I write books about productivity because I'm on a mission to give people back time for the most important things in their world. I get ideas for books when I speak with people in organisations about the things that are preventing them from being their best selves or doing their best work.
Hence my books are about things like meetings, structuring your day, and creating space to think and breathe.
So, when my publisher came to me and asked me to write a book about how artificial intelligence (AI) or, more specifically, ChatGPT could help us with productivity, I went straight back to the problems that people share with me.
In addition to the three things above, the issues that I regularly hear about (that may be future books) include:
I'm sure the list goes on and on. This is the stuff that prevents us from doing our ‘real’ work. We would describe it as mundane, tedious and not very value-adding, particularly if they are tasks we don't do very often. For example, when was the last time you had to:
All of these infrequent tasks take up a huge amount of time when you only do them on rare occasions, particularly if you are starting from scratch. They are difficult to delegate because (a) you don't do them very often, so (b) it's easier and quicker to just do them yourself.
ChatGPT has provided us with a tool to get through mundane tasks. A tool to clean our slate of repetitive, uninteresting and demotivating work that despite this must be done. The stuff that prevents us from doing higher value work or keeps us from our families or the things we work for.
Irrespective of where you are in an organisation, you now have a virtual assistant, intern or support person to help you get through these mundane tasks up to 50 per cent faster than you were doing them before.
By combining ChatGPT with human input, a study by MIT found that productivity increased by between 35 and 50 per cent and the quality improved by up to 25 per cent.
The question at this point is: Could you use some help to simplify your life and work, and free up more time in your day? If so, read on.
The end of labour is to gain leisure.
— Aristotle
Thus, for the first time since his creation man will be faced with his real, his permanent problem — how to use his freedom from pressing economic cares, how to occupy the leisure, which science and compound interest will have won for him, to live wisely and agreeably and well.
— John Maynard Keynes
For centuries, technological advances from the printing press through to the vacuum cleaner were invented to give us more leisure time. Instead, all it did was give us more time for work.
According to Oliver Burkeman, we are destined to be on the planet for about 4000 weeks. I found this sobering, and it bought into focus my mortality, which begged the further, somewhat less philosophical thought, ‘I'm running out of time, so I'd better use that time wisely.’
Now is the time to leverage technological advancements, like AI and ChatGPT, to make that promise of increased leisure time a reality.
There's been a lot of buzz around ChatGPT and AI, and while you may have heard a thing or two about it, chances are you've picked up this book because you may not understand what it does and how it could be useful to you in taking back some of your valuable time.
This book is about getting beyond the buzz and giving you access to a productivity boon.
Right now, people are already using ChatGPT to generate:
And in case you are wondering, yes, some people are using it to help write books (I'll get to that later).
ChatGPT and AI represent a significant step forward in the ability of computers to understand and respond to human language. It has the potential to transform the way people interact with technology, providing a more natural and intuitive experience.
But, as with any new technology or time-saving application, there's always a danger that it could end up creating more work than it saves. Email was supposed to make our lives easier, but it has ended up being a nightmare for a lot of us. I'm reminded of the German word Verschlimmbesserung, which means ‘an intended improvement that makes things worse’.
If used effectively, ChatGPT has the potential to free up valuable time for other activities, so I think the real question is: What will you do with that time? As technology continues to advance and make tasks easier and more efficient, it is up to us to decide how to use our new-found free time.
Disclaimer: Before going any further, you need to know that these technologies are moving extremely fast, and they are full of errors. Even while writing this book, things were changing, and rumours were rife with what the next versions and new applications would provide. With a technology this explosive, chances are some of the ideas covered in this book could be considered obsolete before it even hits the shelves. Despite this, the fundamentals covered in this book provide core strategies for getting the most out of AI and, more specifically, ChatGPT.
You have no time to lose.
It's time to join the revolution.