20 menial tasks ChatGPT handles in seconds, saving you hours

Write your emails for you

Dave Parrack / Foundry

We’ve all been faced with the tricky task of writing an email—whether personal or professional—but not knowing quite how to word it. ChatGPT can do the heavy lifting for you, penning the (hopefully) perfect email based on whatever information you feed it.

Let’s assume the email you need to write is of a professional nature, and wording it poorly could negatively affect your career. By directing ChatGPT to write the email with a particular structure, content, and tone of voice, you can give yourself a huge head start.

A winning tip for this is to never accept ChatGPT’s first attempt. Always read through it and look for areas of improvement, then request tweaks to ensure you get the best possible email. You can (and should) also rewrite the email in your own voice. Learn more about how ChatGPT coached my colleague to write better emails.

Generate itineraries and schedules

Dave Parrack / Foundry

If you’re going on a trip but you’re the type of person who hates planning trips, then you should utilize ChatGPT’s ability to generate trip itineraries. The results can be customized to the nth degree depending on how much detail and instruction you’re willing to provide.

As someone who likes to get away at least once a year but also wants to make the most of every trip, leaning on ChatGPT for an itinerary is essential for me. I’ll provide the location and the kinds of things I want to see and do, then let it handle the rest. Instead of spending days researching everything myself, ChatGPT does 80 percent of it for me.

As with all of these tasks, you don’t need to accept ChatGPT’s first effort. Use different prompts to force the AI chatbot to shape the itinerary closer to what you want. You’d be surprised at how many cool ideas you’ll encounter this way—simply nix the ones you don’t like.

Break down difficult concepts

Dave Parrack / Foundry

One of the best tasks to assign to ChatGPT is the explanation of difficult concepts. Ask ChatGPT to explain any concept you can think of and it will deliver more often than not. You can tailor the level of explanation you need, and even have it include visual elements.

Let’s say, for example, that a higher-up at work regularly lectures everyone about the importance of networking. But maybe they never go into detail about what they mean, just constantly pushing the why without explaining the what. Well, just ask ChatGPT to explain networking!

Okay, most of us know what “networking” is and the concept isn’t very hard to grasp. But you can do this with anything. Ask ChatGPT to explain augmented reality, multi-threaded processing, blockchain, large language models, what have you. It will provide you with a clear and simple breakdown, maybe even with analogies and images.

Break down big tasks into smaller tasks

Dave Parrack / Foundry

If you’ve spent even five minutes with ChatGPT, you know that it likes to break things down into sections and categories. Well, why not take advantage of that and utilize to your own benefit?

ChatGPT can help you break down overwhelmingly large tasks into smaller tasks that feel more manageable. The AI will check that you’re both on the same page, then identify the major components of the task at hand and chunk it down to bite-sized pieces.

You’ll end up with a set of small(er) tasks that you can then tackle in a step-by-step fashion—and once completed, you’ll see that you’ve achieved the monumental task you had in the first place.

Analyze and make tough decisions

Dave Parrack / Foundry

We all face tough decisions every so often. The next time you find yourself wrestling with a particularly tough one—and you just can’t decide one way or the other—try asking ChatGPT for guidance and advice.

It may sound strange to trust any kind of decision to artificial intelligence, let alone an important one that has you stumped, but doing so actually makes a lot of sense. While human judgment can be clouded by emotions, AI can set that aside and prioritize logic.

It should go without saying: you don’t have to accept ChatGPT’s answers. Use the AI to weigh the pros and cons, to help you understand what’s most important to you, and to suggest a direction. Who knows? If you find yourself not liking the answer given, that in itself might clarify what you actually want—and the right answer for you. This is the kind of stuff ChatGPT can do to improve your life.

Get weekly meal plans

Dave Parrack / Foundry

While artificial intelligence isn’t yet able to cook your food for you (though it’s only a matter of time), it can be used to plan out your meals. Just inform ChatGPT of any dietary requirements you may have, how much effort you’re willing to make, particular cuisine preferences, and your weekly budget. It’ll handle the rest.

ChatGPT can tell you what to buy at the grocery store at the start of the week, then generate a meal plan with recipes that suit your needs and wants. You can guide it as much as you want, too, such as by asking it to increase your fiber and protein intake.

Plan complex projects and strategies

Dave Parrack / Foundry

Most jobs come with some level of project planning and management. Even I, as a freelance writer, need to plan tasks to get projects completed on time. And that’s where ChatGPT can prove invaluable, breaking projects up into smaller, more manageable parts.

ChatGPT needs to know the nature of the project, the end goal, any constraints you may have, and what you have done so far. With that information, it can then break the project up