Tired of feeling overwhelmed, drowning into do-less, making countless decisions each day,
leaving you feeling mentally drained?
You're not alone.
Busy professionals and parents face a constant barrage of decisions regarding their work,
parenting, household, and personal decisions, leading to significant mental and emotional
strain.
This constant decision-making can contribute to feelings of overwhelm, stress, and burnout.
But what if I told you there's a secret weapon that could help you reclaim your time and simplify
your life?
That weapon is AI, or artificial intelligence.
I know, I know.
Just hear me out.
In today's episode, we will explore how to use AI tools to simplify everyday life and
make you look like a creative genius.
We'll be looking at the mundane decisions we have to make as busy adults, like making
dinner and packing for a trip, and harness the tools we have to turn decision fatigue
into creative ingenuity.
Thank you for joining me for another episode of LifeSnacks Lesson Plan.
I'm Rachel and I started this podcast during my 29th and last year as a high school teacher.
Goal of my work with LifeSnacks Lesson Plan, as well as my Live and Learn Patreon, is
to create a connection where we are all teachers.
We all have lessons and stories to share that can help others.
I'm so fortunate to be able to extend the four walls of my previous classroom to an
unlimited audience where we can all learn from each other.
And my guests are some of the most inspirational people, with the best stories and lessons
I know, which is why I want to share them with you.
Their words are something everyone should hear.
It is my hope that you are able to take away something from each episode to apply to your
own life, whether that be a career search, path to a more fulfilling life, or new ideas
on current topics.
Before we start today's episode, I should probably explain from an English teacher standpoint
that AI is a huge change that has entered the lives of teachers, basically turning them
into constant AI cheating police.
While I could easily do an entire episode on how AI has changed the educational landscape,
today is not that type of episode.
To be honest, I'm not sure I really ever want to talk about that topic again.
So we're going to focus on the positive side.
There are so many amazing hacks to save us time and make us look extra creative.
And that's where I want us to spend our time.
So just a little bit of background, if you're not familiar with AI, how they work, primarily
today I'm going to be focusing on chat GPT and Google Gemini.
Those are the tools I've experimented with the most in the type of examples I'm going
to give you.
So how AI works, basically it uses a type of artificial intelligence called a large
language model, LLM, specifically a transformer based model.
It was trained on vast amounts of text data and designed to understand and generate human-like
text based on prompts it receives.
So for example, chat GPT was trained on a massive data set of text from books, articles,
websites and more.
It doesn't think or have real world awareness but predicts the most likely next words based
on the patterns it's been taught.
It was fine tuned to follow instructions, provide helpful answers and avoid harmful
or biased responses.
When you type a question or prompt, the model analyzes your input and predicts the best
response based on what it has learned.
It doesn't retrieve answers from a database like a search engine.
Instead it generates responses in real time using its learned knowledge.
It uses context from the conversation to provide relevant and coherent answers.
Now some of the limitations or things to consider is that these models don't have real time
access to the internet unless they're explicitly connected to a web tool.
You can't remember past conversations beyond the current chat session.
It doesn't have opinions or personal experiences so everything it generates is based on training
data.
Besides these limitations though it can sometimes feel human like so it has been optimized to
produce conversational, engaging and natural sounding text.
It does mimic different writing styles, can adapt to the tone that you ask it to and it
understands context better than earlier AI models.
In fact this is the most rudimentary AI we will ever have meaning it's just going to
continue to get more sophisticated.
We know this can be good and bad but today we're going to focus on harnessing its powers
for good.
So today I'm going to take three main areas of being an adult that have added to my own
personal decision fatigue in the past.
I could probably have unlimited episodes on this but I tried to take the major decisions
we all might dread on a weekly basis.
I can always expand or add new areas if you find this sort of episode helpful.
So for the first sort of demographic that I'm going to focus on who might benefit from
this technology would be parents or maybe nannies or full time babysitters who have to
find engaging and educational activities for children on a daily, weekly basis.
So I'm going to personally go back to when I remember feeling stressed when my daughter
was younger and if I was looking for inspiration for something I would normally spend hours
on Pinterest trying to curate the perfect birthday party or educational trip to the
zoo.
Why do we do this to ourselves?
If I knew then what I know now although I didn't have this tool but if I did which I
do now here's what I would do.
So when I was planning my daughter's seven year old birthday party at the time she loved
rainbows.
She wanted a rainbow everything birthday party.
