Kristen 0:00
Have you ever had those big, important projects you know you need to do that just keep getting pushed to the back burner for weeks or even months? It happens to me a whole lot more than I would like to admit. In fact, I just recently realized that a project I had started in December was still sitting, barely even touched, not just unfinished, barely even started, in May. When I realized how long I had let myself procrastiwork—yes, it’s a word, I made it up—on a million other things while I avoided this one project, I honestly was feeling pretty down about it. Might have even beaten myself up a little bit over it.
Kristen 0:47
But right now, today, I can tell you that I am finally making real progress on this project, and it feels so good to finally be moving forward in something that I had put off and really just struggled with for so long, and it really is all because I started using AI to help me plan my week. It has made a huge difference for me. So I wanted to share with you how using chat GPT to figure out when my brain is working best and organize my schedule around it, has really helped me finally make progress on that project and be so much more productive on everything else during my work time too.
Kristen 1:33
Are you a digital product or course creator, selling on platforms like teachers pay teachers, Etsy or your own website, ready to grow your business, but not into the kind of constant hustle that leads straight to burnout? Then you’re in the right place. Welcome to The Savvy Seller. I’m Kristen Doyle, and I’m here to give you no fluff tools and strategies that move the needle for your business without burning you out in the process. Things like SEO, no stress, marketing, email list, building automations and so much more. Let’s get started, y’all.
Kristen 2:12
Let’s start with the back story. I had some big projects going on, and one in particular felt really hard every time I even thought about trying to work on it. I really wanted the end result. In fact, I’m still excited about getting this done, but I wasn’t excited to do the actual work it was gonna take to get there. And so it kept getting pushed to the back burner for months and months, I honestly just was not making any progress on it because something else always came up. I told myself for a while that those something elses were urgent or more important or just had to get done first. But the truth is, those other things that came up were things that I would rather put my attention on. They were things that felt fun, or they felt easier or something, and I just would rather do that than do this hard project.
Kristen 3:09
Now you probably should know that I’m fairly certain I have undiagnosed ADHD. When I say I’m fairly certain, what I mean is I’m pretty dang sure. I was a teacher for 10 years. I know what to look for. I have also learned a whole lot about the things that we miss when it comes to ADHD, especially in girls and in adult women entrepreneurs. So I am fairly certain.
Kristen 3:36
I had this wake up call when I realized I was wasting so much time during my work day. I had gotten to a point where I had really intended to work on this big project, and it was Thursday afternoon, and I still hadn’t even started it, and I was feeling so much resistance to trying to start it. And a couple of things kind of came to mind. I realized that my schedule wasn’t working for me. See, I would get up in the morning, I would have a little bit of work time, and then I would go to the gym. Well, by the time I got home from the gym, showered, got dressed, ate, it was nearly lunchtime by the time I really started working, and the truth is, my brain doesn’t work well in the afternoon, I hit a brick wall around 1:30 or two o’clock, and I know that happens for a lot of people.
Kristen 3:38
Well that Thursday afternoon, when I was just feeling really frustrated and really down, honestly about myself and about my productivity, I thought, you know, maybe, maybe I should just talk this out with chat GPT and see what comes out of it. You can probably do this with any AI tool, whichever one you like. Chat GPT is the one I grabbed that day. I honestly use several different ones for different things. But this chat I had with chat GPT that day really has completely changed how I approach my work week. And I know that sounds dramatic, but it really honestly has.
Kristen 5:05
Alright so let’s talk about the first major thing I realized from this process, from this chat with chat GPT. I kind of finally figured out when I do my best work and how I can organize my day around that. So what I realized in talking this out is that when I wake up, 6am ish, my brain is already spinning with ideas and things I need to get done. And of course, I’ve got kids to get to school, so early in the morning, I’m doing the kid thing. We’re getting up, we’re getting dressed, we’re getting breakfast, we’re getting out the door, all of that stuff. But then the next thing I was doing was going to the gym at 8:45 most days. Now I knew that if I wait until the afternoon to go to the gym, I’m not gonna go. And to be honest, I was prioritizing the gym at 8:45 over work at 8:45 because my afternoons are just as unproductive when it comes to the gym as they are when it comes to work.
Kristen 5:59
Chat GPT gave me a hard truth. And I will say, when you do this conversation, you have to tell it, Don’t just tell me what I want to hear, give me hard truths. And it told me, point blank, you are spending your best brain power time at the gym instead of on the tough work. And then when you get back, you need some recovery time before you’re ready to jump into work again, and you’re basically wasting your most productive brain hours on the gym and recovery time, neither of which require a whole lot of brain power. So with the help of chat GPT and talking out all of the schedule constraints and you know, things I can’t change, we figured out a better way to structure my day.
