Monique Helstrom

Everyone keeps talking about how much time AI saves.
Fewer people are talking about the time it creates.

There’s actually a term for it: AI Admin Debt.
It’s the hidden “interest payment” that comes with adopting AI: the hours spent fixing outputs, checking facts, rewriting responses, learning new tools, and figuring out how to fit AI into your existing workflow.

One study found that employees save roughly 12 hours per week using AI but spend 6.4 hours per week managing it.
(That’s a pretty expensive interest rate. 😬)

This isn’t a reason to avoid AI. Quite the opposite!
It’s a reason to learn how to use it strategically.

That’s exactly why Tal and I built the AI-Powered Assistant Course.
We wanted to help assistants move past the trial-and-error phase and start using AI in practical, repeatable ways that actually reduce workload instead of shifting it around.

Because the goal isn’t to spend your day managing AI.
It's to have AI help you manage everything else!

Have you experienced AI Admin Debt in your role? What’s the most frustrating part?

Find out more about the course: https://www.moniquehelstrom.com/ai-powered-assistant

Truth: This month’s article was hard for me to write. Not because I don’t believe every word of it — I do — but because for a long time, I was the biggest perpetrator of treating feedback like a death sentence.

I could turn one hard comment, one correction, one uncomfortable conversation into a full-blown identity crisis.

So trust me when I say I wrote this from both sides: having been there, and having fought my way out. Over the last 10 or 15 years, I’ve learned how to hear feedback without letting it destroy me, define me, or derail me. And that shift has been one of the most powerful changes of my career and my life. I hope it will be for you too!

Strong Careers Are Built on Uncomfortable Conversations | Monique Helstrom One thing I’ve noticed after working with executives, assistants, chiefs of staff, office managers, recruiters, leaders, and every kind of workplace personality you can imagine: The highest performers are not the people who never make mistakes. They are the people who can make a mistake, feel the ...

One of the biggest mindset shifts I ever made was realizing that my weaknesses weren’t a character flaw...
They were just information.

For years, I thought every area where I struggled was something I needed to “fix” about myself. If I was slower at a task, less energized by certain work, or needed more structure than someone else, I assumed I just wasn’t trying hard enough.

But that’s not how great careers are built.

Your greatest value comes from your strengths—the work that energizes you, comes naturally to you, and produces your best results.

Your weaknesses simply tell you where you need support.

That support might look like a process, a checklist, a template, a tool, a trusted colleague, or even AI.

The goal isn’t to become equally excellent at everything.
The goal is to know yourself well enough to build systems that help you perform consistently.

What’s one weakness you’ve learned to manage with a great system?

The highest performers are not the people who never make mistakes.

They are the people who can make a mistake, feel the sting of it, get the information, and then do something useful with it.

When you receive improvement feedback, your first job is to slow the conversation down enough to understand it.

❌ Not defend.
❌ Not apologize 47 times.
❌ Not immediately promise to become a whole new woman by Friday.

➡️ Understand.

These questions are powerful because they move the conversation from shame to strategy. They also show maturity. They say, “I’m here to understand the work and improve the outcome.”

That is what executives trust, what teams respect, and what careers are built on.

You know those books where you keep saying, “Just one more chapter,” and then suddenly it’s 11:30 p.m. and your entire existential framework is under review?
(Which, for me, is very late. 🙈)

That's the effect "The Midnight Library" by Matt Haig had on me.

*No spoilers!*
At its heart, the story follows a woman who gets the opportunity to explore all the different versions of her life—the ones that would have existed if she had made different choices along the way. Different careers. Different relationships. Different paths.

What I loved most is that it gently challenges the idea that there is one perfect decision, one perfect career, one perfect relationship, or one perfect version of success waiting somewhere out there. Instead, it explores something many of us wrestle with: regret.

As assistants, executives, leaders, and humans in general, it’s easy to look back and wonder:

❓ What if I had taken that job?
❓ What if I had left sooner?
❓ What if I had started the business?
❓ What if I had said yes?
❓ What if I had said no?

This book is a beautiful reminder that every path comes with trade-offs, every life contains challenges, and sometimes the peace we’re searching for isn’t found in a different decision—it’s found in learning to appreciate the life we’re already living.

Thought-provoking, emotional, surprisingly hopeful, and one of the most memorable books I’ve read in a long time.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Highly recommend!