So I could go in to chat GPT or Google Gemini today and I would type in I'm planning a birthday
party for a seven year old who loves rainbows.
Can you suggest some creative decorating ideas and arts and crafts activity and maybe two
outdoor related activities for a group of six children?
Obviously you can tailor this to whatever your situation might be.
And within 30 seconds or less I have a plethora of decorating ideas including a rainbow balloon
arch rainbow table setting with different layers of construction paper rainbow themed
plates and cups and napkins maybe rainbow confetti rainbow streamers a rainbow photo booth with
props like rainbow sunglasses hats or boas rainbow signs and even having the children
at the party decorate them and rainbow centerpieces with vases and layers of colored candies or
water beads flowers or feathers.
So you could even ask it for more ideas if that is not enough for you for an arts and
craft activity it's spit out doing a rainbow tie dye says it always is a hit with kids.
You can provide plain white t-shirts or fabric tote bags and fabric dyes and rainbow colors
let the kids create their own unique rainbow designs.
Be sure to have gloves and aprons on hand to protect clothing you could always use pillow
cases or bandanas if you don't like that idea you just say offer me one or two more arts
and crafts activities.
Then for the two outdoor activities love the first one it suggested a rainbow scavenger
hunt so you could either hide objects and rainbow colors around the yard like a red ball
an orange leaf a yellow flower they could look for natural things like green grass blue
balloon purple crayon give each child a list of items to find and the first one to find
all the items when surprise don't like that idea you can ask it for more but it also suggested
a rainbow real relay race where you divide the children into two teams you set up a relay
course with different stations at each station you have a task related to a specific specific
rainbow color so at the red station they have to run to a cone and back at the orange station
they have to toss an orange beanbag into a bucket yellow hopscotch on yellow squares
green blow up a green balloon blue throw a blue water balloon at a target and purple
do five jumping jacks while holding a purple ribbon first team to complete the course wins
it even gave me some extra tips which yay one of these I had done I did pick up a rainbow
cake where you slice into it and it has the colors of the rainbow big hit doing rainbow
goodie bags with rainbow themed treats pencils erasers stickers candies small toys and then
it suggested to play upbeat kid friendly music for a festive atmosphere so voila I typed
in it took me five seconds to type in my prompt and within 30 seconds I had a list of great
ideas that I could then refine now you might like Pinterest and you might like to still
you know think of things on your own and that's great but if you are short on time and low
on creative creativity your brain is fried after a long week just try it for fun I did
it one more I gave it one more prompt as well for taking your two year old and your five
year old to the zoo so I typed in please suggest two interactive activities for a two year
old and a five year old during a zoo visit as well as a follow up activity to do at home
right because you want to process the field trip so again 30 seconds or less it said
at the zoo you could do an animal sounds scavenger hunt so before the visit create a simple list
of three to four animals that make distinct sounds for the two year old you can use pictures
of the animals at the zoo encourage both children to listen for the sounds and when they hear
one have the five year old read the animals name off the list the two year old can point
to the picture and everyone can try to imitate the sound this combines listening skills early
reading practice for the five year old and fun animal imitations for the whole family
they also suggested choosing a specific habitat at the zoo like the African savannah the rain
forest ask the five year old to explain what a habitat is and what kinds of things animals
need in their habitat like food and water and shelter this could be a good conversation
about what different animals eat then give each child a role so the two year old can
be the food finder pointing out what the animals might be eating the five year old can be the
shelter specialist describing where the animals might live as you explore the habitat encourage
them to point out examples of food and shelter this promotes learning about animal needs and
encourages observation skills again if you don't like those or you want different ideas or more
just ask it for more it did give me a follow-up activity at home to build a zoo diorama using
a shoebox or cardboard box some construction paper some twigs leaves rocks which you could gather
outside some animal figurines glue markers and crayons so you have the children work together
to create a diorama of their favorite zoo habitat the five year old can help by drawing or writing
labels for the different parts of the habitat and the animals the two year old can help by
placing the animal figurines and other materials in the diorama this activity encourages creativity
reinforces what they learned at the zoo and promotes collaborative play it also gave me
additional tips to plan ahead check the zoo's website for feeding times or special events keep
it short a zoo visit can be very tiring for little ones so especially if it's hot think of
everybody who's going on the trip bring snacks and water and take videos or photos of your children
interacting with the animals which can be fun to look back on later so that's you know the little
human side of AI those are two prompts and those are all of the ideas that I got it's never ending
so I want you to think of everyday situations maybe parenting situations in this case where you
