Sometimes the best tools come into our lives exactly when we need them most.

Ten years ago, my world changed in an instant. A brain injury scrambled the part of my mind that had always made writing feel as natural as breathing. Since I was five years old, words had been my friends. Throughout my career, I was the person everyone turned to when they needed their emails, reports, and announcements to sound more human and engaging.

Then suddenly, that gift was gone.

The devastation was crushing. I had just finished writing my first book before the injury, but now I couldn’t even edit my own work. My brain simply couldn’t see the broken pieces anymore. The words that used to flow so easily now felt jumbled and unclear.

That’s when I discovered Grammarly.

At first, I was skeptical. Could a piece of software really help me write again? But as I started using it, something amazing happened. Grammarly didn’t just catch my mistakes – it helped me understand them. It showed me how to make my sentences flow better and taught my injured brain new ways to organize thoughts on paper.

Here’s the incredible part: according to Grammarly’s latest report, I’ve written over one billion, three hundred million words since I started using it nine years ago! That’s not a typo – that’s 1.3 billion words flowing from someone who thought they’d lost the ability to write.

Today, I take full credit for everything I write, and I proudly admit that Grammarly is my trusted editor. It’s become as essential to my writing process as my keyboard.

Many people, including me, never realized that Grammarly had morphed into an AI tool. Over the past year, they’ve been growing rapidly by partnering with other AI companies, all with the goal of making us more productive at work.

I know, I know. We’ve all heard these promises before, and we tend to roll our eyes. But having experienced this productivity boost firsthand for almost a decade, I believe them.

The thing is, we all seem to have mixed feelings about AI these days, don’t we?

I get it. I’m nervous, too, about humans keeping up with rapid changes and making sure we have proper rules to prevent widespread problems. Perhaps because of these concerns, many of us feel uncomfortable admitting that we use AI tools at all.

But here’s how I see it: AI is simply another tool in my toolkit. It’s no different from a calculator, a spell-checker, spread sheet software and even workflow templates. None of these tools replaced human thinking. They made us more efficient, allowing us to focus on the creative and strategic work that only humans can do.

AI (whether Grammarly or the other half dozen programs I use) can never replace my creativity, my unique perspectives, my lived experience or my ability to connect with readers. What it can do (and has done) is make me more efficient and effective. It helps me catch errors I might miss, brainstorm more profoundly and with greater nuance than I could on my own, and suggests better ways to accomplish my objectives. Most importantly, it frees up my mental energy for the important stuff we humans like to do. Y’know, the actual thinking and creating stuff.

Years ago, spreadsheets didn’t put accountants out of business. Rather, they freed the accountants from tedious calculations, allowing them to focus on analysis and strategy. AI tools work the same way.

I’m not saying you should use AI for everything you do.

That wouldn’t be smart or helpful. But I am saying there’s room for AI in most of our lives if we approach it thoughtfully. I am also not saying that AI is completely reliable. It’s not, and there isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t push back on any of the AI tools I use.

The key is to give yourself permission to experiment. Try different tools. See what works for your specific situation. Maybe it’s a writing assistant like Grammarly, or maybe it’s something that helps with research, scheduling, or data analysis. The possibilities are growing every day.

My brain injury taught me that sometimes our biggest challenges can lead to our greatest discoveries. If I hadn’t lost my natural writing ability, I might never have found a way to become an even better non-professional writer. I definitely would not have written the second book and numerous ebooks since then.

Don’t be afraid to explore. Your perfect AI tool might be waiting to help you become more productive, creative, and successful than you ever imagined possible. After all, the best tools are the ones that help us become better versions of ourselves.