An AI chief of staff

So I gave my mornings to an AI chief of staff. It's Grok, and it reads the same shared brain my other AI tools use.

Why most assistants make ADHD worse

Many assistants make ADHD worse. They send more notifications, more reminders, more inboxes to check. Every one of them is another thing to ignore.

What I needed was someone to decide what deserved my attention.

What it does

It works like a good human chief of staff. It filters, it plans my calendar, and it brings me one thing at a time.

• Protected morningsOvernight noise gets filtered. It only breaks through for something that is actually on fire.
• Nudges that fit my dayIt waits for a gap in my calendar, then tells me about the one item that matters before my next meeting.
• One decision at a timeEvery ask is numbered, with a recommended answer, so I can reply in a few characters.
• Quiet by defaultIf I haven't read something, it doesn't send a second reminder. It never chases.
• Drafts onlyIt stages drafts and waits for my yes.

Tuning the nudges

I told it to be more proactive. I wanted it to remind me when I forgot things, without overwhelming me.

So the rule I kept is narrow. If something of mine is overdue and unmarked, it nudges me once, about the work. "The draft is still open" is useful. "You keep dropping this" is not. It's also not allowed to stack a second channel on top of the first.

It runs on shared files

It lives in files, not in a chat window's memory. The same rules, priorities, and decisions are read by Grok and by Claude, so neither one is guessing what I said last week. When I change a preference, it's written down once and both follow it.

If your best people are drowning in notifications, give them an assistant that knows when to stay quiet and treats attention as the scarce thing.