I Started Using AI at Home, and It Changed How I Think About Capacity
- 6 days ago
- 6 min read
Tonya Walley is an executive leader, keynote speaker, and author of Built to Climb: Claiming Your Voice, Power, and Path. Known for her rare journey from frontline field technician to Senior Vice President, she helps leaders navigate growth, resilience, and transformational leadership with confidence and purpose.
In my last Brainz article, I wrote about how I used artificial intelligence to free up time to lead. I shared how AI was helping me summarize information, analyze operational data, prepare for meetings, draft communications, and spend less of my day managing information. But something interesting happened along the way.
I started asking myself:
"Why am I only using this at work?"
Like many executives, my life doesn’t become less complicated when I leave the office. I’m an executive. I’m an author. I’m a wife and a mother. I’m a sister. Right now, I’m also helping someone I love navigate one of the most difficult chapters of her life.
I’ve started using artificial intelligence (AI) to manage some of the complexity of my personal life, too. I may be finding even more value there.
When life becomes the bigger project
My sister was diagnosed with brain cancer in 2024. She lives in California, thousands of miles away from our family in New Jersey. As her circumstances changed, we decided to relocate her to New Jersey so she could be closer to family and have a stronger support system around her.
When we first started talking about it, it sounded relatively straightforward. Move my sister from California to New Jersey.
Then I started making the list. We needed to pack and move the contents of her apartment, coordinate movers, arrange my travel to California, find temporary accommodations while I packed, disconnect utilities, plan accessible air travel home, and think through transportation in New Jersey.
Moving her belongings was only one workstream. Questions came up about medical care, insurance, benefits, prescriptions, doctors, housing, in-home support, and how we would build an entirely new infrastructure around her life. All while continuing to run my own.
I am an operations executive. Complex planning is literally part of what I do. But this was different. When the person at the center of the plan is your sister, and she is battling brain cancer, you’re not approaching the problem with the emotional distance you might have at work. That’s where AI became unexpectedly valuable.
I treated the move like an operating plan
I started putting the pieces into AI. Here is what has to happen. Here are the dates. Here are the constraints. What am I missing?
Then I kept going. Build me a transition plan. Sequence the activities. What needs to happen before I arrive in California? What needs to happen while I’m there? What needs to be completed before we get on the plane? What needs to be waiting for her in New Jersey? What questions should I be asking about health insurance? What services might a disabled adult need when relocating between states? What could go wrong? What am I forgetting?
Suddenly, this enormous emotional undertaking became a series of manageable workstreams. AI didn’t take responsibility for the move. I did. It didn’t make decisions about my sister’s care. Our family and her medical team did. I verified information before acting on it, particularly anything involving healthcare, benefits, travel, or finances.
What AI did was help me organize the complexity. That reduced something executives don’t talk about enough–cognitive load.
The invisible work follows us home
Many high-performing people are carrying an enormous amount of invisible work. We remember the doctor’s appointment, the school deadline, the prescription that needs to be refilled, the trip that needs to be booked, the parent who needs help, the bill that needs attention, the birthday we can’t forget, the work presentation due Monday, and sometimes, the sister who needs to be moved across the country while navigating cancer.
All of those open loops take up mental space. We talk a lot about AI improving workplace productivity. I think there is another conversation worth having. Can AI help us reduce the administrative burden of life? I’m beginning to believe it can.
My personal AI workflows look different
At work, I may ask AI to analyze performance data or prepare an executive briefing. At home, the questions are very different. Help me build a packing plan. Compare these travel options. Create a checklist. Organize these appointments. Build a family schedule. Research questions I should ask. Create a grocery list from this meal plan. Help me think through everything required for this trip. Take this enormous project and break it into something I can actually execute.
None of these tasks individually seems overwhelming. Collectively, they can consume hours. More importantly, they consume attention.
Then I asked AI to help me plan something completely different. After my sister’s move, I have another trip planned. Sedona. This time the assignment wasn’t, Help me manage a crisis. It was, Help me restore.
