The Create Your Day Podcast

91. The Unexpected Self-Care Tool: Using AI to Reclaim Your Time and Sanity

• Jenn • Episode 91

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Feeling like your brain has 37,000 open tabs and your to-do list never stops growing? You're not alone—and surprisingly, artificial intelligence might be the self-care ally you never knew you needed.

Forget the sci-fi fears and "one more thing to learn" anxiety. In this eye-opening episode, I break down exactly how AI can lighten your mental load and create breathing room in your hectic life. This isn't about adding more to your plate—it's about using accessible tools to take things off.

I walk you through practical, step-by-step guidance for using ChatGPT (or any AI tool) to combat decision fatigue, overcome journaling blocks, design realistic schedules based on your actual life, and set boundaries without the guilt. These aren't vague suggestions—I provide the exact prompts to copy and paste so you can start immediately.

What makes this approach different is how it transforms mundane mental burdens into opportunities for genuine self-care. When AI handles email drafting, meal planning, and schedule optimization, you reclaim the mental bandwidth for what truly matters. As I explain, "AI is not the hero of your story—you are. But it can be the personal assistant that preps your notes, drafts your emails, helps you meal plan, and reminds you to breathe."

Ready to move from overwhelm to intentional calm? Download the free AI Self-Care Suite at jenncody.com/selfcare and discover how technology can help you rest without guilt—because that's real self-care.

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Speaker 1:

Hey everyone, welcome to the Create your Day podcast. I'm your host, Jen Cody, and thank you so much for being here with me this week. I am excited about this week's episode because I do a lot of work with AI and usually it has to do with my business and I really do use it like an assistant at this point. There's so much capability when it comes to AI and I know that. I mean if we can just get real for a second. I know a lot of times when people hear the word AI, they think like futuristic, they think it's going to replace everybody, we're going to all be out of jobs, and it sounds kind of cool, but I'm too tired to try to figure it out. And I totally understand. But I'm here today to tell you that AI is our friend and when we use it the right way, it can actually help us, not just in business, but in our self-care. So you know, everything I'm all about is finding balance right, Living our lives in a balanced way, being brave, being bold, and that requires taking care of ourselves, and so what I want to share with you today is that if your brain feels like you always have 37,000 open tabs and your to-do list is just growing and growing and growing. This episode is for you because we are going to talk all about how we can use AI to make our life feel lighter and how we can be less overwhelmed, even though AI may feel a little overwhelming. So we're going to talk about real things. I'm going to actually walk you through how to use it, so this is not one of those things where it's like, oh, just use AI to do that for you. No, no, I'm going to tell you exactly what you need to do when you are implementing some of these things, and there is really an overwhelming amount of ways that we can use AI in our business, in our life, with our families, and I know that this is what you guys are all dealing with.

Speaker 1:

If you are listening to this podcast, you are someone who is trying to achieve a lot of different things in your life, so chances are you're juggling some work obligations, Maybe you're managing a team, You're trying to figure out how to be there for your family a team, you're trying to figure out how to be there for your family, and in between all of that, we're trying to stay hydrated and meditate, not spiral out of control. Right? It's not that easy. So how can AI actually help us, and how can it help us in a way that feels useful and not like I'm giving you one more thing to do on your plate? That's really the key here. This is not oh, here's 10 more things for you to add to your to-do list. This is supposed to be useful to you. This is supposed to be things that can actually make your life feel a little more manageable. And before we get into it, I want to let you know that I have actually put this all together for you in a free download so you can go over to jenncodycom J-E-N-N-C-O-D-Ycom slash self-care and there's a free download there for you with all of these kinds of ways to use AI in your self-care, so that you don't have to remember everything I say today. It's all taken care of for you. So I will absolutely link that in the show notes and remind you at the end of the episode where you can go. But jencodycom backslash self-care free download for you.

Speaker 1:

Okay, so let's talk about decision fatigue. We've spoken about it on here many times, and decision fatigue is basically when you wake up in the morning and you already feel foggy because you have so many things going on in your brain that you just don't know how you can possibly prioritize. It's like when everything is important, nothing is important, so we decide not to make decisions at all because it's too overwhelming to think about what decisions we have to make. So I'm going to walk you, step by step, how you can use ChatGPT or any AI tool you prefer. Free versions are fine. This is how you can help with decision fatigue. So open up your AI tool. So I tend to use ChatGPT right now. So open up ChatGPT and type something like give me five healthy dinner ideas. You can even be very specific Give me. Look in your refrigerator, see what's available, and then you can say give me five healthy dinner ideas that use chicken, rice and broccoli or use, you know, whatever it is that you're trying to use up in your refrigerator. That will absolutely be helpful. You don't have to come up with what to do. You don't have to come up with how to make it. It will give you the ideas. It will tell you how to make them. You can say give me five healthy dinner ideas that will take me less than 20 minutes, or that use a crock pot. You know, give it whatever direction you want, but you don't have to. You can it's almost like Google, but with direction and support, if that makes sense. So that's some way that you can use it for decision fatigue. You can also.

