Let’s face it — ChatGPT is everywhere. In the short time of 2–3 years this AI tool has swept the entire world of it’s feet quicker than any other technology has done before. It’s true that most people already think that ChatGPT is an absolutely extraordinary appliance, but what most of them understand of the AI’s capability only scratch the surface of what ChatGPT can actually do. Beneath that swirly green and white logo, there’s tons of untapped potential that everybody can use to their advantage. It doesn’t matter if your a high-achieving student, a working person, or just a regular human who wants to benefit from this new and cool technology, these 5 ChatGPT hacks will make your life a whole lot more easier.
Here’s the list of the best ChatGPT hacks to make your life easy, efficient, and extraordinary. Image edited by author on Canva. (ORIGINAL IMAGE SOURCE)
1. Let ChatGPT Handle Your Personal Life & Workflow
If every single one of your days is packed with clashing events, activities, and important tasks that require a 25th hour just to be completed, I highly recommend using ChatGPT to help create a schedule for you, instead of Google Calendar or some other schedule-making software. Indeed, most people already use ChatGPT to create their schedules, but they’re not using the AI to the best of it’s capacity. Instead of simply prompting it to “create a schedule for your day”, describe what you want to do specifically. For instance, say:
“I’m juggling multiple freelance projects. Can you create a schedule that blocks out time for client meetings, deep work, and breaks? I work best in the mornings and want to finish by 6 PM.”
ChatGPT will analyze your input and craft a detailed schedule that maximizes and prioritises your productivity. Besides, if you need the to tweak the schedule even just a little bit, just ask. It can adjust based on new deadlines or shifting priorities.
When I input this prompt into ChatGPT, it creates a thorough schedule for my whole day that includes rest periods, meals, etc. Aside from this, it updates it’s memory so that it can do so again in the future. Image by author.
Unlike static scheduling tools, the adaptability of ChatGPT makes it perfect for dynamic work environments. On other platforms, you, yourself have to do all the work and figure out how to get every meeting, task, etc. to line up with time. With ChatGPT, you can just describe it, sit back and relax.
Compared to using other schedule-making softwares, ChatGPT is much more efficient and adjustable as you no need to figure out your objective for every single minute of the day. Instead, you can just tell ChatGPT all your meetings, events, tasks, etc. and allow it to designate times for it. If you have any tweaks or adjustments, no problem, simply describe them to the AI and let it do the job for you. Image by JESHOOTS.com on Pexels
But always remember to save your prompts. Once you’ve found a format that works, copy and paste to reuse on future projects — not just for schedules. This will save time and effort.
2. Create Customised Learning Paths
If you’ve always wanted to learn Spanish, master graphic design, or tackle calculus, ChatGPT can help you develop a learning plan customised specifically to suit your goals and lifestyle. Ditch the cookie-cutter curriculum; this is personalized education at its finest.
With ChatGPT, learning has never been easier; there’s no need to stick to a fixed, textbook syllabus. Instead, use ChatGPT to learn at your own pace, your own time and most importantly — your own comfort. That right there is, as I’ve mentioned before, personalized learning at its finest. Image by Sanket Mishra on Pexels.
Here’s an example prompt for this hack:
“I want to learn French for travel. I have 15 minutes a day, and I’m a complete beginner. Can you make a thorough 3-month plan for me?”
That’s when ChatGPT will draw up your day-to-day roadmap, full of topics to discuss, suggested resources, and practice exercises, just like an independent private tutor who works based on your will. Aside from this, ChatGPT even grows with you. If you’re stuck on a topic, feel free to ask for an explanation or more practice exercises. If you’re whizzing through the basics, ask for harder material.
When I input the above given example prompt into ChatGPT, it generates a really good plan and even mentions different apps or websites that I can use to practice my french skills. This plan is far better than any that I could ever come up with. Image by author.
But make sure to use ChatGPT for active learning. Ask questions like :
“What is the difference between ‘passé composé’ and ‘imparfait’ in French?” or ask for roleplay scenarios, which I’ll talk a bit more about in a while, to practice conversational skills.
3. Use The Right Prompts
It’s no secret that deep, specific research is an extremely difficult task that’s hard to do alone. And sometimes, when you use ChatGPT to answer some of your research questions or help you find more information, it just gives completely unrelated responses or an answer that you’re not looking for. To fix this, we can use something called prompt stacking. This technique involves layering specific prompts to guide ChatGPT toward delivering your targeted answers.
