Quick Overview
🕒 Reading Time: 4 Minutes
🎯 Target Audience: Busy Professionals, Knowledge Workers, Entrepreneurs, and Anyone Struggling with Prioritization
I’ve often struggled with prioritization. I’m very aware of what needs to be done, but too often, I have had too much to do and no clear strategy to get it all done and still have a life! Unless there was a looming deadline which imposed priorities on my day, I’d often sit down in the morning, faced with a long list of tasks, deadlines, and competing priorities. Inevitably, I’d hesitate—debating within myself where to start, what was most important, and how to sequence my work in a way that felt both effective and manageable.
But what I’ve learned is this: That hesitation is a productivity killer.
Conceptually, I understood that overthinking slows us down, but I’d still get bogged down in the decisions to be made. Until I had a breakthrough. Why not ask AI to help?
I pasted in my list of tasks for the day and asked ChatGPT to prioritize them. Here’s the exact initial prompt I used:
“I have the following tasks I want to accomplish today. How can you help me prioritize these tasks and then achieve them?”
What happened next gave me a big a-ha. My AI didn’t only organize my tasks based on some assessment of urgency and importance, but it also considered the cognitive load of each task. It structured my day so that I had a list of simpler, lower-effort tasks to tackle whenever I needed a mental break. Of course, this all makes perfect sense, but “pre-AI me” rarely took effort required into account, I just expected my brain to perform consistently well all the time.
The next morning, I did it again. And then the next. It was working so well, I invited AI into the bigger picture – mapping out a high-level plan for the whole week rather than doling out each day. With AI, I was thinking more strategically about how to balance deep work, meetings, outreach, and personal commitments. I was no longer reacting to my workload—I was proactively shaping it.
My biggest takeaway? The release of cognitive load AI provided is game-changing.
Before using AI for prioritization, I spent a surprising amount of mental energy just deciding what to do next. That’s energy that could be better spent actually doing my best work. Offloading that mental effort to AI freed up my brain for higher-level thinking, creativity, and execution.
Why did this have such a big impact? One of my favorite podcasters, Mel Robbins, talks about the power of reducing hesitation in her book The 5 Second Rule. She explains that when we hesitate, we give our brain time to start negotiating with itself, which leads to procrastination. The key is to get into motion quickly before overthinking sets in. That’s exactly what AI does for me—it removes the moment of hesitation, the mental debate of “where should I start?” and just gets me moving. And once I’m in motion, I can adjust the plan as needed.
This doesn’t mean AI is running my life. I’m an entrepreneur by nature and chafe at the idea of being told what to do. But by giving me an intelligent starting place, I reduce effort before I get started, which frees up my mental capacity to be used where it creates more value.
As I go through the day, I adjust. I jump ahead and cross things off when it makes sense to do so. I push something later or split a task into two blocks if I need more time than anticipated. And as I go through the day, I periodically check in with AI to let it know what’s done. It keeps the running tally, adjusts the plan accordingly, and often gives me some nice props too ... and who among us wouldn’t benefit from a little cheerleading as we get things done?
I’ve enjoyed the process so much that I’ve built my own Custom GPT so my “Daily Productivity Guide" runs automatically without prompting. It’s fun. It’s energizing. And it gets me in motion again and again throughout the day by removing that hesitation that kills productivity.
If you’ve ever felt stuck—paralyzed by an endless to-do list and unsure where to begin—I can’t recommend this approach enough. You don’t have to figure it all out on your own. Let AI help:
Dump your task list into whichever large language model (LLM) AI you prefer (I used ChatGPT in this case). Be as detailed as you’d like.
Include your calendar. A simple screenshot allows AI to see when you’re in meetings so it can help optimize work blocks around those meetings.
Ask for prioritization based on urgency, impact, and effort.
Use the plan as a starting point, then execute without overthinking.
Adjust as needed throughout the day.
What started as a simple experiment has turned into an essential part of my workflow. AI isn’t just a tool for answering questions, it can be a true productivity partner.
Have you tried using AI to structure your workday? I’d love to hear about it. Drop a comment and let’s talk about how we can all work smarter, not harder, with the help of AI.
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