As educators, our time and mental energy are often consumed by lesson planning, grading, meetings, and supporting students. That doesn’t leave much bandwidth for the everyday tasks that keep our lives running, such as making grocery lists, planning meals, or remembering birthdays.
Fortunately, artificial intelligence (AI) can now act as a personal assistant, helping you to save time, reduce decision fatigue, and restore some work-life balance.
Here are ten practical ways AI tools can streamline your daily life outside the classroom:
1. Create Smart Grocery Lists
AI tools such as ChatGPT or AI-enabled apps (e.g., AnyList, Google Keep with AI integrations [still in Beta]) can generate grocery lists based on your meal plan, dietary preferences, or even what’s already in your pantry. For example: Ask ChatGPT: “Make a grocery list for five easy dinners with chicken, beans, and rice as main ingredients.” You’ll get a ready-to-shop list that is customizable and shareable in seconds. You could similarly identify the ingredients you currently have and ask AI to identify potential meal options.
2. Plan Weekly Meals in Seconds
Decision fatigue is real, especially after a long day at school. Let AI take over weekly meal planning. You can include time limits, dietary needs, or ingredient preferences. For example: “Plan five quick vegetarian dinners I can make in under 30 minutes, with minimal prep.” You can pair this with a grocery list generator to get everything in one go. Additionally, if you forget an ingredient, AI can provide a list of potential substitutes based on what you have available.
3. Summarize Long Emails or Articles
If you’re subscribed to parent newsletters, community updates, or other info-heavy content, AI can summarize these for you in a flash. Browser extensions such as Wordtune Read, or plugins for ChatGPT or Chrome, can help you focus only on the key points. As an example: Paste an article into an AI tool and ask: “Summarize this in three bullet points.” For more robust summarizing tools, see 8 AI Tools for Summarizing and Reviewing.
4. Auto-Draft Thank You Notes or Messages
Whether you’re thanking a friend for dinner or following up with a neighbor, AI can help draft warm, personalized messages without the stress of figuring out the right words. For example: “Write a friendly thank-you note to a neighbor who brought over cookies.” Revise the output as needed, and it can save time and mental energy.
5. Schedule Social Media Posts or Reminders
AI can help you brainstorm captions and post ideas for birthdays, holidays, or even school events. Some tools can help automate reminders and calendar tasks using natural language. An example could be “create a cheerful Instagram post for my son’s 10th birthday with a short poem” or “create an image to celebrate my husband’s (our) 10th wedding anniversary.”
6. Organize Travel Plans
Planning a weekend trip? AI tools can act as mini travel agents, suggesting destinations, building itineraries, and even helping you find the best travel times or routes. Try “Plan a three day weekend trip near Minneapolis with historical sites and budget lodging” as a sample or “build a day long road trip route through Minnesota that visits points of interest including the World’s Largest Ball of Twine and the SPAM Museum.” Each state has similarly interesting roadside attractions.
7. Create a Study Plan for Your Own Coursework
In order to make your own classwork fit more effectively into your schedule, ask Google Gemini or another tool to review your syllabus and ask it to draft a study schedule to ensure all your assignments are submitted at least a day before the due date. You could similarly have AI draft your spring workout schedule to prepare for that mid-summer half marathon!
8. Draft and Revise Household To-Do Lists
Let AI help create or prioritize to-do lists for house chores, errands, or home projects. You can ask it to organize by urgency or time required, or even assign tasks to other family members. Try using “create a weekend to-do list for cleaning, grocery shopping, and minor home repairs.”
9. Plan Family Activities or Game Nights
AI can suggest creative ideas for rainy-day activities, family movie nights, or screen-free games for kids of various ages. Claude could be asked “suggest fun, low-cost family activities for a Saturday afternoon with two kids aged 8 and 11.”
10. Reflect and Journal with AI
End your day with AI-assisted journaling. Tools such as ChatGPT can prompt you with questions to help you reflect, practice gratitude, or simply de-stress. “Please give me a journal prompt to reflect on a challenging but rewarding moment today.” It is potentially a low-effort way to check in with yourself, reflect, and stay grounded.
Living Smarter
Educators are caregivers, knowledge-sharers, and multitaskers, and it’s easy to put your own needs on the back burner. By offloading some of the daily mental tasks to AI, you’re saving time and freeing up brainpower for the things that matter most: being present with your students, your family, and yourself.
The key is to start small; try one or two of these ideas this week. You’ll likely be surprised by how quickly AI becomes your time-saving sidekick.
Megan Simonson
Megan Simonson earned a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Saint Mary's University and a master's degree in School Counseling and Community Counseling from Winona State University (WSU). She has worked in various enrollment-related roles in WSU’s College of Education since joining the team in 2016 while also serving part-time as a mental health counselor at an outpatient treatment center in Rochester, MN. She now focuses on her role as the Recruitment and Admission Coordinator for the College of Education.
