Don't Let Them Eat Cake

Today at 12:01 pm, my phone buzzed. Now, my phone buzzes a lot. Probably something I should work on with AuDHD, but how else will I know every piece of breaking news and what my racist high school friends post on Facebook the moment they say it?

But this one was special. It was the product of a lot of work to take care of my family (my husband and I have 3 boys). This one simply said "Shop starting: Last chance to add to the list." I smiled. It was doing its job.

We'd failed again

I can't even sort out one specific memory of it. It had happened so often. But it always had the same shape. 6:00 rolls around, Sam or I are getting back with the last after-activity pickup of the day, and somebody asks "what's for dinner?" And we didn't have an answer.

It's not like we didn't have ideas. We had hundreds of healthy and satisfying meals that we could make, but the prospect of picking one, trying to remember which kid hates what, going to the store, and then cooking was more than we could take.

It was especially hard for me. I struggle with executive function challenges a lot. I was diagnosed with ADHD countless years ago, but 18 months ago, I was diagnosed with autism on top of that. Autism doesn't come with a prescription; it comes with acceptance and active choices to shape your world into one that functions for your neurotype.

But before the acceptance comes shame. A lot of shame. Dammit. Yet again, I'm a fuck up who's about to buy his kids fast food because I didn't plan and execute on this. That shame can be crippling. But after reading and reconciling this diagnosis to my life, I find myself a lot more empowered to do something about it.

Executive function isn't a character problem. It's a system problem.

After this scene repeated itself so many times, I did what Product Managers do. I sketched; I scoped; I researched; and finally I built. YarMeals wasn't my first AI-coded project, and it'll be far from my last. But it's one of the most meaningful. I built a system to take care of my family and to take the routine part, the boring part, and the memory part off my plate (no pun intended).

I built a roadmap of all the problem statements and features I needed to do that:

• It needed to remember all the meals we can make
• It needed to remember who hated what and which ones we never wanted again
• It needed to help us plan the week by making suggestions
• It needed to do the shopping
• It needed to know which brands we prefer, how to convert units, how to turn "one pound" into packs that average 6 ounces, and a hundred more details that go into turning a recipe into a grocery cart

It needed to remember so we didn't have to.

So I sat down with Claude and started building it. First I sketched and taught Claude how to be a design partner with me, not to do it all himself. Then I taught Claude to execute our sprints overnight while I slept, after we'd made all the decisions together.

But mostly I built. Feature by feature, to tear down the obstacles that got us to the 6pm shame.

And today was a milestone.

It was my birthday yesterday. A ton going on like any other day, but even more. I noticed a push notification that I had unplanned nights coming up, and somewhere in the day, I sat down and picked a couple of meals. But something shiny happened (maybe it was ALL those candles. Ugh, so many candles), and I never started the shop.

And that's why I almost cried today when I got that notification that it was taking care of it for me. In much less than the time it took me to write this post, I got the beautiful "Carts are ready" push. And all I had to do was go in and answer a few questions about anything it had been unsure of, and check out.

If you or someone in your family has felt this shame due to their neurodivergence, please share this with them. I want everyone to know that systems can be the greatest accommodation, whether they code them or not. Part of our future with AI coding is going to make custom tools a lot cheaper.

I'd like to hear from anyone who has ideas about EF challenges they've faced for years. Email me, and maybe we can build something together from your own needs. It's not your fault. The fault lies with the tools not being there to help.

This afternoon, on the way home from picking up the boys at school, we'll stop and pick up groceries that are waiting for us, and the boys will unload them and put them away.

There's one problem, though, that I don't think AI is ready to solve for us yet...

Who's going to cook?