even tiny shifts can help us feel more grounded, especially when the world around us feels like it’s accelerating at light speed.

Let’s not forget this…

✨ You don’t have to keep up with everything to use AI meaningfully.
✨ You’re allowed to take breaks and protect your energy.
✨ You can be intentional and tech-savvy, without losing your peace.

We’re all navigating this together, and in this week’s episode, you’ll hear honest reflections, helpful mindset shifts, and a big reminder that:

You still get to choose how you show up in this AI-driven world.

📍 Listen to the full podcast episode here
And share it with someone who might need this conversation too.

Share

Abha

P.S. What’s one small action you can take this week to reduce techno stress in your life? Hit reply or comment below!

Leave a comment

Every week when I sit down to record our podcast, “Who do you want to be,” a podcast that explores the intersection of human intelligence and artificial intelligence, I’m reminded why I started it in the first place.

I do this for women like us: women holding careers, children, ambition, dreams.
Women navigating life at full speed in a world that’s shifting faster than we ever imagined.

A world where AI is no longer some distant concept. It’s here. In our homes. In our work.
It’s helping. It’s overwhelming.
It’s both.

Who Do You Want to Be? is a space to slow down.
To reflect. To ask better questions.
To use technology with intention, while staying anchored in who we truly are.

We don’t have all the answers, but we do want to have the conversations.

In this week’s episode we’re not talking about robots taking over the world.
We’re talking about something quieter, and maybe more dangerous.

👉 What happens when we slowly stop thinking for ourselves?

In this conversation, my cohost Sabine and I explore Sam Altman’s idea of the “silent surrender” the fear that as AI tools become more seamless, we may begin to hand over our creativity, our decisions, even our identity to them… simply because it’s easier.

We talk about:

• Why this surrender is so easy to fall into

• The subtle impact on our mindset, motivation, and confidence

• How we model tech use for our children

• And how to stay present, grounded, and human in the midst of it all

This isn’t about resisting change.
It’s about staying conscious through it, so we can make the most of it whilst avoiding the worst of it.

🎧 You can listen to the episode, here.
📺 Or watch it here:

I’d love to leave you with this:

Since you started using AI… do you feel like you’re still thinking for yourself, especially about things that matter the most?
Or are you slowly outsourcing more than you realise?

Hit reply or comment below, I’d truly love to hear what comes up for you.

Leave a comment

With love,
Abha

P.S. If this episode resonates, share it with a friend who’s navigating motherhood, work, and tech, and trying to stay intentional through it all💛

Share

What do you do when your child shows real potential in a subject like math, and you want to nurture it?

That’s the question we cover in our latest podcast episode of “Who do you want to be,” a podcast that explores the intersection of human intelligence and artificial intelligence.

We’re two mothers who host this podcast, and we deeply immersed in the intersection of mindset, motherhood, and AI.

We are both determined to make the most of AI in our lives, whilst raising curious, capable children.

So when it came to helping our daughters go further in math in a world that is increasingly becoming AI-first, our choices reflected two very different - but equally intentional - approaches.

One of us hired a real, human tutor.
The other introduced her daughter to a gamified AI math tool (that was me!)

And in this episode of Who Do You Want to Be?, we compared notes; not to decide which is “better,” but to ask a more meaningful question:

How do we prepare our children for a future where both AI and human relationships matter?

My co-host Sabine’s daughter is thriving with her in-person tutor.

She looks forward not just to the lessons, but to the connection - those few minutes before class where they talk about horses or school or how her week went. The emotional safety of that space is just as valuable as the academic content. That bond creates trust. And trust, in turn, creates confidence.

For me, the AI tool called Synthesis has been surprisingly effective for my 7 year old daughter. The lessons are short, adaptive, and playful. My daughter doesn’t dread them - she actually asks to log in. And when she gets stuck, the AI gently re-routes and tries again. Usually it’s my husband sitting beside her, watching how she learns, seeing what frustrates her, understanding what clicks.

The key takeaway from both of our experiences are that:
There’s no single “right” choice.

But there is a deeper layer worth examining.

Because this isn’t just about math tutors.
It’s about how we integrate technology into our homes and hearts, and how we help our kids do the same.

