30 Ways to Use AI to Make Life Better and Easier

People might get the impression that I’m something of a Luddite. I don’t use social media at all in my personal life and employ it only sparingly in my professional one. I don’t care much for watching online videos. I’ve hosted a lot of guests on the podcast who criticize modern tech.

Given this, people might imagine that I don’t care for the newest technological innovation on the block: AI.

But honestly, I kind of love it. It’s pretty glorious. It makes me feel like this is an awesome time to be alive.

There are some legit concerns to have about AI, to be sure. It’s not always accurate and not yet great at everything. But if used in the right way and with the right stance, AI can be really handy, improving your life and making it better and easier. It’s like having a personal assistant without paying personal assistant prices.

The great thing about using AI like ChatGPT is that, unlike doing a Google search where you have to sift through countless websites, conflicting opinions, and endless information, you get a single, streamlined answer. Is it really the best, most definitive answer? Maybe not, but oftentimes it’s nice just to be given one option. Again, it’s like having a personal assistant; they may not always fulfill your requests 100% optimally, but the time, bandwidth, and frustration you save by delegating a task in a turnkey way makes the tradeoff well worth it.

30 Handy Ways to Use AI

AI is new enough that people are still discovering the different ways it can be employed. Below are some of the things Kate and I have been using AI for in our work and personal lives; maybe it will give you some ideas you haven’t thought of.

Most of the suggestions below can be done with the free version of ChatGPT, though I use and would recommend the premium version. (As a side note, I’ve tried using ChatGPTs new AI agent feature where it can do things like book hotel rooms and flights for you. I didn’t find it particularly useful, nor worth the $200 a month you have to pay to access it. Maybe it will get better.) There are some other AI tools I think are helpful that I’ll mention with the associated tasks I use them for.

Health & Wellness

Figure out a health issue. I’ve replaced Dr. Google with Dr. ChatGPT. I’ll just type in my symptoms (and sometimes upload a picture — don’t forget that AI can analyze images!) and ask ChatGPT about the potential causes. For example, I’ve been having some pain in my quads lately. I couldn’t determine if it was a muscle strain or a tendon issue. So I told ChatGPT where my pain was, what the pain felt like, when I experienced it, and what precipitated the pain. ChatGPT helped me figure out that I’m dealing with a muscle strain and not a tendon issue. My daughter had some bumps show up on her foot the other week, and I couldn’t tell what it was. So I snapped a pic, uploaded it to ChatGPT, and asked, “What is this?” ChatGPT ruled it a bug bite. Should you rely on ChatGPT to diagnose you for big issues? No, but it can help you troubleshoot minor problems and know when to consult a healthcare provider (when in doubt, go see a doc!).
Explain medical test results. I’ve used ChatGPT to help explain medical test results I’ve gotten in terms I can understand. My father-in-law recently got an EKG and the cardiologist only spent a few minutes giving him a cursory explanation of the results. My FIL then went home and ran the results through AI, which gave him a lot more details.
Generate workout plans. AI can give you a months-long workout plan; just tell it things like your age, your goals, how much time you have, and what equipment you have access to. I have a human coach to do this kind of programming for me, but I’ll use ChatGPT to whip up a workout on the fly. For example, if I’m traveling, I can tell ChatGPT, “I’m in a hotel gym that has a cable machine and a set of dumbbells. I have 30 minutes to train. Generate an upper-body workout that I can do with an emphasis on shoulders.” It instantly offers up a solid workout I can perform with the available equipment.
Estimate macros. ChatGPT has been really useful in my macro tracking. One issue I’ve had with counting macros is estimating the macros for a homecooked meal. Now I’ll just snap a picture of the recipe and ask ChatGPT for an estimate of the macro breakdown for a serving. It’s not going to be super accurate, but it gets you in the ballpark, and that’s good enough. Another way I’ve used ChatGPT for macro counting is to help me figure out what to eat at a restaurant so that it will fit my macros. Here’s a prompt I’ve used: “Here are my remaining macros for the day: ______. What can I get at [insert restaurant] that will fit my macros?”

