Lately, I’ve been on a quiet mission to make life run a little smoother.

Between work deadlines, running a household, and juggling my kids’ ever-expanding social lives, I’ve often found myself thinking: there’s got to be a better way to do this. When even my dog was waiting at the door for his evening walk and I still hadn’t finished replying to emails, I knew something had to change.

So, I turned to my favourite oracle: Google. “Easy ways to use AI to save time,” I typed in. And just like that, I was flooded with links promising time-saving hacks, clever automations, and AI-powered tools that would revolutionise my day.

Honestly, it sounded amazing — like I was just a few clicks away from transforming chaos into calm.

Energised and curious, I picked one suggestion to try: using Google Calendar’s ‘Find a time’ feature to streamline the process of organising meet-ups. According to the internet, all I had to do was open my calendar, select my guests, click ‘Find a time’, and Google would suggest a meeting slot that worked for everyone — complete with auto-sent invites and reminders. I imagined how much time this would save wrangling calendars for work meetings and even family dinners.

But when I gave it a go, things didn’t go quite as planned.

I spent over twenty minutes fiddling with settings, permissions, and availability fields, only to realise that the feature wouldn’t work unless everyone involved had their calendars visible, shared, and synced. Even my own calendar had to be set to share “free/busy” time in just the right way. And if someone was using a different calendar service or hadn’t enabled visibility? No dice. My ‘quick win’ had turned into a tech tangle.

At first, I thought maybe I’d just missed something obvious — a button I hadn’t clicked or a setting I hadn’t ticked. But after doing some digging, I found that I wasn’t the only one. It turns out, even “easy” AI tools come with hidden requirements and confusing assumptions.

That’s when it hit me: If I, a reasonably tech-savvy, tertiary-educated adult, was struggling to make sense of these “simple” AI solutions, then surely I wasn’t alone.

That idea — that there are others out there quietly trying (and sometimes failing) to navigate the brave new world of AI — is what led me to start AI Sally.

AI Sally exists for people who want to feel more in control of their time, their work, and their decisions — but who don’t have hours to wade through jargon, dodgy hacks, or impossible instructions. I want this space to be welcoming, clear, and practical. A place where we can explore what AI can do for real people, without pretending it’s all plug-and-play.

If you’ve ever struggled with tech that was supposed to “just work,” I see you. And I’d love for you to join me on this journey — from confused to confident, from overwhelmed to organised. I’ll be learning, experimenting, failing (sometimes hilariously), and figuring it out as I go. And I promise to share everything I learn with you.

Maybe, together, we’ll find a few small wins — and the time to finally take that dog for a walk.