Reducing the Mental Load with AI: Insights from Jess Clark

Sarah McLachlan: 0:03

Hey there, I'm Sarah McLachlan. Thanks for joining me on the Chaos to Calm podcast, a podcast designed for women over 40 who think that changing hormones might be messing with their mood, metabolism and energy and want to change that in a healthy, sustainable and permanent way. Each episode will explore topics related to health and wellness for women in their 40s, like what the heck is happening to your hormones, what to do about it with nutrition, lifestyle and stress management, and inspiring conversations with guests sharing their insights and tips on how to live your best life in your 40s and beyond. So if you're feeling like you're in the midst of a hormonal storm and don't want perimenopause to be horrific, then join me on Chaos to Calm as I share with you how to make it to menopause without it wrecking your relationships and life.

Sarah McLachlan: 1:00

Hi everyone and welcome to Chaos to Calm podcast. I'm your host, Sarah McLachlan, and I'm so excited today to be welcoming my guest, your AI BFF. I've got the Jess Clark with me here today to talk us all through artificial intelligence and how we can use that to really get through our to-do list there. So we're going to talk about lots of ways that you might use it, some things that might stop you from using it and how to overcome those. So welcome Jess. Thanks for joining me today.

Jess Clark: 1:35

I normally am on business podcasts, so I love the opportunity to kind of reach out to different communities because I am a mum as well, first and foremost.

Sarah McLachlan: 1:46

So, yes, that's it, and that's one of the reasons that you kind of fell into using AI's and at all one of the motivations. Perhaps you can tell us a bit more about how you got to be here and being. I know you're my AI BFF, you're my mentor when it comes to all things artificial intelligence. So yeah, tell us a bit more about you and how you got here.

Jess Clark: 2:09

Yeah, so I have kind of been in the entrepreneurial space on and off since I was in my early 20s. It's always kind of been in the back of my head to have my own business, but on the flip side, I've always had this real hunger for just growth, I guess. So being the CEO of a big corporation that kind of thing always been my dream. But then, when I had kids, just completely changed and I was just like I don't want to go back to work. I'm going to do everything to not go back to work and be a CEO. So let's have a think about business. So I had my first baby, ella, in 2018, and when I was meant to go back to work with her, covid hit. So I was lucky enough to be able to kind of silver lining be able to stay at home with her and be the primary caregiver and work from home a few days a week, part time, and then fell pregnant with Gracie, who's my second born, and yeah, I knew that that wasn't going to be the case again. I wasn't going to get that opportunity to be at home and be a stay at home mom and earn a really good income, which I was working the part time job. So I was like, let's narrow down into what I'm really good at. I had just finished kind of working for government and before I went on maternity leave and I was creating online courses and training lots and lots of different people across the organization and I was like, okay, online courses, that's something that I can do. So that's what I did for the first eight months of business and I knew it was going to be really hard having the two girls at home. But it got to the point where I was like I'm resenting my family because I just want to be able to have a minute to sit down and work and it's not possible. Like this is impossible. Like to be running a business, be growing it, building it and being to the point where I'm successful. It's just not going to happen Having two kids at home.

Jess Clark: 4:17

I don't have the time, I don't have the bandwidth in my brain. I've got grocery lists and washing and changing nappies and everyone's sick and going through all of those motions as we all do, and getting out to the parks and play dates and post-COVID. Obviously, part of my mind was always like I need to socialise my kids because we've been indoors for over a year. I'm in Melbourne as well. It was very much. We are within our 5K radius. We're not going anywhere.

Jess Clark: 4:48

I got to this point at the end of last year, november. I was like this just I don't know. I think I'm going to have to get onto the recruitment sites and try and find something close at home. We're going to have to look down the barrel of getting the kids into daycare. That really hurt my heart. It really hurt my heart because it was going to be long days and they just weren't used to it. I know some families do have to do that, but for us that was always, you know, we didn't want to go down that path.

