Time is your most precious and finite asset. There's a lot of commentary around productivity at work, but not as much at home. If you can save time on your weekly tasks, in all important parts of life, you can make substantial progress.
Just like money, there's no savings too small. Saving 15 minutes on your weekly responsibilities is better than no time savings. Become a time budgeter with the help of artificial intelligence.
AI can help you with a lot. For example, 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 the best AI tool 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 and most recently to the free version. There's a premium subscription for $20 per month, but the free version is usually all you need.
Start with self-reflection – review your week
Society obsesses over AI being able to generate jokes or scripts in seconds, but does this really solve your problems? No. Ponder on your 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.
Two time-sucking examples
For example, here are two weekly tasks (one home, one work) that could be organized and optimized with AI.
- Family chores and housework.
- Digitize handwritten meeting notes.
Family chores and housework
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' pocket money, screen time sessions or weekend activities.
Let's use a family of four as an example – mum, dad, a 6-year-old boy and a 3-year-old girl. In your prompt, include specific details that might impact 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/toys from the kids' list, but make packing/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.
Digitize handwritten meeting notes
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, like: 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. Get a dozen of these types of tasks into AI and the time savings will soon add up.