216: Leveraging ChatGPT: Step-by-Step Solutions for Your Mental Load

Welcome to The Wealthy Mom MD Podcast, a podcast for women physicians who want to learn how to live a wealthy life. In this podcast you will learn how to make money work for you, how you can have more of it, and learn the tools to empower you to live a life on purpose. Get ready to up-level your money and your life. I’m your host, Dr. Bonnie Koo.

Hey everyone, welcome to another episode of the Wealthy Mom MD podcast. I am excited about today’s episode. I have been meaning to do an episode focusing on this topic. I expect that there will be more upcoming episodes on this topic just because it’s kind of invading our lives, for the good and the bad. 

So today we’re going to be talking about AI, but before I get into it, by the time this episode comes out we will be open for enrollment for Money For Women Physicians. This is my signature paid program, you can think of it as financial literacy 101 and 102. And my goal is for you to learn how to manage your money in a way that helps you reach your life goals. 

And that’s because money is a means to an end and there are so, so many things you can do to have the money that you want, to have the life that you want that money helps with dramatically, obviously. And it’s also a great way to examine and change your money mindset because so many of us are stuck in scarcity mode. 

And what I mean by that, I do have some podcasts on that topic specifically which we will link in the show notes. And by the way, to look at show notes all you need to do is go to wealthymommd.com forward slash the number of the podcast. So since this is episode 216, you would go to wealthymommd.com/216. 

So what I mean by scarcity is that you basically never feel like you have enough money, despite the number. I have worked with female physicians who have like a four to $5 million net worth. I remember having some clients who actually had like $5 million in retirement accounts, but they still felt like they didn’t have enough and constantly worried about money. And then of course I have female physicians with a lot less and they might not be super stressed out about money. It’s a wide range. 

And so it’s so, so important to work on your mindset, to calm your brain, yourself, your body so that you truly believe you have enough right now, because even though it seems like thinking you don’t have enough, that like stress and anxiety is going to help you actually take money moves, and for some of you it is. As we all know, a little stress does help reach our goals. 

But with money, people tend to be, you might be having a lot of anxiety about this and never feel like, you know, never feel like you have enough. And that will actually block you from having the money that you want. 

Anyway, we only offer this course twice a year. It includes pre recorded modules as well as live support from me. We have focused Q&A calls as well as office hours. We’re offering office hours this year, and we’ll be taking a deeper dive into how you can use AI for your personal finance. 

Okay, so the best way to find out more and to save your spot is to go to wealthymommd.com/money, you can find out more about it. I hope to meet you and work with you starting early October. 

Okay, so let’s go into AI. Now, when I first heard of ChatGPT, and honestly I can’t remember when but it was probably some time last year, I played around with it a bit specifically for my business. And I was like, okay, it’s kind of cool, but not that cool. So I did use it periodically. I opted into the paid version and I’m going to talk specifically what the difference between the free and the paid version is. 

But then I went to a conference, it was actually my friend, Leti and Kenji, Semi-Retired MD. They had their first conference called the Prosperity Conference in April of 2024. And they’re going to be doing it again by the way, I believe it’s early March 2025, and I’ll actually be a speaker there. And it’s in Las Vegas, so check it out if you’re interested. 

But at their conference they had someone talking about AI and he did this amazing demonstration of how to use it. Like he was doing it live. He was using AI to create videos. I didn’t really like that, I don’t think that technology is great. But he was using ChatGPT and he showed us, literally he created a brand, marketing material and wrote a book. I think it was for a children’s book. 

And I learned that you need to know how to use ChatGPT effectively. And it’s pretty simple, but if you don’t know, then well, you don’t know. It’s all about prompting it well. And what I mean by that is you have to give it as much information as possible for it to give you great responses. I’m going to give you specific examples of that, but just remember the more information you give it, the better it can be. 

Now, in today’s episode, I want to focus on using ChatGPT for your personal life. Now, I’ve done a few episodes, well, at least one episode, I did one on hiring a virtual assistant and why you should strongly consider it. And that’s episode 58. We’ll also link that in the show notes. And so you can think of this as an extra way to make your life easier. 

Now, the reason why I’m doing an episode specifically for your personal life is that once you know how to use it and actually use it, it can dramatically decrease your mental load. I know all of you can relate. And if you’re also a mom and have one kid, and if you have multiple kids, I only have one and honestly I can’t imagine having multiple in terms of just managing all the things, it’s going to help you so much in that area. 

Again, it’s all about reducing the mental load and we all know how heavy that mental load can feel. And therefore you’re going to save time and energy, okay? So I’m focusing on ChatGPT because that is the only program that I’ve personally used. 