Jess Clark: 5:19

Then ChatJPT launched at the end of November I think it's the 31st of November. I got this email to say this is going to be game changing for the entire world, particularly for business. I went down a complete rabbit hole with it. Yeah, obviously, when I first started using it, it was all about how can I use it so that it's going to make my life easier to be a business owner and stay at home and have the kids? That was my first kind of definitely foray into it, just sitting on the couch with my hubby and being like we were both just laughing, just watching these words roll in. If you have seen it and seen you have fast it creates content. That first time when you see that, I think it's almost just like oh my God, how is this even real?

Sarah McLachlan: 6:07

I know it's surreal, isn't it? It's amazing.

Jess Clark: 6:10

So surreal, it's insane. But then obviously I started thinking about oh, what else can I use this for? I've got a to-do list from work, but what about my to-do list for home? That's when I started kind of truly, I guess, integrating it into my entire life and not so much just thinking about it as a business tool. And yeah, since I did do it for business, since I have integrated it with my business, the mental load, the I am at home, I'm running a profitable business inside two hours a day, while my now she's just turned two, so two hours a day she has a nap and that's when I sit down and work and that's basically that's when I work. That's it. Otherwise, outside of that, I am full-time mum mode and I get everything I need to done. Obviously, there are some days where I'm like oh, this is a lot, but yeah, like everybody, the struggle never really goes away and I was thinking while you were talking, like, while you're, you know you're at a different life phase.

Sarah McLachlan: 7:18

say to me, and maybe many of my listeners hearing you talk about baby brain and you know, being deep in those trenches of early motherhood, is very relatable in terms of perimenopause or menopause brain and just feeling overwhelmed and foggy and not clearheaded, and so I guess that really presents the opportunity for using AI or specifically, chat. Gpt is is where your, your zone of genius to really help distill through that, Like I always think two hours a day is not very much.

Sarah McLachlan: 7:55

You know, many people are working an eight hour day or we might think that we have to work a lot for business, but I've seen your to-do list sometimes and what you turn through in that two hours and it's pretty amazing what you can get done. Yeah, let's talk about some of the things that you've used it for in terms of, I guess, more maybe household stuff or personal stuff, and I know there's lots of crossover between the two, and that that's seeing the business use makes you think, oh, I wonder if I could use it for this, but can you tell?

Sarah McLachlan: 8:32

us a bit more about what you think the people can use it for in their home life.

Jess Clark: 8:38

Home? Yeah for sure. So I think the big one for me is I've got One little girl that is she's just turned two, so I'm sure it's going to change, but she's a great eater. She will eat everything. She's super happy to sit in her high chair and she'll just go to town on everything. The eldest one, ella not so much Like we're talking, if it's not chips, like outside of that, she likes cucumber.

Sarah McLachlan: 9:06

She's four right.

Jess Clark: 9:08

Yeah, she's turning five in October. Okay, hopefully she'll come back to. Yeah, so fingers crossed. So I have gone into Chattie PT and I do this on a weekly now, because creating dinners was always just one of those things thinking of what to cook at the end of every day and making sure I've been up to the grocery store to get everything not something that I enjoy at all.

Jess Clark: 9:33

Yeah, so I can put into Chattie PT this is what my family eats, and we only eat chicken breast. We don't eat lamb, we don't eat pork, so we are kind of a bit of a fussy family in that regard. So I've put all of that into Chattie PT and I've said come up with, you know, five meal ideas for dinner and make sure, like for Ella, make sure that she is going to even if it's something that we eat as a family, that she can have something that's going to be portioned out to her. So I've told, or chat all of that, so it'll come up with five amazing ideas that we can eat. And then I'll say great, put all of that into a shopping list for me and I can print that out and I'll go straight to the grocery store with that.

Sarah McLachlan: 10:15

It's so good. I've been using it that way for myself because when we got back from travelling around, I was a bit fatigued with thinking of things to eat. And it's always up to me, you know, I'll ask the others, I don't know, I don't mind, I'll just tell me, I'll make it, just tell me. So then I was like well, I'll ask Chattie, because no, chat's always going to give me an answer, it's going to do me that. It's given me some great food ideas. And then, if I'm like, well, what recipe would you suggest with that? And it'll give a recipe.

