How I'm Using AI to Save Time
As a smart, lazy person, I'm always looking for the most efficient and effective way to accomplish my goals. I don't have the energy to spend more time than is absolutely necessary. This isn't a character flaw - I prefer to think of it as resource optimisation.
I was talking to my friend last week over dinner when I casually mentioned all the things I make ChatGPT do for me. I primarily use ChatGPT because work pays for my Pro subscription - a perk I value more than the free lunches when we gather to co-work.
"Wait, you use AI for what?" she asked, nearly choking on her medium-rare A5 wagyu steak. It didn't occur to her to use AI for half the things I mentioned. That's when I realised there's an entire population missing out on digital assistants that never complain about overworking.
I really think that AI can transform your life, and its uses are limited by your imagination – much like my willpower is limited by my sofa’s gravitational pull after 7 PM. Since ChatGPT was publicly released in late 2022, many companies have popped up with new models and applications. Every company is trying to include AI in their products, for better or worse – I don’t think I’ll ever buy an AI-powered toothbrush.
That said, I still think there's a gap in AI adoption because some people aren't as comfortable with tech, or they can't imagine how AI can help them in their everyday life. So here are some ways that AI is helping me reclaim hours of my life.
Generate specific recipes
My gut and I have a complicated relationship. I'm on a low FODMAP diet because of ‘leaky gut’, and the Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) practitioners I've worked with keep telling me that I have too much "dampness" in my body – which sounds like my body has the conditions of a basement. I also try as much as possible to use cooking methods which save time and reduce AGEs – like slow cooking.
Before AI, searching for recipes that accommodated my dietary requirements was like trying to maintain eye contact during a conversation with someone who has vegetables in their teeth – uncomfortable, distracting, and I just wanted it to be over.
One desperate evening, after staring into my refrigerator like it was a Magic 8-Ball that refused to reveal dinner options, I turned to ChatGPT. "Please give me recipe ideas that are low FODMAP, reduce 'dampness' according to TCM, and can be made in a slow cooker." Within seconds, it generated five appetising recipe ideas. I picked a ginger-turmeric chicken slow cooker recipe, and ChatGPT produced a detailed version that would earn the approval of my stomach, doctor, and TCM practitioner.
Troubleshoot my sourdough
I recently joined the sourdough cult – I named my starter Herculyeast. Despite my devotion, my loaves kept coming out looking like sad, flat pancakes after the cold retard (sourdough speak for refrigeration). Was I overproofing? Was my starter sluggish? Was Mercury in retrograde, sabotaging my sourdough?
After my third consecutive failure, I sent ChatGPT a couple of photos of my deflated dough, along with details about my bulk fermentation, fridge temperature, and time in cold retard. Within a minute, it generated a helpful list of potential culprits, without needing to wade through fifteen blog posts that started with "My journey with sourdough began when I was backpacking through Europe..."
Write a pulse-check survey for my team
I love my team and want to make sure they're satisfied with my leadership, in the same way that I want to ensure my houseplants are happy with their sunlight allocation. In the past when I asked for direct feedback, the response was some version of, "it's all going great, I'm happy" – nice to hear, but not as detailed as I’d hoped. I was worried that perhaps they weren't being as frank as they wanted to be. Some personalities aren't comfortable giving direct feedback to anyone.
So I asked ChatGPT to generate five questions for each team member to answer and send directly to my manager, the CEO, and draft a short message with instructions I could send to the team over Slack. The questions were thoughtful and non-threatening, designed to elicit honest feedback. The five questions and Slack message generated were 90% perfect and were good to go after ~10 mins of editing.
I later asked my CEO to run the replies through ChatGPT to anonymise and summarise the feedback, and it produced a very helpful document for our discussion together. My team gave a 4.75/5 satisfaction rating, which will banish my imposter syndrome for about 2 weeks.
Draft a document for incident management
During a recent retrospective, we concluded that we needed a document to help assess the severity of bugs and incidents. Because nothing says "we're organised" like a detailed protocol for when everything falls apart.
Instead of starting from scratch, which would have required thinking and energy I preferred to conserve for deciding what to watch on Netflix later, I asked ChatGPT to bang out a draft for discussion with my CTO.
The draft was 90% perfect. Again, with a few adjustments from both of us, it was ready to share with the rest of the team. I allocated 30 minutes to discuss and draft something with my CTO, and a complete document was done and ready to share within 15 minutes.
Editing this article
I write for funsies, just because. I don't have the time or budget to meticulously edit this piece to perfection, nor am I ready to pay for professional editing services. That's ok, because I have Claude to edit for me (I find it's generally better for writing tasks). I was able to draft, edit, and publish this article in just over 2 hours by relying on Claude.
My 24/7 digital sidekick
ChatGPT now lives on my phone's first screen—prime real estate previously reserved for only the most essential apps. For almost any task requiring research or content generation, it's become my first stop. I genuinely can't imagine going back to life without it. If you're not using AI to make your life easier, you're essentially volunteering for extra work. And as a smart, lazy person, I can think of nothing more horrifying.