wish you had solutions for how to keep a three year old busy while you're cooking or ways to
teach your ten year old about being a responsible pet owner if they've been begging for a pet
endless endless ideas so by utilizing AI parents nannies babysitters can more easily find engaging
and educational activities that spark children's curiosity foster their development and make
learning fun for our next example we're going to move into probably something that causes 90%
of the population stress and decision fatigue it's all those memes you see down the internet about
the worst part of adulting being why do I have to think about what to make for dinner every day
and can I pay someone else to pack my children's lunches right or better yet teach them so we can
use AI for this in a variety of ways again I'm not going to go over every way that you can use it
because I'd be here forever but I'm going to tell you how I've used it or how I could see it being
helpful so first just recipe generate generation and customization if you don't like what it
spits out the first time you can ask it to keep going so if you have certain dietary restrictions
or you're following perhaps certain macros you can type in exactly what you need or you can tell
it what ingredients you have in the fridge and suggest it can suggest recipes that you can put
together based on what you have so I used this with my current macros that I'm following how
much protein fats and carbs I'm using in my diet right now with some of my favorite proteins and
there are certain veggies that don't my stomach doesn't do well with so I asked it not to include
those and I asked it to plan a week of dinners for me or I can ask it to plan one day
of meals breakfast lunch and dinner with a snack following those macros and I can repeat that as
many days as I want and then ask it to change up a couple things and then I can just repeat that
again you can do this for creative school lunches you know using certain fruits that your kids like
easy proteins that you can pack in lunches possibilities are endless related to meal prep
you can also use it for helping you with your fitness goals so if you tell it that you want a
30 minute full body low impact resistance workout and you have a set of free rate weights from 5
to 20 pounds and you have some resistance bands it can design a workout for you you can tell it to
design a leg day an arm day you know you can tell them you have a jump rope and a treadmill and
suggest an interval workout for you so again you can completely customize how you want this to look
you can ask for one workout you can ask for a week of workouts or four days of workouts so that
you're not over utilizing one muscle group this can be a nice way to just mix things up you have
20 minutes here's the equipment you have ask it to give you suggestions and there you go again 30
seconds or less so we're going to take a little break there because that's a lot and then I will
come back with one more real-world scenario of how we could use this and then we'll have a little
bit of action steps and planning time and to those of you who have followed me for a while you know
that I value mental and physical wellness personally I've worked with a few different coaches over
the years and even been one myself if you are looking for education and support in your own
wellness journey I would love to invite you to the wellness community I am currently in that
keeps me accountable daily with my nutrition and movement if you are a Facebook user you can
search for our free group called team mg this group is led by my coach Megan Grimord who is a
certified trainer and nutrition coach she offers lots of education and support for your wellness
journey if you want to get to know coach Megan more you can follow her on Instagram at all over
case Megan M E G A N underscore Grimord G R I M O R D or even listen to her on episode 10 of the
podcast she has also created a discount code for my listeners just go to her website www.team-mg.com
and enter code lesson plan 10 to get $10 off any of her premium coaching packages for the first
month coach Megan is a busy mom like me who works full-time so I appreciate her practicality mixed
with some tough love to keep me going during our break I usually take time to answer one or two
of the ask the teacher anything questions the first one I have today is how do you incorporate
lessons learn from the classroom into your life outside of teaching great question I definitely
feel fortunate after 29 years to have both the soft skills and the hard actual journalistic
skills that I have so to launch this podcast venture I definitely have to adhere to deadlines be
consistent remember all of the things I learned with writing and speaking and creating content you
know what people would want to listen to I'm having to pick up a lot more skills that I didn't learn
in teaching but it's definitely those people skills when I'm interviewing all of the same
techniques that I taught in journalism class about what makes a good interview storytelling
techniques but then really just like being consistent staying self-motivated being on a
schedule I am you know not reporting to anyone else but myself so all of those things that I've
had to teach my students when it comes to putting together a large project for publishing all of
those things are applying to this new venture as well second question I got is what's the best
feedback you've received from a listener about your podcast people have been so nice I'll say
a funny one somebody said that it reminded them of a sermon I'm gonna say that that was my
disaccomplement I think so I think people are surprised that again ordinary people and you
know not people that you see in pop culture on the news of course have such fascinating lives
and such fascinating stories and nobody gets to hear about them and I think a lot of what I've