I wanted the trip to feel intentional, not like another itinerary I had to manage. So I used AI to help think through the experience I wanted rather than simply searching for hotels and activities.
Wellness. Space. Nature. Time to decompress. Spa experiences that aligned with the kind of restoration I was seeking, including chakra work and a Four Hands Abhyanga Shirodhara treatment.
An itinerary with enough structure that I wouldn’t have to figure everything out once I arrived, but enough open space that I wouldn’t return home needing a vacation from my vacation.
AI helped me compare options, think through the experience, sequence the days, and create something that felt less like a trip and more like an intentional reset. That may sound like a small thing compared with moving someone across the country. I don’t think it is.
Restoration belongs on the plan too
Executives are very good at planning for outcomes. We create operating plans, transformation plans, succession plans, strategic plans, and development plans.
What many of us aren’t nearly as disciplined about is planning for restoration. We wait until we’re exhausted. Then we take a vacation. Sometimes we bring the same pace that exhausted us along for the trip.
I am learning to think differently about that. AI helped me plan the difficult thing, moving my sister. But it also helped me plan what comes afterward. Rest. Reflection. Recovery. Space to think.
There is something powerful about using the same technology that helps us move faster to intentionally help us slow down.
The goal isn’t to fill the time AI gives back
This may be my biggest lesson so far. When we talk about productivity, we assume any time we save should immediately be reinvested into producing more. If AI saves an hour, we schedule another meeting. If it makes a task faster, we add another task. If it creates capacity, we fill it.
I’m trying not to do that. Some of the capacity AI gives me absolutely goes back into my work. It gives me more time for strategic thinking, developing leaders, solving complex problems, writing, and building the next chapter of my career and business. But some of it belongs somewhere else. With my family. With my sister. With myself.
Sometimes the highest-value use of an hour isn’t another deliverable. Sometimes it’s dinner without your phone. A conversation with your child. Sitting beside someone you love. Reading a book. Walking through Sedona. Or doing absolutely nothing.
AI still requires human judgment
The same caution I shared in my previous article applies even more when AI crosses into our personal lives. AI can be wrong. It can hallucinate information. It can misunderstand context. Verify information involving healthcare, government benefits, travel requirements, financial decisions, or other high-impact matters with authoritative sources and qualified professionals when appropriate.
I don’t outsource judgment to AI. I use it to organize information, identify questions, explore possibilities, and create a starting point. AI does the organizing. I still do the deciding. That distinction matters.
Maybe we need a different definition of productivity
For much of my career, productivity meant getting more done. I’m beginning to think about it differently. Maybe productivity isn’t just about output. Maybe it is also about creating enough capacity to be present in the parts of our lives that don’t appear on a performance scorecard.
My sister’s journey has taught me a lot about that. There will always be another email, another meeting, another presentation, another business problem waiting to be solved. But some moments don’t come back.
AI cannot sit beside my sister. It cannot be a mother to my children. It cannot be a partner to my wife. It cannot restore me. But if it can take some of the planning, searching, organizing, comparing, and administrative work off my plate, it can give me something incredibly valuable–more capacity to do those things myself.
I’m still early in figuring out how AI fits into my life. But I’m increasingly convinced that its greatest value may not be helping us do more.
Read more from Tonya Walley
Tonya Walley, SVP Field Operations and Vendor Management
Tonya Walley is Senior Vice President, keynote speaker, and author of Built to Climb: Claiming Your Voice, Power, and Path. A first-generation college graduate, she built her career from the frontline of the telecommunications industry to executive leadership, leading large-scale operations, business transformation, and high-performing teams. With more than three decades of leadership experience across telecommunications, technology, and nonprofit sectors, she is recognized for connecting operational excellence with people-centered leadership. Tonya is a recipient of the Most Powerful Women Award and the Luminary Award, and is recognised among influential women leaders.