Speaker 1:

Maybe you're really overwhelmed at work this week and you need to let people know that you can't take anything else on. But how many times have you been sitting at your desk and you're wondering how to say something without it coming off the wrong way? I know my daughter is famous for this. She'll be like writing a letter to her professor, to someone at work, and asking me over and over again does this sound okay? Does this sound okay? Like we second guess ourselves all the time. So, using ChatGPT to just open it up and put the prompt in, write me a friendly, clear email that says I can't take extra work on this week. Or write me a friendly and clear email that says I can't take extra work on this week. Or write me a friendly and clear email that says I cannot attend that work event or I'm unavailable for that meeting.

Speaker 1:

There are ways for us to become more practiced in communicating in a way that feels really good to us when we use AI to help us, Because sometimes we know what we want to say, but it may take us 10 tries to write the sentence until we feel like it actually feels good to us. Right, it feels like the message is getting across the way that we want it to, and it's also making us feel like we're helping the situation. So you can ask ChatGPT to give you 10 options of that email so that you can kind of become more familiar with what feels really good for you. The point is to let AI do the heavy lifting here and then you can tweak it so that it sounds like you and not robotic, and AI has come so far when it comes to this. You can say I want you to write this in a way that doesn't sound like AI was involved, and it will tweak the way the conversation goes. What I want you to really remember here is that this is not cheating. This is how you outsource the things that make you say like, oh, I do not want to be doing this, so don't think of it as cheating. Okay, let's talk more about how AI can help us with self-care, because one of the things that I am an advocate for but I don't find that it comes easily to me is journaling.

Speaker 1:

I work with so many people that journaling is just everything to them. They wake up in the morning, they start writing and they really have so much self-care benefits from journaling. I mean, it's just. I don't have to tell you all the benefits of it. We all know that this is something that really does help get our brain focused, keep us really in line with what our values and what's in alignment for us. Right Like journaling is how we can kind of put our circumstances into perspective by pen to paper or typing things out. Once we start to see it in black and white, it really does feel different to us.

Speaker 1:

But blank page anxiety for me is a real thing. I get, I sit down, I feel like I'm so motivated to do it and I just don't know what to do. So here is something that will help you Letting AI help you start this process, even if you only have five minutes. So again, step by step, you're going to open up ChatGPT or Gemini or Abacus anything that you want to be using and you're going to say give me a journaling prompt to help me process overwhelm or help me reflect on why I feel stuck even when I'm getting things done. You know, sometimes journaling, we want to journal because of something specific, so this is not necessarily about sitting down and asking AI give me a journal prompt for the day, although you can do that. This is more about telling AI what you're feeling, what you're dealing with, and asking it to help you journal through that situation. You can choose the prompt that it gives you that feels good to you, and then you can type your thoughts right into AI, because AI can be your thinking partner here. Or you can write your response in the notebook and just use the AI as a springboard for you, Because this is all about helping to guide you to clarity not to perfection, right.

Speaker 1:

It's about changing the perspective and about letting AI be your thinking partner, honestly, like really allowing it to help you get from sitting down staring at the blank page to okay, now I start to feel. I'm starting to feel a little bit different about my circumstances. I'm starting to see how this fits into my life right now, and if you're someone who's looking to just start journaling and you haven't had the time or you've been a little confused about how to fit it into your life, you can also use AI to create a journal for you so you can sit down and ask ChatGPT create 30 days of journal prompts for me so I can start my journey with journaling. So, yeah, there's so many ways and as you do this, you will definitely start to feel more comfortable and you'll start to notice that when you sit down with your ChatGPT comfortable and you'll start to notice that when you sit down with your chat GPT, you know already what to do. You know like you're not going to need my prompts to help you, because every time, the same way, artificial intelligence gets smarter. The more that it deals with you and the more that it interacts with you, you're going to get smarter at learning how to prompt the AI to give you what you need. So that's one way that you can use AI to help you start journaling, because that's something I'm definitely going to be doing, because I always say that I want to journal and it just I don't know, it feels like a chore to me, and this whole idea of this week's episode is how to use AI to keep things that are overwhelming, to have them start feeling like they're being taken off of our plate instead of adding more things to our plate. So I may try this for the journaling.

Speaker 1:

Now I want to talk about how we can use AI for our scheduling. You guys know that I am a hardcore time management junkie. I feel like once you own your time and your schedule, your life drastically changes. So if you are someone out there that right now you're like I need a schedule that feels supportive. My schedule feels like it is suffocating me. Ai can help you design your week based on your real life, not like the unrealistic Pinterest and Instagram lives that we look at every day. So this is what I want you to do. This is a really great exercise Sit down and make a list of what is non-negotiable in your week and when you think about what's non-negotiable.

Speaker 1:

These are things like dropping your kids off at school, right, Maybe meetings that you have scheduled for work, Workouts If you go to the gym. What are the different times that are non-negotiable? You want to make sure that those are in there. And then I want you to add in some rest blocks, even if it's 10 minutes, 15 minutes. It doesn't have to be an hour, it doesn't even have to be 30 minutes, but just adding it in and making it your non-negotiable. So, at least 10 minutes a day. Add into this list.