heard is that people just love hearing other people's journeys and their stories and even if
it's not something that they can directly apply to their life it's just really interesting to
hear other people's stories what other people have wrestled with how other people have approached
different parts of their career or their school life and so I've gotten a lot of great feedback
on the storytelling aspects of the guest episodes so I really have appreciated that feedback keep
it coming you can go to my website at life's next lesson plan dot com and ask questions there
there isn't ask the teacher anything section there there is also a place for you to suggest
guests for the podcast as well so be sure to visit us at life's next lesson plan dot com
we're back from break and ready to get into the third and final example I brought for you today
of how to revolutionize your adulting using AI so if you're lucky enough to plan vacations even
if it's just a short weekend getaway I usually am not the one doing the planning and I also
don't enjoy packing so if I have to plan and if I have to pack I thought why not get some
assistance from AI so I played around a little bit with some of the ways I could use chat GPT
to help me plan a vacation so you could type in a prompt like what are some of the off the
beaten path destinations for a solo traveler in and then fill in the blank wherever you're
going or what are the best beaches in the Caribbean for families with young children you can also
type in some of your interests your budget a place you know an area that you'd like to go the
Midwest the West Coast and it can give you endless examples of things that you could do on a budget
in a certain location maybe you want to be by water maybe you want to try out some wineries again
you tell it and you can continue to refine your search you can also build a customized itinerary
by suggesting certain you know having it suggest hidden gems or restaurants again the more
information you give it about your travel style so if you don't like crowds you want certain
weather there are you know you want to visit antique shops when you are going on a vacation it can
suggest things around that you can also ask for information about cultural experiences
nightlife food tours hiking again you can personalize it to how you like to travel and endless
opportunities there in the past Pinterest travel guides travel brochures the internet you know it
could take you a lot of time and some people like that that's their relaxation that's what they
look forward to doing and that's great I'm just not one of those people I'm also not one of those
people who likes to pack it is usually something that gives me a little bit of anxiety before
I leave I've gotten better with kind of keeping a list or keeping a travel like toiletery bag
now that is completely packed and I can just throw it in the suitcase when I need to go but you can
use AI for this as well so if you know what the weather is going to be you can have it sort of
give you what to wear generator input your trip details like the dates you can tell it the weather
or have it search for what the average weather is typically like tell them what you have room for
you know you're using a carry-on what the size of your suitcase is or you can have it create a
capsule wardrobe for you so I'm bringing two pairs of jeans three tops a swimsuit a light jacket two
pairs of shoes describe the shoes and it can can trick can create a capsule wardrobe for you so
maximizing different outfit combinations with minimal luggage you can ask it you know what are
the things I don't want to forget when I'm going on a three-day weekend adventure and you can check
that based on your own list that you have you can also have it give you checklists for chargers
medications travel documents adapters it can give you suggestions it can also generate lists for you
so use it however it would help you the most all right for our homework or our action steps today I'd
like you to choose one facet of your life that you could use some creative assistance or you feel
like you just spend too much time making decisions maybe it's one of the things that I suggested
today and you just want to play around with activities I was actually using it for I wanted my
students to do some poetry mimicking and I was kind of at a loss for just like how I could set it up
so I had asked for ideas for lesson planning as well if you don't like what it spits out the
first time it's it's usually just a very basic response you can keep refining it so these are
just a few examples of ways that we can harness these new tools rather than resisting them demonizing
them they can help us okay it's not going away just like I think the internet is here to stay
so hopefully this gives you some practical actionable steps to leverage AI to reclaim some
of your time simplify your life I'd love to hear some of the ways you're incorporating this to make
your life easier I hope today's episode on AI got you thinking a bit about this developing tool
and how it can look in your own life please keep the ask the teacher anything questions coming by
visiting our website at life's next lesson plan dot com where you can suggest topics and guests for
the show and browse free resources from past episodes until next time keep sharing these
important lessons and stories and be sure to follow us on YouTube Instagram and Facebook for
behind-the-scenes content and information on the February self-love features I'm doing each week in
February on my live and learn patreon each Friday I'm delving into a new topic related to self-love
and we're ending February with a book chat on the book worthy by Jamie Kern Lima that Anastri Lo
suggested an episode 8 I'd love to see your faces in person or on zoom to discuss how we can all
learn to love ourselves a bit more we'll see you next time