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ChatGPT Tasks: A Guide With 10 Practical Examples

Learn what OpenAI's ChatGPT tasks are, how to use them, and discover 10 practical use cases to automate and schedule your actions.
Jan 17, 2025  · 8 min read

ChatGPT tasks are a new ChatGPT feature that allows us to automate actions by scheduling them to run at specific times or intervals. This capability enables ChatGPT to remember our instructions and perform tasks even when we're not online.

There are numerous use cases for ChatGPT's scheduled tasks. For instance, we can set up a daily task to receive AI news briefings. If we’re learning a new language, ChatGPT can help us practice daily through scheduled chat sessions.

In this tutorial, I’ll explore 10 practical examples demonstrating the diverse ways ChatGPT Tasks can be used, from learning Python to crafting bedtime stories for your kids—plus, we’ve created a video on ChatGPT Tasks that you won’t want to miss!

How To Create a ChatGPT Task

Using ChatGPT tasks requires a ChatGPT Plus subscription. To get started, we first select "GPT-4o with scheduled tasks" on the model dropdown:

Selecting the ChatGPT with scheduled tasks model.

Then, to schedule a task, we prompt ChatGPT with the description of the task and the schedule. Let's say we already know the basics of how to program in Python, but we would like to keep learning. We could schedule a task by asking ChatGPT to teach us daily something about Python with a prompt like:

Setting up a task in chatgpt tasks

It's as simple as that. Now, each day at 14:10, we will receive an email from ChatGPT with something interesting to learn about Python!

This is what the email looks like:

Task notifications for chatgpt tasks in email

To see task output, we click the "View Message" button in the email. This will open a tab with ChatGPT displaying the generated message:

Note that each task is associated with a conversation, and all the messages generated for that task will be contained within that conversation. We can also open the conversation directly from the conversation view inside ChatGPT.

How to Configure ChatGPT Tasks

To view the tasks we’ve created, open the menu by clicking on the profile avatar at the top-right corner and then going to "Tasks."

Opening the task list.

By hovering over a task, we can configure, pause, or delete it:

Editing a task in chatgpt tasks

In the task configuration, we can update the instructions and the schedule. We recommend always checking the schedule to make sure it matches what was specified. We’ll see two examples later where this mattered.

Configuring a task in chatgpt tasks

ChatGPT Tasks also supports push notifications, which I find more effective for task reminders than email notifications. To enable them, navigate to the "Settings" menu and then to the "Notifications" section.

Enabling push notifications on chatgpt tasks

ChatGPT Tasks Examples

Because we can set tasks very easily in natural language, the real limit here is our imagination. Everything we do regularly or that we want to be reminded of doing is a great candidate.

In this section, I share a few use cases that I found could really help me. I will show examples that worked well, as well as some that failed.

Before we get into that, let me share a tip. When writing a task for the first time, start by asking ChatGPT to do it in one minute. This allows you to test the result and fine-tune the prompt before setting the real schedule you want to use.

For example:

In one minute, give me the current weather report.

Meal planning

One of my daily headaches is deciding what to eat, so meal planning is a task that I'm excited to try. I've always wanted to reserve one day of the week to prepare food for the whole week, but I already struggle to decide what to eat daily, let alone plan for a full week.

For my schedule, Monday morning works best, so I set this task using the following prompt:

Each Monday at 9 am, create a meal plan for the entire week, including a complete grocery shopping list and recipes. Keep the meals varied. I have a Cosori air fryer, so keep that in mind when selecting the recipes.

Unfortunately, when I tested this prompt, ChatGPT failed to answer properly, and the generated message was simply a repetition of the instructions (the time difference is because I wanted an answer immediately):

Meal planning tasks glitch.

It might just be a glitch since this is still a beta feature. It's strange because if I just prompt it with the instructions in the normal chat, I get the expected output. If this happens to you, I suggest tweaking and testing the prompt until it starts doing what you want.

Staying updated on interesting topics

ChatGPT tasks seem like a great way to keep ourselves updated about a topic that we're interested in. Since ChatGPT can browse the web, we can use it to get a daily digest of news or a topic. Here's an example:

Each day at 6 pm, give me the latest AI news.

