I tried this and it knocked out things I'd been avoiding for two years in a single afternoon. Not because ChatGPT did anything magic. Because it did the one thing I never do: it made me say all of it out loud, then it made every item small enough to finish.
Here's what nobody tells you about the stuff sitting on your shoulders. Most of it takes under fifteen minutes. The unanswered text, the subscription, the RSVP, the light bulb. What makes them heavy isn't the work, it's that they're all in your head at once with no order. Put them in a list, sort by speed, and the list starts disappearing in front of you.
That's the whole method. One interview to get it all out. One plan that puts the fastest fixes at the top. One prompt that has ChatGPT do every part that doesn't need you. And one question at the end that tells you which item actually matters.
The plan · 6 steps
- 1Switch to Work
- 2Turn on voice-to-text
- 3The Interview
- 4The One-Day Plan
- 5Handle what doesn't need you
- 6The one that hits
Set up: ChatGPT Work and your voice
Step 1: Switch to Work
Open the ChatGPT desktop app (best) or chatgpt.com. At the top of the screen there's a switch between Chat and Work. Choose Work. Work is the mode built for longer, multi-step tasks: it can research, build documents, use a browser and connect to apps like Gmail. That's what lets it do things for you in prompt 3 instead of just talking about them. Work is on Plus, Pro, Business and Edu plans.
Step 2: Turn on voice-to-text
You'll be answering a lot of questions and typing them all is where people quit. Click the microphone icon in the message box and just talk. It transcribes into text you can read and edit before you send. This is dictation, not the two-way Voice mode, so you keep the whole conversation in writing where ChatGPT can turn it into a list.
Maverick's tip
Do this in one sitting with your phone nearby. Half the items need you to look something up (the subscription name, the friend's text, the renewal date), and the plan is only as good as the details you give it.
Prompt 1: The Interview
Paste this in first. It goes area by area so nothing hides, and it's capped so you're not answering forty questions.
PROMPT 1: INTERVIEW ME
Interview me about everything in my life that's broken, unfinished, or quietly stressing me out. Go area by area: money, health, home, relationships, work, admin and paperwork, digital life, and anything else. Ask three short questions per area, at most two rounds per area, and skip an area if I say there's nothing there. Nothing is too small; include the stuff I'd be embarrassed to say out loud. If I dump everything in one message, skip the rest of the interview. When I say DONE, turn all of it into one list called The Weight: one line per item, grouped by area, with how long I've been avoiding it next to each one. If I didn't say how long, write "?" instead of guessing.
Why it's worded like that
Three questions per area, two rounds max is the cap. Without it, eight areas times five questions is a forty-question interrogation and people bail halfway. Skip the rest if I dump everything matters because that's what most people do once the mic is on: they just talk for four minutes. Write "?" instead of guessing keeps ChatGPT from inventing "three months" next to things you never dated. Those numbers are for you, so they need to be true.
How to answer
Hit the microphone and talk like you're venting to a friend. "Money: three subscriptions I don't use, a gym I haven't been to since January, I owe my brother 200 bucks." Messy is fine. It sorts it. Say DONE when you're empty.
Before you start
Mine came back with 23 items: three dead subscriptions, $200 owed to my brother, a dentist visit two years overdue, a mole I kept meaning to get checked, a kitchen light out for three weeks, an unanswered text from June, an expired passport, a 401k match never set up, 40,000 unread emails, the same password everywhere. It flagged three as having real consequences. The rest, it said, was "just weight." It's a to-do list, not a verdict, and now it's on paper where it can be sorted.
Prompt 2: The One-Day Plan
Stay in the same chat. This turns the list into a schedule with the quick wins first, and puts it in Canvas so you can tick things off as you go.
PROMPT 2: THE ONE-DAY PLAN
Now turn this into a one-day plan. Sort every item by how fast it can be fixed, fastest at the top, except anything with a hard deadline or a health issue, which goes in the first block regardless of speed. For each item give the time it takes, exactly what to do, and a label: ME (only I can do it), YOU (you can do it for me right here), or SPLIT (you prepare it, I finish it). Put it in Canvas as a checklist I can tick off, with a start time for each block starting at [9am], breaks built in, and the longest item last so it can spill into tomorrow without wrecking the day.
What comes back
Something like this. Fastest first, the important stuff pulled forward, the closet last.
- 9:00 Quick wins: Pay your brother, reply to Sarah, send the RSVP, cancel two subscriptions, book the eye exam, renew the car registration, phone storage. Mostly SPLIT: it drafts, you press send.
- 10:20 Bookings and money: Dentist, the mole, the Amazon return chat, gym cancellation, read the card statement, set up the 401k match, start the passport. SPLIT, with a few ME.
- 12:45 Work and digital: Expense reports, the 40,000-email purge, a password manager and your top five passwords. YOU writes the method, ME does the clicking.
- 2:20 The bigger ones: The raise (meeting request plus the script), LinkedIn rewrite. SPLIT.
- 3:45 People and home: Call your mom. The closet. ME.
ME / YOU / SPLIT is the part I changed from the video. When I first ran it with just two labels, almost everything was both: ChatGPT drafts the message, I hit send. SPLIT makes that honest, and it's what makes the next prompt work. The other change: "fastest first" on its own buries what matters under what's easy, so deadlines and health jump the queue. Car registration due next week beats a light bulb.
