I’ll be working in ChatGPT and get distracted for a moment. That distraction would make me waste more time than I’d like to admit, and I usually have that “Oh, right. The project!” moment. That’s when I decided to look into ChatGPT Scheduled Tasks; I’d pretty much written it off as just a reminder, but I underestimated it.
What surprised me was that ChatGPT could sometimes handle the task itself instead of simply reminding me to do it. After trying it out, I found four scheduled tasks that changed my mind.
Set contextual reminders
It was simple, but it fixed one annoying habit right away
My five-minute breaks often turned into much longer ones. Something always distracted me and made me forget what I was doing. So I gave ChatGPT that job instead. I scheduled a five-minute reminder and set up notifications so that even if I was on another tab, I would be notified. I have to admit it worked perfectly, and it’s great when you only want to give a task a specific amount of time.
If you usually lose track of time when multitasking, this is useful for more than just breaks. You can use it to do things such as giving yourself 15 minutes to answer those emails you’ve been meaning to answer. When the time is up, ChatGPT will pull you back with a push notification. Just make sure you enable Tasks notifications first. Mine ran the first time, but I didn’t see the reminder until I went back to ChatGPT because the notifications were off.
ChatGPT limits how many Scheduled Tasks you can keep active at once. Free and Go users get three, Plus users get five, Business and Edu get 10, and Pro and Enterprise get 15.
Report the latest news every day
I set a 7:30 PM report so the day’s updates would come to me
I scheduled a daily task to check Android, Windows 11, and Samsung Galaxy news and bring me the five biggest stories from the past 24 hours. I also asked for sources and an explanation of why the stories were so popular. I got my stories on time, with exactly what I asked for. It saved me from searching myself or from visiting various sites to see what was trending that day.
What you have ChatGPT search for will obviously depend on your interests. The useful part is being specific about:
- The topics
- How far back ChatGPT should look
- How many results you want
- What it should leave out
My Scheduled Tasks prompt told ChatGPT to avoid minor updates and repeated news, which helped keep the report focused instead of turning it into a long list of everything published that day. Also, if you ever need to edit your prompt, ChatGPT lets you do that, and by clicking the three dots on the Scheduled main page, you can also Run now.
Check my calendar before I start the day
My 8 AM calendar rundown showed up right on time
I set up a Scheduled Task for 8 AM and asked ChatGPT to check my Google Calendar for everything I had scheduled that day. I wanted a short rundown of everything scheduled, including any overlapping or back-to-back events and the free-time blocks between them. It did exactly that. My schedule included a meeting from 11 to 11:30, and ChatGPT told me there were no conflicts or back-to-back events, and it also showed me my free time.
I was surprised to get the rundown notification on my phone because I set it up on my computer. When I checked my phone at 9 AM, it was already there. So you can set it up on your computer and check it while you’re still in bed. By the time you actually sit down at your computer, you already know whether you have a busy morning or some room to breathe. It saves you from opening Google Calendar first just to figure out what kind of day you’re walking into.
Watch the price on a product
So I didn’t have to keep checking Amazon
I found a EUCOS 62-inch phone tripod on Amazon for around $24, but it would only interest me if I could get it for $17. Since I don’t want to go back to Amazon every day to see if it drops to the price I want, I told ChatGPT to check for me. I set up a Scheduled Task with that exact product link, and I told it to keep an eye on it. The useful part is that I also told it to stay quiet unless the tripod hits $17 or less. If that happens, I asked it to give me the current price and the Amazon link.
ChatGPT created a monitoring task called EUCOS Tripod Price Watch. This is obviously something totally different, and much more interesting to me, than just setting a reminder. If ChatGPT doesn’t tell me anything, I can assume the tripod hasn’t reached my target price yet. For something I’m interested in but not in a hurry to buy, that’s exactly the kind of shopping assistant I need.
Scheduled Tasks are not just reminders
I still find the reminder useful because I tend to forget things when I’m multitasking. Now that I’ve dug deeper into Scheduled Tasks, I can see that Scheduled Tasks can do a lot more than just remind me to do something. It can check things for me, so I can focus on more important work. When there is something worth seeing, ChatGPT will let me know.
Since not all plans let you set up the same number of Scheduled Tasks, you can start with the more important ones, whether they’re reminders or something else. That’s why it started making more sense to me. Fewer things to keep in my head, and hopefully fewer of those “Oh right. I forgot about that” moments.