Now, I use Gmail for my personal and for my work. And for those of you who do, and maybe other email programs, you’ll notice that there’s an AI function. Personally, I haven’t played with it that much. I pretty much use ChatGPT, but I think I’ll start exploring what Google can do for me in terms of email responses. 

So first I just want to say there is a free version and a paid version. Now, I use the paid version. Now, the free version is based on GPT 3.5, I guess it’s just a version number, and it can do a lot of things, okay? But the paid version is obviously much more robust and it’s basically version four and it’s about $20 a month. I think it’s totally worth it. 

So what’s interesting is that the free and paid version have different MCAT and LSAT scores. So for example, the free version has a like 60% accuracy in practice exams where the paid version is more like 90%. And when it comes to the LSAT, it’s around 40th to 50th percentile, whereas the paid version is basically in the top 10%. So again, the paid version is much more advanced. It can handle a lot more data and has more, I’m trying to think of the word, like thinking capabilities, okay? 

So let me give you four ways that you can use ChatGPT. There are so many ways, but I’m just going to focus on these. So for those of you newer to AI, I just want you to be able to get started and start playing with it. Now, my advice, because I know ChatGPT or just using AI can feel overwhelming, and the last thing I’d want for you is to feel more overwhelmed with ChatGPT. So I would just focus on one task at a time, okay? 

So the first thing I want to talk about is meal planning. How many of you find meal planning just not great and just awful and sometimes you just simply don’t have time for it? Now, there are many ways to make meal planning easier that are not related to ChatGPT. Personally, I don’t find meal kits that helpful unless you enjoy cooking and have the time to cook. But for most of us, time is of essence. And so there are things like hiring personal chefs or having ready made meals delivered. 

And so using it for meal planning is fantastic. Now, in general, I want to say that when you’re talking to ChatGPT, typing it in, it’s all about being super conversational. 

So for example, I used ChatGPT recently to create a sample meal plan so that I get 90 grams of protein a day. I’m taking my health a lot more seriously, I’m going to talk about that in another episode, and one of the things I’ve learned as a woman and a perimenopausal woman is that protein is so important. It’s always been important, but it’s much more important now since I’m losing muscle faster than someone who’s younger than me. 

So 90 grams of protein. So I basically told it my weight, my height, and that I’m lifting heavy weights and that I want 90 grams of protein a day. I also told it specific things like these are my common protein preferences, I do eat meat, and that I specifically didn’t want to eat protein shakes. So do you see how I just gave it a lot of information and I said it very conversationally. It’s not like I had to think about a bullet point list or et cetera, I just typed in what I just said. 

And so then it immediately gave me some options. And from there I’m able to tweak it. And what I love about it is since I’m, again, tracking around 90 grams of protein a day, like I don’t have a good sense of how much protein is in a certain type of protein or a certain amount. Like I have rough ideas, but you know, not really. And since I’m focusing on this, I wanted to really know and understand the type of food that I should be eating every day. 

So it gave me a sample, I believe it was three meals. And I think it even gave me snack ideas. So let’s just say that I don’t like shrimp and I was like, oh, I forgot to tell it that I don’t like shrimp. So then you could just give it more information. So you could literally say, oh, this is great, but I forgot to tell you that I don’t like shrimp. That’s exactly the type of thing you would say. Do you see how conversational that is? And then it would create another menu based on not having shrimp. 

Now you could give it information, like we are vegetarian and we don’t eat these types of foods or one of my kids has a dairy allergy, or we really want to make sure we get enough fiber, and you can give it exactly how much fiber that you want. If you don’t know what’s a good amount of fiber, you could just ask ChatGPT like, hey, what is the recommended amount of fiber for blah, blah, blah, for an adult who’s a male or et cetera. 

So you can keep tweaking it. And you can add things like, I’m looking for a meal plan for the next seven days. I want it to be easy. And again, the more information you give it, the better, like something like I want to be able to batch cook and I have about two hours to do this. I want to minimize chopping, using too many bowls. I think you’re getting the hang of what I’m saying, right? Just give it as much information as possible. 

And then you could even say, “Okay, great. Can you give me a shopping list for this and divide it by category? So that it’s not just a random list of food, it’s by category.” That’s how I like to make my shopping list so I’m not scanning it all and figuring out, oh, I’m in the dairy section, let me look for X, Y, Z. 

So meal planning is something I’ve been struggling with a little bit. And so I’ve really been using ChatGPT and I’m playing around with it, right? Because I might try something like, oh, that sounds great. And you try it, then you’re like, oh, that didn’t quite work. And you have to think about why it didn’t work. And then you give ChatGPT more information. 

