By Brian Westover
Publication Date: 2026-06-07 12:37:00
Performance coaching has always fascinated me, but traditional coaches are prohibitively expensive—hundreds of dollars for a one-hour session. To be honest, something like this is way out of my budget. In addition to the cost, finding a coach who is available in my area (Idaho) and knowledgeable about my industry (tech journalism) adds another layer of complexity.
As AI tools emerged, I heard about people using them for all sorts of personal applications, including therapy. I wouldn’t use an AI as a psychiatrist, but it seemed useful for performance coaching, which often doesn’t require a license. So I employed Gemini as my own AI performance coach for two months.
Below I’ll show you how I did it, from the files and prompts I provided the AI to how to use the feature called Gemini Gems.
Meet my coach: Google Gemini Pro
For this experiment I used Google Gemini. I was about 10 months into a 12 month trial of the Gemini subscription, which was recently renamed…