Home & Lifestyle

Diagnose home repair issues. I’ve been using ChatGPT to help with home repair issues. The other day, I was installing a fan. My outlet had more wires coming out of it than what the installation instructions said there would be. So I snapped a pic of the installation instructions, told ChatGPT I had an extra wire not listed in the instructions, and then asked what I should do with that extra wire — I got the correct answer in a few seconds. Another issue I had when I installed the fan was that one of the lock washers got stuck on a screw, and I couldn’t get it off. So I snapped a pic of the screw and stuck washer, told ChatGPT the problem, and asked how I could get the washer off. It gave me an answer that worked.
Work through home improvement estimates. Our upstairs bonus room needs some remodeling. We got an estimate from a contractor, and it was way over our budget. So I uploaded the line-item estimate to ChatGPT and started asking it questions like “How could we reduce the cost by $____? What could we eliminate from this estimate?” It helped us work through some scenarios quickly to figure out an approach that would work for how much we wanted to spend.
Translate laundry care symbols. The laundry care instructions on a garment’s tag are sometimes given in symbols rather than text. If you don’t know what the symbols mean, snap a pic and ChatGPT will translate the symbols into written instructions.
Figure out what’s going on with the plants in your garden. I planted a tree in my yard last spring. During the fall, the leaves started getting black spots on them. So I snapped a pic and asked ChatGPT, “What’s going on with my tree? Why are there black spots?” I got an answer and was able to take action to remedy the issue.

Personal Assistance & Productivity

Transcribe and summarize YouTube videos. I don’t care much for the vast majority of online video. I much prefer to read things. So, I use Tactiq, an AI tool, to transcribe YouTube videos instantly. I can then read, scan, and skim the transcript to get the info I’m looking for quickly. I’ll sometimes also run the transcript through ChatGPT to give me a cleaned-up summary.
Transcribe the conversations you have with yourself in the car. When I’m alone in my car, I talk to myself. It’s how I work through problems. I’ll also talk to myself in the car while trying to organize my thoughts for writing. Now, I transcribe the conversations I have with myself using Otter.ai. I can then ask Otter.ai questions about my conversation to help clarify and summarize the main points. A few articles I’ve written on AoM have started as Otter.ai transcriptions from my car.
Organize your computer. Never lose a file again by allowing AI to organize your files for you. I’ve been using Sparkle, and it works like a champ.
Use it as a coin toss in close decisions. When I’ve got a minor decision to make and can’t decide between two close options, I’ll ask Claude or ChatGPT for its opinion and decide to go with whichever one it picks. I basically treat it as a coin-toss mechanism that gives me slightly more confidence in the outcome than actually flipping a coin.
Use NotebookLM as a research assistant. I like using NotebookLM for the research part of my writing process. I input all my notes into NotebookLM, and then NotebookLM creates a chatbot based on those notes. I can then use my chatbot as a research assistant. “Find me quotes about ____ topic.” “Are there any connections between ____ and ____?” “Give me a summary about ____.” It doesn’t pull in outside information, which keeps its answers focused on the specific notes I want answers sourced from and reduces hallucinations.

Food & Cooking

Generate a recipe. Think of a dish and ChatGPT can generate a recipe for it. Just say, “Give me a recipe for coconut curry chicken,” and it spits out a recipe. Are the recipes that AI produces going to be as good as those you find on cooking websites? Probably not, but sometimes you don’t want to sort through all the variations out there and read through all the narrative fluff food blogs surround their recipes with.
Generate a recipe based on what you have on hand. You cannot only use AI to generate a random recipe, you can tell it what you have on hand and have it come up with something you can make with those ingredients. For example: “I have leftover white rice, Mexican cheese, a tomato, and a rotisserie chicken. What can I make for dinner?” It will then generate several recipe options that use those ingredients.
Modify a recipe. Feed an existing recipe into ChatGPT and ask for it to be modified, e.g., “Make this recipe dairy-free,” or “Scale the measurements up to serve twelve people.”
Organize your grocery list. Once you write out a big grocery list, you can ask ChatGPT to organize the items by sections in the grocery store. You can also feed it a recipe, and it will give you a shopping list organized the same way. It makes shopping a lot more efficient.