I’m just throwing out this percentage, but I think of it as reducing 80% of my mental load and giving me ideas that I may not have thought of before. Now, even if I don’t particularly like the ideas, it’ll help me think of more ideas based on what it said. So I think of it as dramatically reducing thinking time, again, all about reducing mental load. 

Okay, the second thing I want to talk about is scheduling and task management. Now, I haven’t played too much with this, but I always feel like I have trouble organizing my week and I don’t know about you, but I tend to think I can do a lot more in one day than is actually humanly possible. And lately I feel like I’ve been having focus problems. And so I actually bought a visual timer where you can actually see the time running out visually, not like a countdown. 

And so I’ve really been trying to optimize my time and be efficient because I just have a lot more on my plate mainly because of the move and, you know, Matt going to a job, he was remote before. And so it’s just really important for me to kind of make sure everything is done, including outsourcing some tasks like cleaning and even organizing. But still, there are things that need to get done. And then there are things that are important to me, like making sure I get my “self-care” in, like working out or taking my morning walk. 

And so you can give it a prompt such as this week, I have a really busy week. I’m going to be in the clinic from eight o’clock till 6 PM, Monday through Friday. My commute is this long. My son has soccer practice on Tuesday and Thursday at specific times. Can you help plan my week, including one hour each day for exercise and some time for self-care? I might even say, and it’s okay if I can’t do exercise and self-care every day, but I would really love to do it three times this week. 

Now, again, that’s a lot of information and then it’s going to spit out a response and you can keep tweaking it. It usually has sub sections with bullet points, et cetera. And so you’re just going to keep tweaking it because you might see the response and you’re like, oh, I forgot to tell it this and that. So you can keep giving it more information without having to redo the whole prompt. And again, it might give you ideas that you may not have thought about before. And that, to me, is just fantastic. 

I also use it in my course a lot because often, you know, let’s say you schedule Saturday, 10 AM, give yourself one hour to work on the budget. And I don’t know about you, but if this is kind of new to you, you’ll get to 10 AM Saturday and you’re like patting yourself on the back for scheduling time. And then you sit down and you see work on budget and you’ll be like, well, what does that mean exactly? What steps should I actually take? 

Now, I do give specific steps in my program on how to approach it, like break it down. And the more you can break it down and be specific, when you schedule that time you immediately know what you actually have to do. And so you can ask ChatGPT how to approach any task. 

So for example, just using the budget example, it could be Saturday 10 AM for one hour, and if you have less time, you know, 30 minutes. And the task could be something like creating an account on YNAB, Y-N-A-B. I think you all know that that’s my favorite program for spending plans, and connect my accounts. And then sit down and make the first draft of the spending categories that I want to keep track of. 

Do you see how specific that is? And when you get to that time, again, we’re using Saturday 10 AM as an example, when you sit down, you know exactly what to do. You’re not spending time thinking like, what am I actually going to do with my budget? Because it’s so easy to be overwhelmed, especially, again, if this is new for you, and to just do something else. 

Now, my other favorite way to use ChatGPT is to help with communication and writing email drafts. We’ve been using this a lot in our business because sometimes you kind of know what you want to say, but you kind of don’t. Or maybe you have a, I don’t know, a negative email or just something that requires a lot more thought. And again, it’s all about reducing mental load. 

So what I would do here is copy and paste the email. Well, first you would give it a prompt and then you copy and paste the email. So for example, I get asked to speak a lot and I can’t do all of them for time reasons, or I might be traveling or it just might not be the right fit. And so I might say something like, “Below I’ve copied an email that was sent to me. Please help me craft a response. I want to thank them for thinking of me and thoughtfully declining the invitation.” 

Now, that might seem like a simple thing to write, but in the moment in the midst of doing a gazillion things, it just might be hard. Again, it’s all about reducing mental load. And so it’ll draft an email and I usually have to tweak it. For example, I might say, “Oh, can you make it more conversational? Can you make it more XYZ?” And even if you don’t use the verbatim ChatGPT, we usually don’t, it gives us an idea of how we want to say it. And so again, it’s just dramatically reducing the time, especially if you have writer’s block. 

So I do get asked to speak and sometimes they give me their budget for a speaker and sometimes they don’t. So I might say something like, I got invited to this talk, below is the email that I received. I am interested in speaking, but I need more information such as is my flight going to be covered? What is their budget for the speaking? And then I might even say, and can you suggest anything else that I need to address? Do you see how amazing this is? Do you see how it can just dramatically reduce your time? 

