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
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.
Rick'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
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
What comes back
Something like this. Fastest first, the important stuff pulled forward, the closet last.
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
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
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
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.
Rick'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
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
The excuse audit
For the items that survive the day. This one is uncomfortable in a useful way.
BONUS: WHY I HAVEN'T
Mistakes That Stall The Day
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.