Travel & Planning

Create an itinerary for a trip. Just tell ChatGPT where you’re traveling to, how many days you’ll be there, what interests you, the age of your kids, where you’re staying, etc., and it’ll give you a suggested itinerary in a few seconds. You don’t need to follow the itinerary to a T, but it can make for a helpful starting point in creating your own plan for the trip.
Get hotel recommendations. It can be hard to sort through all of a destination’s hotel options to find the one that’s right for you. ChatGPT can give you some recommendations based on a prompt like, “What’s a hotel in New Orleans that’s family friendly, in a quiet part of the city, and has a good gym?”
Build a packing list. Tell ChatGPT where you’ll you’re going, what the weather will be like, and how many days you’ll be gone, and it will spit out a packing list.
Translate on the fly. ChatGPT is pretty dang good at translating things, which can come in handy when you’re in a foreign country and don’t speak the language. Snap a picture of a sign, document, or menu to get an instant translation.

Education

Get homework help. Are you stumped with a word problem your kid is working on for homework? Snap a pic of the problem and ask ChatGPT to break it down. Ask for it to show you the steps for solving it, rather than just giving the answer. Great for helping your kid (and you!) understand the process.
Chat with a reading tutor. When I’m reading a book, I’ll use ChatGPT like my personal tutor. For example, right now I’m re-reading Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man. I just finished chapter 3. So I started peppering ChatGPT with questions: “What’s going on in chapter 3? What do literary critics say about chapter 3? What symbols appear in chapter 3? What themes are being explored? What’s the historical background of this chapter?” The chatbot helps me understand the book on a deeper level and notice things I might have missed. The trick is to get more and more specific with your questions.
Summarize scientific studies. We reference a lot of scientific studies in our articles. I’ll paste in a link (when the whole study is available online) or upload a study (when you have to pay to access a pdf) and ask ChatGPT for a short, accessible summary.

Business & Professional

Brainstorm and work through business issues. I’ve been using Claude to help me think through business issues. I can tell it an idea I have, what I plan on doing, concerns I’m thinking about, etc. I then chat back and forth with it as I work through the different issues. I don’t look for answers from Claude, but rather use it as a sounding board to do my own personal reflection.
Perform data analysis. I use ChatGPT to analyze AoM-related data. I’ll upload a CSV file of stats and start asking ChatGPT questions about it. This kind of analysis used to take hours to do, but now only requires a few minutes.
Fix bugs in your code. An issue I’ve run into a few times is our site breaking after I make an upgrade or code change. I’ll upload the code and ask ChatGPT, “What’s causing this to break?” What used to take an hour of Googling and trial and error to fix now just takes a second.
Simplify legalese. Got a contract that you don’t understand? Upload it to ChatGPT and ask it to summarize things in layman’s terms.

Entertainment & Events

Generate game and activity ideas. We’ve used ChatGPT to generate game and activity ideas to do with our church youth group on Wednesday nights.
Generate book and movie ideas. We’ve asked ChatGPT to come up with ideas for books and movies to read and watch together as a family. A good prompt is something like, “We’ve got a 14-year-old son and 11-year-old daughter. We’ve enjoyed the following movies together: _______ What are five movies that we also might enjoy?” Are the ideas all winners? No. But some are.

There’s some worry that AI will make us less intelligent, and that risk exists if people use it mindlessly as a complete substitute for thinking and effort. However, when employed judiciously, I find it enhances my creativity and expands my capacities — streamlining tedious tasks and freeing me to focus on what’s more enjoyable, meaningful, and important.