Today should have been the day the dread peaked. But it didn’t.
Dare I say it, on the first official day of the summer holidays, I actually feel excited.
My children are 15, 14 and 11 now. Pretty grown up, right? But I can still suggest a trip to the park and, within twenty minutes, they’ll have their shoes on, lunch packed and a rugby ball or two in the car. They’re a huge part of why I built my business in the first place.
Even so, if I’m honest, I’ve spent the last three years dreading the school holidays.
Christmas, Easter, half terms and especially the summer. Six whole weeks.
The dread normally begins during the final week of school. My back tenses, I go inward and I start running through everything in my head. Client work, leads, following up, keeping my content going and trying to be present as a mum.
It’s such an intense countdown. I try to ram as much as I can in because I’m already telling myself that, once the children are home, getting everything done is going to be impossible.
There have been so many holidays where I’ve promised the children, “We’ll go out at 11. I’m just going to do a couple of hours of work first.”
Then I blink, and it’s four in the afternoon.
They’ve asked me several times when we’re leaving, and I’m still sitting there doing busy tasks or stressing about something I need to write. Shoot... I did it again.
Writing has always been one of those jobs that can take far longer than I expect. Not because I don’t have anything to say. I usually do. I have thoughts, feelings, opinions and experiences I want to talk about.
What I don’t enjoy is sitting down with a blank page and trying to turn all of that into something structured.
That’s what feels different this time.
My content for the week is already done, and I have a structure in place to support what comes next. That means I can focus much more clearly on what I actually want to achieve in a day and on the conversations that might move the business forward.
I’m not saying the summer is suddenly going to be effortless. The children will still need me. Client work will still need doing, and business doesn’t stop because school has.
What has changed is that the pressure I normally feel around keeping my content going is no longer sitting so heavily on me.
The way I’ve built this is not about handing everything over to AI. In fact, it works because I stay involved.
I speak my ideas into it. It helps me clarify what I’m trying to say, then structures what I’ve already given it. I can see the thinking take shape, approve the decisions and say, “No, that’s not what I meant,” when something is off.
It isn’t writing for me at that first stage. It’s helping me organise what I’ve already said.
That moment, when I see the first structure appear, gives me a real sense of relief. I can look at it and think, “Okay, this is taking shape. I like it,” or, “That part needs refining.”
The judgement stays with me.
That matters because we’ve been sold the idea that AI is supposed to save us time, and it can. It can help with research, analysis and many of the tasks that would otherwise take much longer.
But when it comes to content, faster isn’t automatically better.
There’s no point creating more content for the sake of it, especially when that content may be someone’s first impression of your expertise.
A lot of experienced service-led professionals are already using AI, but they’re wasting time rewriting drafts that were meant to save them time. The output may be polished, but it doesn’t reflect the depth of their experience, judgement or standards.
They know they’re better than the content makes them look.
If AI content still sounds like AI, the problem often starts before the draft. Something is missing from the first input.
When your thinking, opinions and lived experience aren’t there, AI fills the gaps. A normal chat window will usually keep writing rather than stop and tell you that the input is too vague.
That’s why my system has guardrails. It isn’t allowed to invent, exaggerate or infer what I think. It has to be a true reflection of me.
Does that mean there is still work involved? Yes.
Systems take time. They take iteration and refinement.
But the effort now compounds.
Instead of starting from scratch every time I need to publish, I spend time getting clear on one meaningful idea. That idea becomes my newsletter, and the approved thinking then supports my emails and social content.
Of course, this way of working doesn’t solve client delivery, leads, family logistics or everything else competing for my attention. But it supports one recurring task that used to expand far beyond the time I planned to give it.
That alone has changed how I’m entering the holidays.
It has also made me think differently about what I want this summer to be about.
When someone recently asked what my focus was, my first response was, “Honestly, just survive.”
But that isn’t really what I want.
I want to focus on connection, communication and relationships.
I want to meet people, have coffees, jump on Zoom and listen to how they’re actually feeling about AI. I want to understand where they want support, where they’re struggling and what they absolutely do not want AI to replace.
It can be easy to see conversations as less urgent than producing more, especially when you want to grow or feel pressure to grow. But a big part of growing a service-led business comes through communication, trust, introductions, shared thinking and people understanding the value of what you do.
And guess what? Those conversations can also become the driving force behind stronger content because they show your audience what you’re experiencing right now, the questions you’re being asked and the language you’re using when answering them.
The process is there to help me capture that. It isn’t there to replace it.
So perhaps the question isn’t simply, “How can I use AI to produce more?”
A better question might be:
What do I want AI to support, so I have more capacity for the work only I can do?
For me, that means more room for my family, more room for conversations and more room to listen, think and make decisions properly.
That feels like a much better use of AI than simply filling the internet with more content.
Reply and tell me one thing you want AI to support, and one thing you do not want it to replace.
Speak soon,
Shannon