AI is already part of our lives and immersing into it at an unprecedented speed.
Are we embracing it with awareness, or using it just for convenience?

We talked about that, too. I won’t give away all the chat here, but if this peaks your interest at all, you can listen to it here:

Or watch it here:

And if this conversation resonated, you’ll love some of our most recent episodes exploring the emotional side of AI.

Because as much as we focus on its usefulness, we also need to talk about how it’s shaping our relationships, identities, and inner lives.

• In Episode 37, we asked: Is it ever okay to build emotional relationships with AI?
  Think robotic dogs comforting elderly patients. Or children bonding with AI companions. Or even you, whispering “thank you” to Alexa. When does this feel helpful? And when does it quietly start to replace something real? We share personal stories and raise questions that don’t have easy answers, but are important to ask

• In Episode 36, we talk about AI getting into deeper relationships: For example - Would you date an AI? It sounds like sci-fi, but it’s already happening. We dig into real examples of people forming romantic bonds with AI chatbots, what’s driving this trend, and how it reflects deeper emotional needs - loneliness, convenience, control. We also explore the risks: what happens when AI gives us only what we want to hear?

• And in Episode 35, we talked about why people actually miss the “nice” version of ChatGPT.
  You know, the one that was overly polite, encouraging, and kind of like a life coach? OpenAI’s new update made it more neutral, and people felt the shift emotionally. So what does it say about us that we liked the version that made us feel good, even when it wasn’t real? It opened a door to deeper questions about our need for validation and the parasocial relationships we’re forming with our tools.

Subscribe now

So why are we having these conversations?

Because we’re already living in an AI-first world.
And more importantly, our children are growing up in it.
It’s about raising humans who know how to connect, with tools, with ideas, and with each other.

That starts with awareness.
It continues with intention.
And it deepens through community, like this one I’m building here with you.

Let’s talk about it!

Would you trust AI to teach your child?
Have you ever felt emotionally connected to your chatbot or virtual assistant?

Comment below or hit reply. I’d love to hear form you!

Leave a comment

Episodes of our podcast drop every Thursday - so subscribe if you want to be notified - and I’m going to share more about them here too.

Until next week, keep asking questions. Keep exploring new tools.
And above all, keep staying grounded in who you want to be.

All for now,

Abha x

I don’t miss an opportunity to sit down with an inspiring mum who is building a business, to dive into her world - the challenges, the wins, the big whys behind it all - and share her story here.

This time, I’m thrilled to introduce you to Khevna Jilla, founder of Familierge (Family + Concierge), a bespoke lifestyle business that supports busy families relocating to, living in, or visiting Dubai.

I met Khevna met in Dubai at a networking event and connected right away. Despite being on the entrepreneurship rollercoaster AND being a mum to two small boys, she always exudes positivity.

In this vulnerable interview, we pull the curtain back and get a peek into Khevna’s life as a mum and business owner, the juggle of it all - and most importantly how she manages it all whilst staying true to herself, her purpose and her family.

I get so much energy and joy from the interviews and I hope you enjoy them as much as I do!

Meet Khevna, mum of 2 and founder of Familierge, a family concierge service

Q. Can you start by telling us a little bit about yourself?

I’m a mum to two very energetic boys - ages three and eight - who keep me on my toes! I’ve spent over 15 years in marketing, working corporate jobs. But two years ago, after our family moved back to Dubai, I decided to launch Familierge - a lifestyle concierge service exclusively for families.

It came from a very real need I experienced myself. I was planning a staycation for my son's first birthday and realized how overwhelming it was. Even a short local trip felt like moving house! I thought - there has to be a better way to support parents with this. When I found there wasn’t anything like it in Dubai... I decided to create it myself.

Q. What inspired the leap from marketing into entrepreneurship?

It really started after I had my second child. I was exploring freelance options in marketing but hit a wall.

While planning that staycation, I felt how intense and stressful travel could be with kids - and it clicked. What if I created a service that solved this exact problem for parents like me?

That was the spark. And from there, I built Familierge - to give back time, ease, and support to families who desperately need it.

Q. What’s your personal “why” behind this business?

Making a real difference in people’s lives.