Kristen 6:44
So now I use those first couple of hours after I drop my kids off for what chat GPT is calling my deep work. Those are those things that require a lot of brain power. I bumped my gym time back to mid morning just before lunch, which means when I come home to shower and eat, it’s lunchtime anyway, and I have just one break in my day for all of that stuff, rather than multiple breaks that really chop up my productive time. All my client calls are now moved to afternoons because I’ve learned I can still be on and focused and doing good work when I’m talking to other people on a call, even during that normal afternoon spot. It’s when I’m working alone that I really just hit that brick wall and can’t keep going.
Kristen 7:30
The rest of the afternoon outside of client calls, is when I handle tasks that don’t require as much thought, answering emails, sending out invoices, doing admin work, all of that less taxing work, not the deeper, harder work that really needs my full attention. I do that stuff in my deep work block in the morning before I go to the gym. Now, this change in my schedule has made a huge difference in how productive I am every day. Right now, as I was just planning this podcast episode, and now, as I’m recording it, I am in that morning deep work block, because this is work that for me takes a lot of thought and a lot of planning, and I really want to make sure I’m doing my best work at this time. In a little while, after I finish this, I’ll go to the gym and I’ll do some easier things this afternoon. So getting my schedule to match when my brain works best was the first step.
Kristen 8:25
But the other thing that I am really loving is using AI to plan out my entire week in a way that fits that new schedule, and also makes sure that I don’t drop any of all the million plates I am juggling. And I know you probably feel like you’re juggling a million things too. So let’s talk about the way that I approach this and how I make this happen.
Kristen 8:50
So the initial kind of setup was to just pull up chat GPT, hit the microphone, and I just started talking about how I was feeling. In that moment, I was frustrated, so I just started pouring out all my feelings, even the not so productive ones, like feeling guilty for not doing enough work and frustrated at my lack of progress. But I also shared all my scheduling stuff, the kids’ school schedules and extracurriculars and how many hours I want to work and what my options are for the classes that I go to at the gym, all of those things.
Kristen 9:24
I also grabbed a giant list of tasks for that big project I was talking about that was in a Google Doc, and I pasted that in, along with a list, just a kind of a brain dump, giant list of all the things that I need to get done on a regular basis. You know, answering emails, recording podcasts, coaching calls, doing client work for my maintenance plan clients, all of those things, and at the end, I basically just asked chat GPT, help me figure this out.
Kristen 9:51
And initially, chat GPT and I broke those big tasks out into about a four week plan. We won’t get through all of it in four weeks. We’ll take what’s left at that point and do the next month. But we broke out a plan for the first four weeks. Now that we have that, every Friday, I take about 15 to 20 minutes to plan the next week’s tasks. And I input three main things—what is left from this week’s to do list, because let’s face it, things come up, and sometimes you don’t get to everything. So the few things that are left from this week’s to do list, what was our big picture plan from that bigger project for next week, and then I put in my whole calendar for next week, all the personal stuff, all the business called everything. Right now I am dealing with end of school activities. We’ve got fairy tale ball this week and awards ceremony next week and half days and field days and all the things. So my calendar is extra full with personal stuff in addition to all the client calls.
Kristen 10:50
So I put all of that in and then chat. GPT builds out a daily schedule for me that looks something like, Monday, during your deep work block, you’re going to do these two specific tasks, and then in your afternoon, they call it flex time, do these easier tasks. Tuesday’s deep work you’re going to accomplish this. And then Tuesday afternoon, you’ll do those. Wednesday, you’ve got a lot going on in the afternoon, so let’s just do a deep work block in the morning, go to the gym, and then do your family stuff in the afternoon. And it takes what I need to get done and spreads it out across the week in a way that works with the way my brain functions. I get that hard stuff done in the morning, and it also gives me the time blocked out for calls I have scheduled, for kids events, all of that kind of stuff.
Kristen 11:39
One of the best things for me is that I don’t have to spend my mental energy figuring out what to do when. That’s been huge for me, because that decision making process itself can just be exhausting, and it naturally needs to get done on Friday afternoon. And I already told you, my afternoons are not my good work time, so I don’t have to spend my own mental energy on this, because chat GPT is helping me do it.
