Sometimes your to-do list looks more like a novel. Anything that might help you successfully cross off some of those items is appealing, and ChatGPT has some tricks that can aid you in powering through the list well beyond simply drafting business emails or summarizing long conversations.
After some experiments and hearing from others who have created their own productivity hacks with ChatGPT, I’ve put together a handful of particularly useful prompts you can use when organization and motivation are low, but there’s still a lot to do.
1. Time Blocking
Scheduling out your day and week is the most basic, necessary, and often difficult part of being productive. Explaining everything about the demands on your time can take even longer. Luckily, ChatGPT’s models are now advanced enough that you can be fairly brief and straightforward with your requests. Tell ChatGPT, “I want to be productive without burning out. Help me create a daily routine that includes time for deep work, Zoom calls, meals, and short walks.”
Though simple, that’s plenty for ChatGPT to start with. The AI will ask follow-up questions, and you can provide as much detail as you want. The more detail you provide, the more useful the routine will be, but the conversational approach makes it feel less like another homework assignment. Once it has enough information, you’ll see your day broken into sections.
For me, that meant blocks of time for professional work like writing current assignments, looking for new ideas, applying for positions, and even email and admin. They were all broken up with time for breaks, meals, family time, exercise, and even sleep here and there. It wasn’t exactly what I wanted, but it was a perfect starting point that I could then refine, and a lot easier to work from than a blank calendar. Letting ChatGPT draft your day removes a lot of decision fatigue. Not having to ask “what should I do next ?” all of the time makes for a much more productive week.
2. Meeting Magic
A friend in an office job with lots of meetings led me to another useful prompt. She spends a lot of time preparing for meetings and often feels over- or underprepared, depending on how much time and energy she has to invest in getting ready. The advent of ChatGPT has reduced a lot of the stress of running a million meetings thanks to variations on the prompt: “Can you help me draft an agenda, key discussion points, and potential questions to ask?”
Again, the conversational approach to organizing relieves a lot of stress. All she has to do is describe the kind of meeting and people who will be there, along with any documents and presentations that she is allowed to put into the system. ChatGPT provides her a draft introduction, a timeline and agenda for the meeting, possible action items to make sure people know about, and even possible questions she might field and ideas for how to answer them. The more she uses it, the better these guides apparently get, especially in learning her voice and adapting to whatever obstacles have cropped up during meetings so they don’t present a problem the next time.
3. Decisions AI
When you have to make a big decision, the factors to consider can make it hard to navigate to the best answer. Someone who recently had to make some of the biggest decisions of their life told me they struggled with pros and cons lists and other traditional decision-making strategies. He wanted to be efficient about it without missing anything important, and found conversation with ChatGPT to be an ideal method. He told the AI, “I’m thinking of moving to a new city for a job I think I would like more than my current role. Can you help me weigh the pros and cons and ask questions I might not have considered?”
Now, you probably don’t have decisions at that level to make every day, but the template of asking about pros and cons and getting ChatGPT to bring up questions you might not have consdiered could apply to anything from the life-changing example to something as simple as figuring out what software to use for a project or who to invite to collaborate on a presentation.
4. Task Slicer
One of the most difficult aspects of being productive is seeing how one giant project can be split into more digestible chunks. I’ve found ChatGPT to be a real help in this regard. For instance, I’ve asked it, “Help me turn my goal of organizing my home office into small, focused tasks I can do in 20-minute chunks over the next week.”
The response from ChatGPT did exactly as I requested. Each task was small, relatively easy, and fast. Decluttering, clearing one drawer at a time, sorting miscellaneous cables, and so on, until a week later, I had a very nice, streamlined setup with everything labeled and easy to find. Making small, winnable activities isn’t the approach everyone likes, but it’s genuinely sped up everything I have to do.
5. Learning Acceleration
Another friend told me how ChatGPT has maximized their productivity in an oddly unproductive way, helping them cram when they haven’t had time to study a subject. For instance, fifteen minutes before a call about blockchain, which he knew little of, he asked ChatGPT: “Can you explain the basics of blockchain in fifteen minutes, with key concepts and real-world applications?”
Five seconds later, he dove into a crash course, breaking down decentralization, the ledger, and how it connects with cryptocurrencies, supply chains, and smart contracts. He looked like he knew what he was talking about and impressed the person he was meeting with. I wouldn’t say it’s a great plan for everyday life, but when you’re pushed for time, ChatGPT can be the short-term tutor to save the day.
Productive Power
These hacks aren’t a solution on their own; they’re really more like nudges to do what you already know you have to do. ChatGPT doesn’t magically make you productive, but it removes a lot of the friction that keeps you from being productive. Sometimes that’s all you need. And if you don’t have someone to be that life coach, ChatGPT can be the friend who helps you get out of your own way.
It’s worth a shot. After all, the worst-case scenario is that ChatGPT just gives you a weird metaphor about productivity. But you might just see your afternoons free up instead.
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erichs211@gmail.com (Eric Hal Schwartz)
