Discover 9 everyday tasks ChatGPT can complete in mere seconds, from writing emails and planning trips to analyzing complex data, saving you precious hours of your daily time. These simple yet powerful tools can radically transform your productivity.

Article contents:

• Introduction
• Writing emails
• Generating schedules and itineraries
• Explaining difficult concepts
• Analyzing difficult decisions
• Planning complex projects
• Compiling research
• Summarizing content
• Creating flashcards
• Practicing interviews
• Conclusion

Introduction

ChatGPT is rapidly changing the world. This process is already happening, and it will only accelerate as the technology improves, more people gain access, and more individuals learn how to use it. What is astonishing is the number of tasks ChatGPT can already manage for you.

While critics may look down upon the potential of AI assistants, I use it to handle all kinds of routine tasks for me. Here are my favorite examples for saving time and effort.

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Writing emails

We have all faced the task of writing a difficult email—whether personal or professional—without knowing exactly how to phrase it. ChatGPT can do the heavy lifting for you, writing the (hopefully) perfect email based on any information you provide it.

Suppose the email you need to write is professional in nature, and phrasing it poorly could negatively impact your career. By prompting ChatGPT to write the email with a specific structure, content, and tone of voice, you can give yourself a great head start.

A winning tip for this is to never accept ChatGPT’s first attempt. Always read it and look for areas of improvement, then request edits to ensure you get the best possible email. You can (and should) also rewrite the email in your own voice.

Generating schedules and itineraries

If you are going on a trip but are the type of person who hates planning trips, you should use ChatGPT’s ability to generate travel itineraries. The results can be highly customized depending on how many details and instructions you are 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, relying on ChatGPT to get an itinerary is essential for me. I will provide the location and the types of things I want to see and do, and then let it handle the rest. Instead of spending days researching everything myself, ChatGPT does 80% of the work for me.

Just like with all these tasks, you do not 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 will be surprised by how many great ideas you encounter this way—simply delete the ones you do not like.

Explaining difficult concepts

One of the best tasks to assign to ChatGPT is explaining difficult concepts. Ask ChatGPT to explain any concept you can think of and it will deliver results most of the time. You can customize the level of explanation you need, and even have it include visual elements.

Let’s say, for example, that a senior manager at work regularly lectures everyone about the importance of communication. But perhaps they do not go into detail about what they mean, just constantly pushing the why without explaining the what. Well, just ask ChatGPT to explain communication!

You can do this with anything. Ask ChatGPT to explain augmented reality, multi-threading, blockchain, large language models, or whatever you like. It will provide you with a clear, simple breakdown, perhaps even with analogies and images.

Analyzing difficult decisions

We all face tough decisions from time to time. The next time you find yourself grappling with a particularly difficult decision—and cannot make up your mind one way or the other—try asking ChatGPT for guidance and advice.

It might seem strange to trust any kind of decision to artificial intelligence, let alone an important one that has you stuck, but doing so contains a lot of logic. While human judgment can be tainted by emotions, artificial intelligence can avoid that and prioritize logic.

Needless to say: you do not need to accept ChatGPT’s answers. Use artificial intelligence to weigh the pros and cons, to help you understand what matters most to you, and to suggest a direction. Who knows? If you find yourself disliking the provided answer, that in itself may clarify what you actually want—and the right answer for you.

Planning complex projects

Most jobs come with some level of project planning and management. Even I, as a freelance writer, need to plan tasks to finish projects on time. This is where ChatGPT can prove its invaluable worth, breaking projects down into smaller, more manageable pieces.

ChatGPT needs to know the nature of the project, the end goal, any constraints you might face, and what you have done so far. With this information, it can break the project down with a step-by-step plan, dividing it further into phases (if necessary).

If ChatGPT does not break down your project initially in a way that suits you, try again. Change the prompts and have the AI chatbot adjust to exactly what you are looking for. It takes some back-and-forth, but it can cut planning time from hours to mere minutes.

Compiling research

If you need to research a specific topic that interests you, ChatGPT can save you the trouble of compiling that research. For example, before a trip to Croatia, I wanted to learn more about the Croatian War of Independence, so I asked ChatGPT to provide a concise summary of the conflict with bullet points to help me understand how it happened.

After absorbing all that information, I asked ChatGPT to add a timeline of major events, which further helped me understand how the conflict evolved. ChatGPT then offered to provide battle maps and/or summaries, as well as profiles of key players.

You can go even deeper with ChatGPT’s Deep Research feature, now available to free users, for up to 5 deep research tasks per month. With Deep Research, ChatGPT conducts multi-step research to generate comprehensive reports (with citations!) based on vast amounts of online information.

Summarizing content

There are only so many hours in a day, yet so many new articles published on the web day after day. When you stumble across extra-long reads, it can be helpful to pass them through ChatGPT for a quick summary. Then, if the summary falls short in any way, you can go back and read the full article.

As an example, I ran one of my own articles from PCWorld (where I compared Bluesky and Threads as alternatives to X) through ChatGPT, which provided a concise summary of my points and categorized the best alternative to X based on my provided reasons. Interestingly, it also extracted elements from other articles.

This is a great trick to use with other long-form, text-heavy content that you do not have time to get through. Think of interview transcripts, lectures, videos, and Zoom meetings. The only caveat is never to share private details with ChatGPT, such as company-protected data under non-disclosure agreements and the like.

Creating flashcards

Flashcards can be extremely useful for drilling a lot of information into your brain, such as when studying for an exam, onboarding into a new role, preparing for a job interview, etc. And with ChatGPT, you no longer need to painfully create those flashcards yourself. All you have to do is tell the AI the details of what you are studying.

You can specify the format (such as Q&A or multiple choice), along with various other elements. You can also choose to keep things broad or target specific subtopics or concepts you want to focus on. You can even upload your own notes for ChatGPT to reference.

Practicing interviews

Whether you are a first-time job seeker or have a lot of experience under your belt, it is always a good idea to practice your interviews when making career moves. Years ago, you might have had to ask a friend or family member to play the mock interviewer. These days, ChatGPT can do that for you—and do it even more effectively.

Tell ChatGPT the job title, industry, and seniority level of the position you are interviewing for, what kind of interview it will be (such as a screening, technical assessment, group/panel, one-on-one with the CEO), and anything else you want it to consider. ChatGPT will then conduct a mock interview with you, providing feedback along the way.

When I tried this myself, I was amazed at how well ChatGPT could pretend to be a human in this context. And the feedback it provides for every answer you give is invaluable for smoothing out your rough edges and improving your chances of success when you are interviewed by a real hiring manager.

Conclusion

These nine tasks represent the tip of the iceberg of what ChatGPT can accomplish to save your time and improve your productivity. The beauty of these tools is that they are available now and can be used immediately to improve your work and personal life. The key is experimentation and learning from interaction with ChatGPT, developing your own methods to get the best results. As these technologies continue to be developed, we expect them to become even more powerful and useful in the near future.