Now, speaking of emails, I know many of you have a hard time keeping up with your email, so you can even ask it something like this, in my personal emails. I find it really hard to keep up with them. I get so many and then sometimes I forget to respond, even though I would like to. Can you suggest a way for me to keep on task? I would love to respond to emails within two days. 

And then it’ll give you a suggestion on how to approach it. And again, it’s going to give you ideas. You’re going to be like, oh, I didn’t even think about that. That sounds fantastic. Right? And again, you could keep tweaking it. 

In fact, I’m going to do this right now during this podcast. So here’s what I’m going to type. I have trouble keeping up with my emails. They pile up and sometimes I forget to respond. I would like to respond within 48 hours as much as I can. So then you hit return and it starts spitting out a response. 

So the first part is that, first of all, ChatGPT talks to you like a normal person. So it wrote, email overload is a super common challenge, especially for busy professionals like yourself. It knows that I’m a female physician. Here are a few strategies and tools you can use to help stay on top of your emails and ensure you respond within 48 hours. 

So it gave me two ways. Now the first one says prioritize with AI and number two, time block for emails. Now you may know that so many apps are incorporating AI and I’m focusing on ChatGPT, again, just focus on one thing at a time. As an aside, there are so many new tools for charting and helping you finish your charts, which I think are fantastic. 

So under the prioritize with AI, it says you can use AI tools to sort, prioritize, and even suggest responses to your emails. And so it says specifically ChatGPT for drafting quick responses. If you have emails that need thoughtful replies, but are time consuming, copy and paste the email into ChatGPT and ask it to help you draft a response. This can save you tons of time. Do you see how conversational the responses are? 

And then it says you can use it to brainstorm responses or polish your language to maintain your tone and professionalism. Then it mentions a tool, I haven’t heard of this, but it says, or you can try this tool called Superhuman, and it says it’s paid. And it says Superhuman uses AI to prioritize important emails and organize your inbox by what needs immediate attention. So it sounds like it helps sort of like put your emails into high priority and low priority. And it also has reminder features. 

Now, again, I mentioned I use Google or Gmail, and I have noticed that it now says, it’ll actually prompt me like, hey, this was sent five days ago, or you haven’t responded in five days. And I do see that, but I don’t always use that feature. 

The second thing it says is to time block. It says dedicate two daily blocks of time, maybe 30 minutes, for email management. During these periods focus solely on clearing your inbox. And so it even gives a suggestion, in the morning handle new emails and urgent tasks. In the afternoon, respond to any unread or unresolved emails and review your inbox once more before the day ends. By limiting how often you check your emails. You can avoid getting distracted throughout the day. 

Number three, snooze or flag non-urgent emails, and it goes into detail. And then four, automate reminders for follow-ups. Five, use email templates. Six, declutter and unsubscribe. Seven, email inbox zero approach and it talks about what that is. And then it said hire help. 

Now, again, these are just multiple suggestions. And let’s say you really love the idea of automating reminders for follow-ups. First of all, can I just say automating things as much as possible is just a huge lifesaver. We use that a lot in my business so that things aren’t so manual. 

So those are the examples I wanted to talk about today. I hope you can see the power of using ChatGPT. Again, if this sounds like something that would really help you, I would just start with one task. So maybe it’s meal planning, maybe it’s email draft responses. And as you use it for that specific task, you’re going to see what works, what doesn’t work, how you can prompt it, et cetera. 

Now, here’s the thing, I used ChatGPT to help me plan this podcast episode and I had to keep tweaking it. And I think of this as giving me talking points, but I naturally expound on them, you know, putting in my take and obviously my voice. And it saved me a lot of thinking time, right? Because otherwise I’d have to sit down and be like, okay, what are some practical examples of using AI? You know, using examples from my life, et cetera. 

And meal planning I knew was probably going to be something as well as email responses, but it gives me a lot more ideas and I could tell it to actually script it, but I don’t think I’ll ever use that feature because I feel pretty comfortable talking off the cuff and as long as I have some key bullet points, I’m good with that. 

Okay, I hope you found this super valuable. Again, Money For Women Physicians is open for enrollment, we start early October. Go to wealthymommd.com/money. We’re going to do a much deeper dive in using ChatGPT in your everyday life and of course in your personal finances. Thank you so much and I’ll see you next week. 

Hey there, thanks so much for tuning in. If you loved what you heard, be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss an episode. And if you’re listening to this on Apple Podcasts, I’d love for you to leave a review. Reviews tell Apple that this podcast is, well, awesome. And it will help women find this podcast so that they too can live a wealthy life. And finally, you can learn more about me and what I do at wealthymommd.com. See you next week.