Amanda Smith is a freelance journalist and writer. She reports on culture, society, human interest and technology. Her stories hold a mirror to society, reflecting both its malaise and its beauty. Amanda's work has been published in National Geographic, The Guardian, Business Insider, Vice, News Corp, Singapore Airlines, Travel + Leisure, and Food & Wine. Amanda is an Australian living in the cultural center of gravity that is New York City.
There's a lot of commentary around productivity at work, but not as much about all your home tasks. Time is the most precious thing you have -- so if you can save time on your weekly to-do list, in all parts of life, you could be saving a lot more time for the fun things.
Just like money, there's no time savings too small. Saving 15 minutes on your weekly responsibilities is better than nothing. Become a time budgeter with the help of artificial intelligence.
AI productivity tools can help you with a lot of things, like planning, saving and maximizing time on cleaning, cooking, exercising, shopping, scheduling, traveling and life admin. Look at the tasks you procrastinate on - this is where you can use the most support.
ChatGPT seems to be one of the best AI productivity tools to chat with, so I'm testing out its time-saving chops. OpenAI's ChatGPT was released in 2022, but it has undergone major updates, notably to the free version. There's a premium subscription for $20 a month, but the free version is usually all you need.
Society obsesses over AI being able to generate jokes or scripts in seconds, but does this really solve problems? No. Ponder on your personal pain points and use the tools tactically to find better or faster ways of doing things.
If meals are always a mess, use ChatGPT as a co-cook. If you want to get the kids off screens, you could use ChatGPT to generate trivia questions for their age group. If you never know what to wear to work, you could ask AI to plan your week's outfits, based on your wardrobe.
Contemplate how ChatGPT can best help you, with two to three top tasks or categories.
For example, here are two weekly tasks (one home, one work) that could be organized and optimized with AI:
1. Family chores and housework.
2. Digitize handwritten meeting notes.
Organize your family chore chart with ChatGPT. It's a handy tool to help assign age-appropriate housework tasks. You could ask ChatGPT to use a star or point system, which connects to your kids' allowance, screen time sessions or weekend activities.
Let's use a family of four as an example: mom, dad, a 6-year-old boy and a 3-year-old girl. In your prompt, include specific details that might affect a weekly schedule. For example, commuting to work, playing sports, music lessons and recurring household tasks.
Prompt: "Create a weekly chore chart for a family of four, with kids aged 6 and 3. Include age-appropriate chores, the estimated time to complete each task, and a reward system based on points."
I wanted to see what it generated, because it gave me ideas I hadn't thought of, such as watering house plants.
And here's the points-based reward system it generated:
I asked ChatGPT to remove the dusting, vacuuming, sweeping and organizing books and toys from the kids' list, but make packing and unpacking the dishwasher a daily task and add help with cooking on Saturday or Sunday.
I made a couple of requests, such as adding "get shoes on" daily, then asked ChatGPT to sort in order of daily to weekly tasks. I also asked it to switch up the parent tasks.
Prompt: For parent tasks, change laundry to Wednesday and Sunday. Daily cooking, 1 hour a day including lunch and dinner. Vacuum on Sunday, 30 minutes. Clean stovetop, surfaces and toilet, 15 minutes. Dust on Sunday, 15 minutes. Take out trash and recycling, twice a week, 20 minutes. Meal plan and grocery shop on Sunday, 1 hour.
If there are any errors, just ask ChatGPT to regenerate it. Small tweaks are to be expected.
ChatGPT's reward system suggestions triggered an idea: The kids could earn bonus points if they help with any parent tasks, especially for Sunday's chores.
You could even ask ChatGPT to turn its plan into a printable page to stick on your fridge to use as a scoreboard.
Another way to gain AI productivity is to summarize handwritten meeting notes in seconds. If you're in multiple meetings during the week, use ChatGPT to digitize your handwriting. Download the ChatGPT app so you can easily take and upload a photo of your pages.
Prompt: Transcribe these handwritten notes into text.
Then open up the desktop version to easily check the text and paste it in a word document. Keep the physical notes page (or photo) open to cross-check.
I have the handwriting of a high school student, so I had to make a few requests. I told it that the sixth bullet should read "Clearer briefs - deadlines, time, priority list (one for you)." But still, not bad, ChatGPT!
While this might not save you hours per week, it's a good example of a small task that can be sped up with AI. Once you start using AI productivity tools for these tasks, the time savings will soon add up.