Sarah McLachlan: 10:47

Now, so far the recipes have been good and we've been having fish tacos on a higher rotation, which, chattie suggested to me because I had lots of coriander in the garden and sides and we had it last night and six out of six, eight, which is pretty phenomenal because it's not normally like that, I know it. And instead of the meal plan, feeling hard and taking for ages and doing the shopping list and working it all out. It's like a 30 second process now because I just go into the same thread and say this week we've got more of this thing or that thing, or give me five meal ideas and off we go.

Jess Clark: 11:27

I love it.

Sarah McLachlan: 11:28

Yeah, so, yeah. So meal plan shopping list recipes it does.

Jess Clark: 11:33

Those To do lists are awesome. So last week Gracie turned two and I had planned to have like a little mini birthday party here at the house and then on the weekend we had, you know, lots of family stuff, so I had to have like food in the house once again. So all of the shopping lists were done. But then all of just the little things, like I said, that you forget sometimes where it's like you've got to have the candles, that just like sometimes get left off the shopping list and making sure you've got the balloons and you know she's two. So we wanted to make it like really special for her.

Jess Clark: 12:08

But I put all of that into chat as I was kind of remembering it, and then I got chat to make sure that it was included in that shopping list at the end of the week as well. So just little things like that where I'm just thinking of things on the fly. I can put them into my phone notes too, and then when I'm doing that initial, that final prompt to chat just straight in there. So it's all in there. You just don't have that brain fog or getting getting hope in the grocery store and that feeling of like oh, I forgot this, and now I've got to go back.

Sarah McLachlan: 12:39

Yeah, there's nothing worse than that Is that the other day had ended up going to three supermarkets because I'd forgotten stuff because I hadn't written my shopping list from chat there as well. Yeah, so we were just talking before we started recording, jess, about using chat to help write emails when we're feeling emotional. If we've got a you know, maybe we had an argument or we've got a complaint or something like that you said that you would, you'd used it or you were using it that way.

Jess Clark: 13:14

Yeah.

Sarah McLachlan: 13:15

You used it in business to help me write emails and I was going to write an email today with it and I thought it's so great, it doesn't like a second. I still can't get past how I can give it a whole page of text and it reads it in a second and then gives me a response, mm, hmm.

Sarah McLachlan: 13:31

You know it would take me hours just to get started with something sometimes and get that procrastinating around writing. So sometimes people are a bit worried about losing their personality or their personal touch when they're using artificial intelligence and chat GPT. Yeah, what do you think? Or what's your thoughts around that?

Jess Clark: 13:55

I think from a business perspective, it's very easy to train it. I always say, like chat GPT, it's a language model that is there for us to train to sound like us if you need it in that way. So for business you obviously want, it's going to be easier for you to have text that sounds like you. That's going to generate that. You can then copy and paste and then revise and edit a little bit more before you post it or send something by an email from a mum perspective, if you're, if you are sending an email that, like we were talking earlier where we've had an incident this week with Ella at Kinder. So I've been sending emails back and forth to the main Kinder teacher and, yeah, it's been emotionally charged on my part. So there's been times where I just have to I won't respond and I'll just sit on it.

Jess Clark: 14:49

But I was saying to my husband yesterday like I need to just get chat GPT to write this because I can sit there and I can put in you know what's been going on and I can also copy and paste in emails that I've previously written so that it will sound like me and that's generally my trick.

Jess Clark: 15:08

So if there already has been some back and forth or you've written an email that that sounds like you, then you can generally pop that in and it will train chat in terms of you people thinking that it's not authentic. I think you have to still see it as a tool. You know, like, like, like anything. If you want something to sound more like you, then it's your job to make sure that you've got the copy, that you've got the text and you're going over it and making it and adding more personality, and there are lots of tips and tricks that you can use to make it sound more and more like you. But if you are right at the beginning of your journey and using Pat, then yeah, I would just say that you are going to be editing a little bit more on the heavier side.

