11 dead-simple ChatGPT prompts that are surprisingly useful

Get meal ideas from available ingredients

Dave Parrack / Foundry

Most of us endure busy working lives these days, which leaves little time for doing much of anything else—and that can include grocery shopping for the ingredients needed for home-cooked meals. Thankfully, if you ever find yourself with a small set of ingredients and no idea what to make with them, ChatGPT can help.

Just list the staple (and otherwise) ingredients you have available and ask ChatGPT for some meal ideas using them. As an example, I asked, “What meals can I make with rice, eggs, and frozen mixed vegetables?” ChatGPT suggested egg fried rice, a vegetable rice omelet, and baked egg fried rice muffins, among others. Pretty nifty in a pinch.

Troubleshoot your problems

Dave Parrack / Foundry

When something goes wrong, your first instinct might be to panic or shut down—but maybe it should be to ask ChatGPT for help instead. ChatGPT can provide troubleshooting help whenever you’re stuck dealing with an unknown or unexpected issue.

Just ask ChatGPT to provide a list of troubleshooting steps for whatever has gone wrong. In my case, I’ve asked what I can do about a Windows laptop that has stopped working—my short prompt of “Please list some troubleshooting steps for a Windows laptop that has stopped working” resulted in a solid list of 10 things I could try.

This is equally useful for all kinds of other problems, like if your toilet randomly flushes on its own every so often, if your car starts making a weird noise, or if your wireless router is on the fritz. Just make sure you never share sensitive personal data with ChatGPT!

Create tailor-made workout routines

Dave Parrack / Foundry

While YouTube remains an option when looking for a workout routine, ChatGPT can provide you with ones that are as general or as specific as you need them to be. Want exercises for people your age? Or stretches for an aching lower back? Or simple workouts you can do at home without any equiment? Ones you can do at your desk? No worries!

I personally asked ChatGPT, “Please create a short workout routine a 40-year-old can do in their lounge.” (I’m a bit older than 40, but what better way to stay young than to work out as a younger person would?) ChatGPT came through for me with a 20-minute low-impact workout routine that I found challenging but doable. It’s one of the many ways you can use ChatGPT to actually improve your life.

Generate comprehensive checklists

Dave Parrack / Foundry

Checklists are so useful for when you absolutely don’t want to forget an important step, like when you’re packing for vacation, hosting a party, or spring cleaning your home. ChatGPT can help by creating checklists for lots of different scenarios—and for best results, you’ll want to include specific details to clue ChatGPT into your specific needs.

I asked ChatGPT to “Please provide me with a checklist for packing for a vacation to Italy in September.” Note that I mentioned both the location and time of year I was visiting! The more context you can provide in your prompt, the more accurate and helpful the checklist will be.

Explain concepts (like I’m 5)

Dave Parrack / Foundry

With a single, one-line prompt, ChatGPT can explain even the most complex concepts in a way that you can grasp. Want to understand nuclear fission? Or how EV batteries work? Or what kind of engineering goes into modern data centers? Just ask!

But make sure to tack on the “like I’m 5” to your prompt—taken from the ELI5 trope on Reddit—so that ChatGPT dumbs down the subject enough to be digestible no matter your background. As an example, I asked ChatGPT to explain the concept of time travel like I’m 5. (Feel free to change the age or add any other qualifiers you want.)

Summarize online articles

Dave Parrack / Foundry

Do you feel like you’re inundated with so much information that you just can’t keep up or absorb it all? You aren’t alone. There are billions of web pages out there—no one has the time or energy to read every single thing that catches their eye. Thankfully, ChatGPT can help by analyzing any online article and spitting out the most important bits.

In the example above, I asked ChatGPT to summarize my own article about mundane tasks ChatGPT can handle for you—and it accurately broke it down, correctly citing PCWorld as the source throughout. In testing, I found that ChatGPT sometimes even pulls info from other sources to fill in details and provide more context.

See what happened on a day in history

Dave Parrack / Foundry

It’s important to not only know what has happened in the past, but to understand why those things happened. You could work your way through encyclopedias and history books, spending years of your life absorbing facts and putting them together… or you could put ChatGPT to work and get it to do all the heavy lifting for you.

With a simple prompt, ChatGPT can list all the major historical events that have happened on a particular day. You can ask about a specific day in a specific year, or the same particular day throughout the years. If the response stokes your interest, you can follow up wi