Here’s exactly what to do:
First of all, start broad and then refine step by step. For example:
Begin with “Explain the basics of blockchain technology.”
This question is to get the AI to know a background of your follow-up questions, so don’t be to specific or too broad either. Like in this example, I asked it to explain the basics of blockchain technology, not to explain what technology in general is because that’s waaay too broad and general. Image by author
Follow up with something like — “How does proof-of-stake differ from proof-of-work?” Which is a somewhat specific question, but still not too specific, at least not the question that I want to ask yet. You should ask your follow-up questions like these so that ChatGPT knows the particular path in the main topic that you’re going into.
With the follow-up question, ChatGPT starts going much deeper into the particular topic instead of in general. Image by author.
Finally, drill deeper into a very specific question. Now is the time you ask your intended question. “List five real-world applications of blockchain in supply chain management.”
At last, with this final prompt, ChatGPT is giving me the exact answers that I’m looking for. Image by author.
By building on each prompt, you’ll gather detailed information and also gain a comprehensive understanding of the subject.
Even if the 3rd question doesn’t hit the spot, you can ask it a few more specific ones until the AI model understands completely from the previous questions and provides you with your anticipated or expected response.
Have ChatGPT synthesize your findings into a report, outline, or even presentation slides. This can save so much time and make your research way more easy. Additionally, if it’s important paper, maybe ask the AI to cite it’s sources, which can also save tons of time and effort.
While I agree that ChatGPT and other AI models are very useful in simple research, I highly recommend you to NOT use them for important studies and papers as it is true that these models sometimes make up information and are inaccurate in a phenomena known as AI hallucination. Yes, it’s a real thing. Instead of using AI for important research, do your own experiments, find out information by yourself and cite reliable sources by yourself. Trust me, it pays of. Image by Pixabay on Pexels.
4. ChatGPT Has More Ideas Than You Might Have
Staring at a blank page or not knowing what content to generate is every writer’s and creator’s worst nightmare. ChatGPT can really help with this. If you’ve got writer’s block or creator’s block — if that’s even a thing, ask ChatGPT to come up with some ideas for content.
Be specific. Instead of saying, “Give me ideas for a short story,” say something like:
“I want to write a science fiction story about humans in the future who live underwater. Can you give me some ideas about peculiar cultural customs for underwater societies?” , for example.
If you be too broad, ChatGPT won’t know what type of ideas you’re looking for (as shown in this picture), which is why you must be specific and have a rough plan for your content in your mind — unless of course you’ve just started creating content. Image by author.
ChatGPT can make those specific ideas florid, imaginative, and lift your project to the next level. You can even ask it to outline chapters, draft dialogue, or even come up with character names and backstories.
You can keep iterating until you find something that’s just right for your story.
ChatGPT’ s ideas can be continuously switched up and changed until you land on something that suits your content formatt and is just right. Simply ask it to change it’s ideas based on your own personal decisions until it lands on that perfect topic. Image by Polina Zimmerman on Pexels.
Despite all of this, I am strongly against using AI for generating your content entirely such as in AI-generated videos, articles, etc. AI is simply a tool. It should not be abused to create content and put it under a human’s name. In my opinion, AI should be strictly used for ideas and not for the entirety of the content.
5. Role Playing
Few people realize that ChatGPT has the ability to adopt certain personas in order to give more specific and profound responses. As I’ve mentioned before, role playing is really useful when you want to get the right answers from ChatGPT. Set the stage with a clear directive. Here are a few examples:
1. “You are a professional career coach; guide me through some editing for a senior position in marketing.”
2. “You’re a nutritionist; provide a week of meal planning that meets vegan marathoner training requirements.”
These types of instructions have generally proven more relevant and actionable because they have some degree of containment for ChatGPT.
The Final Word
ChatGPT is so a whole lot more than a glorified Q&A machine, which most people don’t even realize. With the right prompts, creativity, and practice, you can turn it into an actor, tutor, brainstorming partner — practically anything. Even better, the more you experiment with it, the better it gets at understanding and adapting to your needs.
Keep using ChatGPT to make your life simpler and more efficient. Who knows? You might even discover your own hacks along the way.
This story is published on Generative AI. Connect with us on LinkedIn and follow Zeniteq to stay in the loop with the latest AI stories.
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5 ChatGPT Hacks That You’ve Never Heard of (But Need to Know)