Sarah McLachlan: 15:58

Yeah, and I think I always joke and it's kind of half joking and it's half true that you need to talk to chat like they're a two or three year old, like be very, quite specific, you know, but kind of broad but specific to you, but you're only going to get as good out as what you put in, like in Sure. You know, like when you're talking with your kids, you sometimes need to be quite specific and tell them what you want or what your expectation is. Kind of the same, I feel, with chat.

Jess Clark: 16:28

Yeah exactly the same and on the flip side, like sometimes it can come back and it can sound way too professional. You know, you might, you might put, and you, because you haven't said you know, I want you to write in more of a conversational tone. Or I said yesterday one of my clients said oh, you know, my business is quite niche, it's, it's a bit woo woo and she's like a lot of my concepts like quantum leaping and things people don't really understand and I will just get chat to set, like say to chat, explain this like you're talking to an eight year old. Yes, you can get copy and get text back so that it's really simple to understand for everybody.

Sarah McLachlan: 17:13

Yeah, we've even done that with my kids that are asking me about something, or we didn't. I didn't know what it was, we homeschooled. They asked me lots of questions and I don't know all the answers. I don't need to, but I helped them find it. So we've done that and I was like, oh okay, can you explain it? Yeah, to a 13 year old or to the nine year old and just to play around with it and see what it does. One thing that we did as well, which my kids really like it one of my kids is really into Dungeons and Dragons and he got chat to help him write a quest, so he left it quite open and then he left, and then he gave some more specifics. He said I wanted a riddle you know, for different things.

Sarah McLachlan: 17:53

One of the riddles didn't really make sense. Not sure where chat went with that one, but that was okay. We just told it Didn't really get your riddle. Try again. Actually, I think that's maybe a good point to note as well, as at some times, I've heard of people using chat in terms of their health and diagnosing or trying to get an idea of where they're at, and chat is using information up to is it the end of 2021? Is that right? Yeah, and also sometimes, particularly, I've noticed if I'm asking it for a reference, like for a scientific publication, it will make it up or do it's approximation or it's taking from so many different sources. It can't give you one specific source. So I think it's important that we mention that and think about it. I don't know that it's necessarily appropriate for doing stuff like trying to diagnose yourself or find something out, but that's how people I've heard of people using it that way.

Jess Clark: 18:55

Yeah, I have seen doctors that have got quite big TikTok followings and they've been using chat just to have a bit of fun around putting in trying to get the right diagnosis, to see if chat would come up with the right diagnosis. And the ones that I've seen it's been pretty accurate, pretty spot on.

Sarah McLachlan: 19:14

But yes, in saying that if you are, maybe they'll see a doctor and not be trying to see a health professional and I imagine for them their inputs or what they're putting in is because they know the diagnosis as well potentially doing that there.

Sarah McLachlan: 19:29

So yeah, so it's all about what we put in. The quality of what we're putting in is what we're going to get out, and we've talked about some of the different ways that people might use it. Are there any other unusual ways of using it or really creative uses for chat GPT that we haven't talked about? Oh put it right on the spot there.

Jess Clark: 19:53

Yeah, I know, not that I can think of at the top of my mind. I think, like you know, with your Dungeons Dragons story like it's more in my in my, I guess, era of motherhood as well like bedtime stories. So when we go to bed it's always like well book, do you want to read? I've read all of these. I don't want to read these anymore.

Sarah McLachlan: 20:17

I want to go back downstairs get another book, and then I just thought of one yeah so I noticed when I logged in the other day it actually had a prompt to you know, like what could you do with chat? And that's the thing. Now it does actually tell you that. So people are feeling like I don't know what I'd use it for. Just go log in and have a go, it'll give you some ideas. And one was like about making up a story about a shark or something. I didn't pay much attention because I was there to do some work stuff.

Jess Clark: 20:45

But the other. We used it, so we put in Ella's name and like yeah, it's really cool. Yeah, and it came up with a whole story and I could say like make it three minutes.