Prompt 3: Handle What Doesn't Need Me
The trick from the video. Fill the four brackets first, or it's guessing which gym and which app.
PROMPT 3: DO YOUR HALF
Now do the YOU part of everything marked YOU or SPLIT, in order. Draft every email and text ready to send. For each subscription, find the exact cancel page and write the steps. For each appointment, find the booking page and prep what I need. Use the browser for anything that needs it. Details: I live in [CITY], my insurance is [INSURER], the gym is [GYM], the subscriptions are [APPS]. Ask me before you log into anything, pay for anything, send anything, or cancel anything. Check each item off in the Canvas when your part is done, write my remaining part next to it, and at the end tell me exactly what's left for me.
What you'll watch it do
It goes down the list. The text to your friend, the RSVP apology, the email to HR about the 401k, the gym cancellation letter. Then the steps: where the cancel button is for each app, the Amazon chat script for a return past the window, what to have ready for the DMV. With the browser it opens the dermatologist finder for your insurer and the gym's cancellation page and reads them for you. Each one gets checked off.
What it does alone, and what it can't
- ChatGPT does this itself: writes every message, email and script, ready to paste. Finds the cancel page and the exact steps for each subscription. Finds booking pages, checks which doctors take your insurance. Writes the DMV and passport checklists, fills what it can. Asks before anything that logs in, pays, sends or cancels.
- You do this: press send from your own accounts. Log in and click the final cancel button. Confirm the appointment with your ID and insurance. Pay the fee, sign the form. Say yes, or no.
You are always the last click. Every item becomes one press for you. Logins, payments, sends and cancels stay yours.
Prompt 4: The One That Hits
Same chat. This is the bonus prompt from the video, plus one line that turns the answer into something you can start before you close the laptop.
PROMPT 4: THE LIFE-CHANGER
Now tell me one thing on this list that would change my life the most if I actually did it today. Explain why in three sentences, then give me the first ten minutes of it, step by step, with the clock running from 0:00.
What it said to me
Not the raise. Not the 401k. It picked the mole. Its reasoning: everything else on the list costs money, embarrassment or clutter, and all of those come back. The one item where "I'll get to it" can turn a ten-minute appointment into a different kind of year is that one. And booking it breaks the exact habit that built the whole list, noticing something matters and letting it sit.
Then it gave me the ten minutes: photograph it next to a coin, write down where it is and when I noticed it, screenshot my insurance ID, open the finder, book the earliest appointment with anyone decent (not the best doctor, the earliest one), and text one person "booked it" so it's real. I was done before my coffee was cold.
If you want the boring answer instead: "Change my life the most" pulls toward the dramatic pick. If you'd rather get the highest-leverage practical one (the 401k match, the password manager, the raise), change the line to "the most impact over the next year." Ask it both ways. They're usually different, and both are right.
Maverick's tip
Do the ten minutes right then. Not after lunch. The whole reason this works is that the answer arrives while you're already in motion.
Bonus Prompts
Three more that came out of running this. All in the same chat.
The Sunday check
The list will grow back. This keeps it short. In Work you can also turn it into a scheduled task so it runs itself every week.
BONUS: THE WEEKLY WEIGHT CHECK
Every Sunday at 6pm, look at The Weight. Ask me which items I finished, which I didn't, and what's new since last week. Rebuild the list, put the fastest new fixes at the top, and give me a plan for one hour on Monday morning. Keep it to five items.
The money-only pass
Connect Gmail in Work first (Settings, then Connected apps) and it can read your receipts to find the subscriptions you forgot you had.
BONUS: FIND THE LEAKS
Go through only the money items. For each subscription or membership I'm not using, estimate what it's cost me since I stopped using it and what it costs per year if I leave it. Total it. Then give me the cancel steps for the three biggest, in order.
The excuse audit
For the items that survive the day. This one is uncomfortable in a useful way.
BONUS: WHY I HAVEN'T
For each item still unchecked, ask me one question: what's the real reason I haven't done it? Not the excuse, the reason. Then tell me, honestly, which ones I should just delete from the list because I'm never going to do them, and which ones I'm avoiding because they matter. Be direct with me.
Mistakes That Stall The Day
- Typing the interview. Use the microphone. Talking for four minutes beats typing for forty.
- Answering "nothing" for an area to move faster. The embarrassing areas are where the weight is. Say the thing.
- Letting it guess dates and durations. The "?" line in prompt 1. If you don't know, it stays blank.
- Skipping the Canvas. The tick-off is the motivation. Watching boxes fill up is what carries you to item 15.
- Fastest-first with no exceptions. Deadlines and health go in block one. The prompt handles it, don't remove that line.
- Sending prompt 3 without your details. City, insurer, gym, app names. Without them it can't find anything, only describe it.
- Expecting it to press the buttons. It prepares, you finish. Every send, login, payment and cancel is yours. That's the safe version.
- Doing it in three sittings. One afternoon. The momentum is the method.
Do This Today
Block one afternoon. Open Work, hit the mic, paste prompt 1 and start talking. Everything else in this guide follows from the list you make in the next four minutes.
Download the full PDF below for the complete printable version with the one-page checklist you can keep open while you work.