Speaker 1:

Then you go to ChatGPT and you type in help me create a time-blocked weekly schedule that includes these tasks, and you're going to paste your list in there. You can give it further direction and say I only want these things to happen between the hours of 9 am and 5 pm, or I only want this to happen on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Whatever it is, but let this organize your week. It won't be perfect, but it will be a brilliant starting point. You can ask the AI to optimize for focus time, optimize for your energy levels Like maybe you're someone who just has a really big energy dip at three o'clock in the afternoon, right, that's a really common time. Tell it that. Let AI help you move from being reactive to like the chaos that's going on to being really intentionally calm. And getting control of our schedules is the first step in feeling like we're not suffocating. So, again, this is all in the free download for you. Like we're not suffocating. So again, this is all in the free download for you, along with some other ideas as well.

Speaker 1:

So now, something else that I love to chat with you guys about is setting boundaries. Well, Can we use AI to help us set boundaries without being guilty. You bet your ass we can, so let's talk about it. Setting boundaries is self-care. It just is so. When we can set boundaries by using the right words, even when we're really tired of trying to find the right words, this can feel like an impossible chore. So I want you to think about a boundary that you need to set. It can be personally, it can be at work, whatever it is. So maybe this could be like saying no to a favor that someone asked you. It can be declining a meeting that you were invited to attend. It can be taking on a project, Whatever it is.

Speaker 1:

Think about a boundary that you need to set, and then I want you to go into chat GPT and write write me a kind but firm message saying I'm unavailable for this right now. Or you can also phrase it help me say no without a sound, without sounding apologetic. That's a big deal. We tend to spend a lot of time apologizing for our own boundaries, and that's a shift that's important for you to make. You don't need to be sorry that you have a boundary. It's a good thing that you have a boundary. So, asking ChatGPT help me say no without sounding apologetic. Or write this message so that I sound nice and kind, but it's also firm and they know that I'm not open to negotiating Then you can review whatever it gives you, tweak it so that it sounds more like you and hit send.

Speaker 1:

What I would say at this point is you can save this in a document so that you can use it later. So if you find that this spits out really good content for you, save it to a document that's called you know boundary scripts, and then you can go back and next time you find yourself unsure of what to say, you kind of have a script already set to go Because, let's face it, you know boundaries. They're emotional and we feel like exhausted by the time we're done trying to figure it all out. So letting AI help you with this is a huge, huge benefit. So these are some ways that AI can be helpful to you, but there's so many ways that we can do this. You know there are so many things that AI can do for us, and that's why I created the self-care suite in the download that I'm offering to you guys. So I want you to be able to look at your self-care situation and how you're using your time, because, especially if you're going to use that prompt about creating time for yourself. Let it create time for you to use these prompts for AI self-care, you know.

Speaker 1:

So the download that's available to you again, it's at jencodycom backslash self-care one word jencodycom, backslash self-care one word. It includes things like meditation scripts, guided visualization scripts, personal affirmations that you can create for yourself, boundary setting scripts, morning journaling all of those things are included in there. We also have some emotional processing tools, right, Because it can be hard to create, you know, boundaries for ourselves, just to be able to process our own emotions. How can we transform fear that we're feeling into something else? We can use AI to do all of this and to help us on this path and help us through this journey. So I encourage you to head on over to JenCodycom and just click the download JenCodycom backslash self-care.

Speaker 1:

Let me know what you're thinking about, Let me know what you think of it, and remember that AI is not the hero of the story, right, You're still the hero of your story, but why don't we let AI be the support person, be the personal assistant that you're looking for, be the one who can prep your notes, who can draft your emails, who helps you meal plan. How many of you wish you had a personal assistant that can do all of these things for you. And then, bonus, maybe even make you not forget to breathe once in a while, Because, if we can use it intentionally, AI actually gives you back the mental bandwidth that makes you overwhelmed. So this way, you can actually spend time on things that move the needle for you, or resting without feeling guilt. If we can rest without feeling guilt, that's real self-care. So I'm hoping that this episode was helpful and actually maybe made you sigh a little bit in relief. That's what I want. I want you to really want to go deeper and I want you to check out that download and see how you can start to use AI to release yourself from overwhelm, Because you didn't work this hard to just feel burnt out and exhausted all the time. Right, we want to be able to move forward in a way that feels good. We want to move forward in a way that makes us feel like we're getting closer to the things that we're trying to accomplish, and not further away because we're just treading water. So I hope this episode was helpful for you.

Speaker 1:

As always, I will ask for you to please go on over. Leave a review, leave a rating. It helps the podcast reach more and more people, and that's so important right. The more people we can reach, the more lives we can change, and we're doing it together. So thank you so much for spending time with me. I really appreciate it. I know your time is valuable. I know you have 100 things right. We're all spinning these plates in the air, and the fact that you chose to spend some time with me does not go overlooked. So thank you so much. I will see you next week. Until then, take care of yourselves, take care of each other and have a good one. Take care.