Sarah McLachlan: 20:55

So you know it's not, yes, keep it short.

Jess Clark: 20:57

We want to get to bed tonight.

Sarah McLachlan: 20:58

The other thing I was just thinking of is book summaries, yes, so as long as your book was published before the end of 2021,. You can ask chat to give you a summary of the main points of it.

Jess Clark: 21:11

And or I do, I do that quite a bit actually. So you know, being in marketing, there is so many books that come out all of the time. But yes, so pre 2021, you can go in get the summary. And then what I like to do is take it that extra step further and, if it's something that's going to be implementable in your life, so you could go and find, you know, a health related book and say, okay, well, summarize that for me. So I've got the dot points, but then how can I actually implement it into my life? So give me an action plan over seven days, over 14 days, so that I can implement it into my life, and that's like spot on. It's always been really, really great.

Jess Clark: 21:53

That's amazing yeah.

Sarah McLachlan: 21:55

That's next level. That's where I see, like with you, jess, like we've got stuff, yes, we can do it. Then you always take it to the next level. People should follow you on socials, definitely because you're always sharing tips in there and, while, yes, it might be a business focus, absolutely it's applicable to the rest of our lives you know, and how we do it.

Sarah McLachlan: 22:17

And I think, like we were talking before, as some people are reserved, or then I am not sure we are using a lot of AI without really knowing or thinking about it in many of the other things that we do. But if we think of it as a tool, like I, just have it open and sometimes I'm like I want a different analogy or I want a different word, or you know, and that's actually, if you're using a thesaurus online, you're already using AI for stuff like that, so it's really handy it's. You know, we got the opportunity as modern women to do a lot of things and we can feel really overwhelmed from that, but we use the tools. It's like you know, I have a thermo mix that makes it quicker and easier for me cooking, and we also have stoves and ovens, because it's much quicker than cooking on a fire. We use all these tools to help make our lives simple or a bit easier in the context of a very fast paced modern world.

Jess Clark: 23:14

So we are on our phones all the time. You know, our phone is always in our pocket and this, you know, there's an app now, so it's not even like you've got to be on the web browser you can open. And, as you said, I know yesterday a girlfriend just couldn't that one of these words was on the tip of her tongue and she's like I need this word, Like what is this word? And she said chat, like this is the context. And it was like no, that's not it, it's more about this. No, that wasn't it. And it came up with it in three goes. It came up with the word that she just couldn't think of yeah, and that's.

Sarah McLachlan: 23:47

You know, sometimes that just happens or a movie, or a song or, yeah, there's so many uses you can use it for it's just like another smart tool in your pocket and and on your phone, and, yeah, you can keep going and your same threads or start a new one anytime. But it really is that new best friend. Isn't it in your pocket? Yeah, it all goes. Yeah, and before we finish up, just do anything we haven't covered off in terms of chat, gpt or AI and and making it your best friend.

Jess Clark: 24:22

Yeah, I think just to note, you know chat GPT is one of three kind of AI tools that it was the first to launch at the end of last year. But Google has their own AI now called Bard, and there's another company called Anthropic and they have another one called Claude to. They've just launched Claude. So if you are into it and you, I think chat GPT is a great to start off with. The other two have got different kinds of functionalities. One is connected Google's version is connected to the internet. So if you do want to have more up to date answers, then you can use Bard. But I think we also.

Jess Clark: 25:04

I know there's there's some people out there that are still kind of a little bit nervous about using AI because they think that you know that the data is going to be recorded. You know for privacy reasons they don't want to be jumping on, and I think you know I, when I get in my car, my phone beeps and it's telling me where, where it thinks I'm going. Basically, yes, and it's pretty much spot on, yeah, every time we get in my car. I went to a dropped dollar off at Kinder this morning and then I got in the car and on a Thursday morning I take grace to music and as soon as I get in the car, my phone vibrates and it's telling me this is the way to navigate to the music hall, and I think we are so in the trenches with, with AI, on a basis anyway, and all of our data is with Facebook and everything.

