Adrienne Jung has spent much of her career doing something that comes naturally to her: looking at complicated, chaotic systems, seeing the bigger picture, and finding ways to make them simpler.

In this conversation, we explore how the way we think shapes the way we learn, work, communicate and solve problems.

Adrienne shares how growing up across different countries and languages influenced her thinking, why she walked away from translation despite her talent for languages, and why she often needs to see the entire system before the individual pieces make sense.

We talk about the difference between being good at something and actually being suited for it, why some people can appear scattered when they're really thinking several steps ahead, and what happens when you begin to understand and work with your own cognitive patterns instead of against them.

Our conversation takes us through language, education, art, favourite spoons, systems thinking, leadership, mental load, families, technology and AI.

Adrienne is the CEO and co-founder of Eeva, a company developing what she calls "household intelligence." The idea grew from a realization that while we've built incredibly sophisticated systems to help organizations operate, managing a household still relies heavily on memory, shared notes, whiteboards and invisible work.

That leads us into a broader discussion about something Adrienne has spent her career doing: making the invisible visible, reducing unnecessary complexity, and building systems that allow people to focus on what they actually do best.

Perhaps that's also one of the most interesting promises of technology: not replacing the things that make us human, but taking care of some of the friction so we have more time to create, think, connect and do the things only we can do.

Learn more about Eeva: https://eeva.ai/


TIMELINE

00:00 - Why AI should give humans more time to create
02:47 - Meet Adrienne Jung
04:08 - Growing up across languages and cultures
05:18 - Why Adrienne walked away from translation
09:42 - Art, emotion and experiencing the world
10:37 - The importance of having a favourite spoon
18:13 - Translating between more than languages
22:21 - Are we teaching children the right things?
24:35 - Will AI replace translators?
27:22 - Translation and neurodivergent minds
29:41 - Understanding the system changes everything
32:29 - How language changes the way we think
37:58 - From systems thinking to entrepreneurship
39:08 - Why managing a home felt strangely inefficient
42:17 - The invisible work of running a household
44:07 - How Eeva works
48:36 - The broken refrigerator that exposed the problem
51:04 - Why the home has been left behind
57:34 - Mental load and making invisible work visible
59:52 - Why simplicity is incredibly difficult
1:02:27 - Adrienne's perspective on AI
1:04:17 - What humans need to preserve in the age of AI
1:09:18 - Uncertainty, information and a changing world
1:13:14 - How much news should we consume?
1:17:49 - Politics, perspective and understanding the other side
1:21:10 - Families are organizations too
1:23:42 - Helping other people do what they're best at
1:24:49 - Needing the big picture before the details
1:26:43 - Is generative AI unusually suited to neurodivergent minds?
1:27:45 - "Scattered" thinking that isn't actually scattered
1:29:46 - Thinking out loud and understanding your own mind
1:32:05 - Where to find Adrienne and Eeva
1:32:43 - Why these conversations matter

Adrienne Jung is CEO and co-founder of Eeva.

The Long and Winding Answer is a podcast about atypical minds, neurodivergence, giftedness, creativity and the many different ways humans think, work and experience the world.