Kristen 12:04
Now this has been honestly so, so helpful for me, but I want to be honest about the good and the not so good parts before you try it yourself. So like I said, one of the biggest benefits for me has been taking the mental load off. Instead of me having to look at everything and compare to my schedule and start putting things in and moving them around and figuring it out, AI does that for me. Most of the time, the reality is it doesn’t matter if I do a specific task Monday or Tuesday, as long as it gets done early this week. But having to figure all that out takes a lot of mental work, and it exhausts me.
Kristen 12:38
I also feel super accomplished when I check things off of a to do list. So having things listed out in a checklist, in my notion dashboard, really helps me. I want to see them checked off, but I’ve always just struggled with figuring out what to put where and how long things will take. So this has given me those concrete daily plans. I get to feel the satisfaction of checking off the tasks, but I don’t have the mental drain of creating the plan or the stress and frustration and honestly overwhelm when I look at the big list of things to do this week and then all of my commitments that are taking away from my work time. It also has really helped me to balance making progress on big projects but also keeping all those regular business tasks going that keep things running in my business.
Kristen 13:26
Now, chat GPT does make mistakes sometimes, there are some limitations here. I have, at times, loaded in a calendar that says I have a call on Wednesday, and it puts it on the schedule for Thursday instead. I’ve put in that I have a podcast episode due on Tuesday, and it scheduled me to record it Wednesday, which obviously won’t work. I want to record it the day before the deadline, not the day after, and not even the day of, really. So you do have to look over the plan and make sure everything has been put in in a way that works for you, that usually just takes me a couple of minutes. I might shift a few things around. I’ve also had a couple times where a big priority kind of got left off of the schedule. So I do keep a separate Google Doc with that big picture weekly outline that we had created, and I kind of just mark things off of there as they get done. That way I can see things that are getting left and make sure nothing’s falling through the cracks.
Kristen 14:23
Now, yes, there are some limitations, but I will say the initial conversation I had with chat GPT was probably 45 minutes or so of talking and thinking and kind of going back and forth on things. That was also when I was creating my dashboard in notion with the schedule. So there’s a little bit of tinkering with notion, templates and things, during that 45 minutes. But now, on a weekly basis, I’m really only spending 15, maybe 20 minutes every Friday afternoon on planning for the next week. So considering that, I am finally making big progress on a project that had been stalled for five months or more, I think that time investment has definitely been more than worth it for me, even with the limitations and the mistakes that chat GPT sometimes makes.
Kristen 15:08
I honestly think that this approach could really be useful for anybody who’s super busy and has trouble staying on track and planning things out. Not just for people with ADHD tendencies like mine, although we definitely struggle with this more than other people do. So if you are feeling overwhelmed by your own to do list, or you struggle to make progress on big projects, here are some action steps that you can use to try this out for your own business.
Kristen 15:35
So first, spend a little bit of time just kind of paying attention to when your brain is working the best. Pay attention to when you’re naturally doing your best work. Notice when you tend to hit a wall or lose focus. What’s going on? What time of day is that? Start paying attention to that before you ever start talking to AI about your schedule.
Kristen 15:56
Another thing you should definitely do is start making a master task list. List out all those weekly, regular, recurring tasks that keep your business going. Add in any big projects you’re working on or things that you need to complete and don’t forget to include some details about your personal commitments, your schedule constraints, kids’ pickup times at school, whatever it is that you have going on that kind of blocks your day in. And then open up chat GPT, and just start talking about your schedule and the challenges you’re having.
Kristen 16:29
I love to do this using the microphone, not typing on a keyboard, so I usually use the app on my phone and just start talking. Be really honest about what’s working and what isn’t. Share all of that information that you gathered when you work best, your task list, your calendar, all of those things, and ask for help creating a weekly plan that works for your brain. While you’re at it, talk about your frustrations if you need to. Chat GPT will give you a really nice pep talk if you start telling it that you’re frustrated with yourself. So if you need that little pick me up, share all of that information.
Kristen 17:08
If you want somewhere to start right now, for this week, just kind of pay attention to when you’re feeling most productive and when you’re struggling. Jot down some notes about those best work times, or just take a mental note, and then take 30 minutes on Friday or this weekend to start that initial conversation with chat GPT about when it’s going to work best for you to do different tasks.
Kristen 17:32
I would love to hear how you plan your week, or if you’re going to try this AI planning method that I share, shoot me a DM on Instagram @kristendoyle.co and let me know what you think, or if you have any questions about my process. If you use notion, I’d be glad to send over my notion dashboard for you as well, if you’d like a little kickstart with getting that set up. And if this episode helped you think differently about your schedule, take a screenshot and share it in your stories. I would love to see it and share it with my audience, too. I’ll talk to you soon.