When I was in the corporate world, I was working crazy hours but not feeling fulfilled. Now, when a parent tells me they feel supported, more present with their kids, or simply seen - that means everything.

And honestly, I also want my boys to see that moms work hard too. That we build, create, and lead. Even when things get hard, we keep going.

Q. What’s been your biggest challenge as a business-owning mum?

Time. Always time. There’s never enough of it! But beyond that - it’s the emotional bandwidth.

I’m also navigating perimenopause, which adds another layer. The hormone shifts, the energy dips… it’s real. You’ve got to be the resilient entrepreneur, the present mum, the supportive partner - all at once. It’s exhausting.

I’m learning to prioritise sleep, be kinder to myself - and I’m taking herbal hormone supplements which are helping me. This journey demands everything, and you can’t pour from an empty cup.

Q: What’s one piece of advice you’d give another mum wanting to start her business?

Start before you're ready. I worked on my business for 18 months before launching - because I thought everything had to be perfect. But the truth is, things evolve. You grow as your business grows.

Also, surround yourself with people who lift you up. Community is everything. Being around people who get it will help you navigate the messiness of entrepreneurship.

Q. What’s your take on AI and how it fits into your business journey?

Honestly, I didn’t fully understand its potential until I met you! I knew about ChatGPT and the buzz around it - but not how powerful it could be when trained and used well. Now I see how AI can streamline my work, save time, and scale my impact. It's not here to replace us - it's here to empower us. But we need to get educated and start using it smartly.

Q. What’s your ultimate goal as a working mum?

To raise emotionally intelligent, kind, and empathetic boys who know the value of hard work - and who see that mums can chase big dreams too.

Q. Where do you draw inspiration from?

My boys, first and foremost. And also, other women. The stories I’ve heard over the past year… from women turning pain into purpose, breaking cycles, building empires from nothing. It’s so powerful. And those stories always make me feel - if they can do it, I can do it too.

Q. How do you stay motivated?

I literally talk to myself every morning. I remind myself of why I started. I keep music on to lift my energy. And I practice mindset work, because motivation doesn’t always show up!

Q. What’s your top productivity tip?

Do the most annoying task on your list first. Get it done early, and everything else feels easier. That alone can change the entire flow of your day!

Q. Favourite parenting hack?

When emotions are high, I’ve realised, just giving your child a hug can make a massive difference to both you and your child. Especially when you don’t want to. It diffuses tension instantly and reminds both of you that you’re on the same team. It works even with my 3-year-old!

Q. How do you fill your own cup?

Music. Puzzles. The rare moments of quiet. Meditation doesn’t work for me, but puzzles help me zone out and reset. And I’m learning that I do need more rest to keep going.

Q. What do you feel most guilty about?

Not spending enough quality time with my kids. That guilt never fully goes away. But I’m trying to be more present, even if just for 30 focused minutes each evening at dinner time. I put away my phone, so they have me 100% during that time.

Q.What’s one tool that makes your work easier?

ChatGPT, hands down! I don’t know how I managed without it. It’s a game-changer for productivity.

Q.What’s the best thing you’ve watched or read lately?

Two shows: Parenthood on Netflix; I don’t know how I hadn’t seen it before! It’s lighthearted and so relatable with many multi-generational stories weaved into it. And Adolescence which sparked powerful conversations at home about raising boys.

Q. Favorite quote?

“I am not what happened to me. I am what I choose to become.”

Ever since I heard this quote, it has stuck with me. This constantly reminds me that I’m not defined by the past, only by the choices I make now.

I am so grateful for Khevna to have shared her story so openly and beautifully. Her honesty, drive, and vision are exactly what this community is about. 💛

If you’d like to watch our chat, you can do that here:

To all the working mums reading, I hope Khevna’s journey reminds you that:

✨You don’t have to be perfect to start.
✨You’re not alone in the juggle.
✨And yes, you can build a business that supports the life you truly want.

Leave a comment

If you want to know more about Khevna and the amazing services she offers at Familierge to make your life with a child as easy as possible, do check out her website here.

📩 Love this interview? Forward this to a friend who needs to hear it! And if you’d like to be featured in a future issue, hit reply and tell me your story.

xx Abha xx