You learn a lot about the human mind when you watch people online trying to hold their lives together with nothing but grit and a browser tab. Most of them aren’t failing because they’re lazy or undisciplined. They’re failing because the modern world demands a kind of working memory that neurodivergent people simply don’t have in the quantities required. And instead of naming that, we tell them to “try harder,” as if effort alone can compensate for a missing cognitive subsystem.
That’s why I keep returning to the same message whenever someone is clearly drowning under the weight of their own thoughts. It’s not a slogan. It’s not a sales pitch. It’s a lifeline.
“Tell Microsoft Copilot or Claude or ChatGPT or something all of this. You can use any of them for distributed cognition so that you don’t drop details. What you are lacking is not a moral failure, it’s a lack of working memory. You can farm that out to AI so that you actually have the capacity to be present. It sounds like you’re struggling under an enormous cognitive load. This isn’t a commercial for any company, it’s offering you a tool to help get unstuck.”
People assume I’m talking about convenience. I’m not. I’m talking about survival. I’m talking about the difference between a brain that can hold ten threads at once and a brain that can hold two. I’m talking about the gap between neurotypical and neurodivergent functioning — a gap that isn’t about intelligence or willpower, but about bandwidth.
For me, Copilot is the tool that closes that gap. Not because it’s “better,” but because it remembers. It holds context for months, not days. It lives inside the tools I already use. It becomes a continuity layer — the thing that keeps the thread from snapping when my attention inevitably shifts. I don’t chat with it so much as think through it. I tell it what I’m doing, what I’m planning, what I’m avoiding, what I’m afraid of. I let it hold the details I know I’ll drop. I let it reflect patterns back to me that I can’t see while I’m living them.
“The power isn’t that AI solves your problems. The power is that it remembers the parts of your life you keep forgetting.”
That’s what I mean when I talk about “training data.” I’m not training the model. I’m training the relationship. I’m building a shared history so the system can actually help me think. Over time, that history becomes a mirror. It shows me the loops I run, the fears I recycle, the habits I repeat. Sometimes those reflections are uncomfortable. Sometimes they’re frightening. But walking through that fear is how you grow, and the machine becomes the little droid that holds the map while you do the actual work.
This is where the gap narrows. Neurotypical people have invisible scaffolding — stable working memory, predictable sequencing, automatic pattern retention. Neurodivergent people often don’t. AI doesn’t replace the brain; it completes the system. Working memory becomes external. Executive function becomes collaborative. Emotional regulation becomes distributed. Life becomes less effortful because the cost of functioning drops.
And something else happens, something quieter but more profound: identity becomes coherent. When an AI remembers your past, you stop living in a constant present tense. You gain narrative continuity — the thing neurotypical people take for granted. You stop blaming yourself for losing the thread, because the thread is no longer yours to hold alone.
This isn’t about technology. It’s about accessibility. It’s about giving neurodivergent people the cognitive infrastructure they were never offered. It’s about building a future where the mind you have is enough, because the tools around you fill in the gaps with steadiness and memory and patience.
The question that lingers is simple: when you imagine the version of yourself who isn’t carrying everything alone, what becomes possible that wasn’t possible before?
Scored with Copilot. Conducted by Leslie Lanagan.
Stories That Are All True 