Jess Clark: 25:55

Yeah, that's right, and it's all out there. So I think, if you were coming from the perspective of like, oh no, I want to keep my information private. Yeah, I'm sorry to burst that bubble, but it's probably already out there. And the other thing is is just you wouldn't be putting in your banking information or anything. That's right, you know.

Sarah McLachlan: 26:15

Y eah yeah, like I don't put my children's names in or their ages or things like that. Generally, you can still keep and it's not really the need to depending on what you're doing, I suppose.

Sarah McLachlan: 26:27

But yeah, I think it's that we are so connected, so much of our life is connected. I mean, even my dishwasher has the capacity to connect to an app so I can turn it on when I'm out. Yeah, everything's connected these days. I don't necessarily use it, don't turn that function on, but, yeah, we I think that this is a way that we can help make life easier and we don't have to give everything over to it. We can certainly keep ourselves and our core information to ourselves there as well. So thank you so much for joining me today. It's been great.

Sarah McLachlan: 27:01

So to summarize really quickly in chat is you know, really can be your new best friend in terms of getting stuff done and getting it done efficiently. We need to give it good quality information to get a good quality output and we'll learn and you know it's like learning any new skill. It takes a bit of time and practice and trial and error for you to see, I guess, the full scope of how you might use it and also how to get the best out of it. I will share your links in the show notes, jess, if anyone's interested wants to go follow Jess or see what freebie she's got. She's got lots of great info and help there in terms of prompts and getting the best out of chat and how to use it. I'll pop those there and, yeah, feel free to let us know how you're using chat. I'd love to know if there's some creative way that you're using it that we haven't covered off today or how it's helping you in your life. Thanks so much for joining us today, jess.

Sarah McLachlan: 28:07

What a great episode. We've learned so much. We've talked about what chat, gpt is, artificial intelligence, why we might want to use that, why people may not. We've talked a bit about that and how to manage that objection, as well as how to use it in your day to day life. We've covered off heaps of different things already, but just while we've been talking some more, I've thought of you know other ways that you might use it to help ease that mental load and that emotional labor that comes with being a woman in our modern, fast paced world, and I was, and we've mentioned how chat will prompt you or some things that you can do.

Sarah McLachlan: 28:48

But you know like if you're going traveling somewhere, you can make an itinerary to see them when you set the parameters of how long you're going to be there and how much time you want to spend sightseeing gift ideas. You know if you've got someone really difficult to buy for pop in. You know who they are, what they like chat will guarantee you will give you something wonderful or different and you could set the budget with that as well. So you know you get to control how much or how wide the output is, by how much. What you put in as we've talked about with Jess, it's all about the inputs is going to influence your outputs there as well. I've used it for coaching plans, like for the team that I coach to help me come up with a like a session plan and different drills and even like pre-season fitness schedule.

Sarah McLachlan: 29:44

Like it seriously is only limited by our imaginations what you can use and do with it.

Sarah McLachlan: 29:50

You could do a cleaning schedule, like a spring cleaning schedule over a period of weekends, or, look honestly, it's limitless and I hope that you take the deep dive into chat and use it to help make your life easier, because I really see it as a really valuable tool to help us get all the things done that we need to, and I hope that you get to know it and feel that way too.

Sarah McLachlan: 30:14

I'd love to hear from you if you do start using it, what you've used it for. So do feel free to tag me on your socials at the Perry menopause naturopath or drop into the show notes or comment about what you're doing with chat gpt or how you're loving using it to help reduce your mental load. Until next time, take care and thank you so much for sharing your time with me today. It's really common for women over 40 to experience the chaos of changing hormones, mood, metabolism and energy, but I hope you know now that common doesn't have to equal normal for you or them. You can help others understand they aren't alone in feeling this way and that Perry menopause doesn't have to be horrific by subscribing, leaving a review and sharing this podcast with other women in their 40s and beyond. Thanks so much for listening and sharing your time with me today in this chaos to calm conversation.