A nice thing to keep in mind with tasks that require web browsing is that ChatGPT provides the sources of the results. This makes it easy to see where the information comes from so we can check the source’s credibility or simply read more.

Checking the web browsing sources in chatgpt tasks

Recurrent reminders

One area where I see ChatGPT tasks replacing existing dedicated apps is with recurring reminders. For example, there are apps dedicated to reminding us to drink water regularly. With push notifications enabled, we can easily replace such an app with a task like:

Remind me to drink water every hour.

Interestingly enough, when I created this task, it didn't work. At first, I thought that it didn't yet support tasks that are this frequent. However, after further inspection, when I opened the task configuration, I saw that it had failed to set the schedule:Checking and fixing the schedule manually in ChatGPT Tasks

Then I switched it to “Custom,” which resolved the issue and displayed the specific times I would receive reminders:

Fixing a schedule in chatgpt tasks

Specifying complex schedules

I live in Taiwan, and here, to take out the trash, we need to go down the street at specific times when the trash collection truck is passing by. I tend to always forget the schedule, so having an easy way to be notified when the time is coming is very useful to me.

For example, in my neighborhood, the schedule is every day except Wednesday and Sunday at 10 AM and 5 PM. I want to be reminded half an hour before so that I have time to get ready for it. Here's an example prompt for this task:

Every day, except Wednesdays and Sundays, at 9:30 am and 4:30 pm, remind me to take out the trash.

This worked well. However, I've tried a more complex example, and ChatGPT failed to get the correct times.

When I was a teaching assistant at the university, I kept forgetting when and where I had to teach my classes, so I had to open the email I received at the start of the year with my weekly schedule more times than I can count (I was too lazy to set it up on Google Calendar). So, I thought I’d try to ask ChatGPT to solve this for me using the following prompt:

I'm teaching at the university, and here's my class schedule:

Monday

8:30 Algorithms and Data Structures - Room A3

10:45 Logic - Room B5

Tuesday

14:00 Artificial Intelligence - Room A2

16:15 Constraint Programming - Room C1

Thursday

10:45 Algorithms and Data Structures - Room A3

14:00 Constraint Programming - Room C2

Friday

8:30 Logic - Room B4

Each day, 15 minutes before each class, send me a reminder with the class name and room.

Unfortunately, it didn't get the schedule correctly. When I checked the task schedule, this is what I saw:

ChatGPT Tasks failed to understand a complex schedule.

This is incorrect. It has 4 reminders on Friday, January 17, but I only provided one class on that day. I could probably tweak the prompt, but that would start to require more effort than to actually just set it up myself on Google Calendar.

The takeaway for me is to not trust it blindly (at least for now) and always check the actual schedule.

Entertainment

How many of us have sat down on the couch wanting to watch something and ended up spending more time selecting something than actually watching it?

This could easily be fixed with a ChatGPT task like:

Each night at 9 pm, suggest three movies for me to watch. Provide the genre and short summary for each of them.

Another example related to entertainment could be to ask for suggestions on what to do while traveling. We could say we're spending a week somewhere and ask for a few activities to be suggested each day at 8 am so that when we wake up we have some ideas to discuss over breakfast.

Social media marketing

My friend runs a small coffee shop. We noticed that on days when she posts something on her story in the morning, it attracts more customers. However, she's running the shop alone, and she often doesn't have the time or inspiration to write something.

This is another example where I feel ChatGPT tasks can be quite helpful. Not only can it serve as a reminder to post something, but it can also help craft the post's content.

ChatGPT Tasks with images

We can also ask ChatGPT to generate an image as a task. We could have done that for the social media post but, in my opinion, those images are not very suitable for that particular use case.

I saw someone suggesting on YouTube that they use it to generate a bedtime story for their kids. I found this very creative, and it's definitely something I'd like to play around with if I had kids. I tried something like this:

Each night at 7 pm, create a fantasy bedtime story for my kids. Generate an image to illustrate the story.

This is what I got on the first night:

Bedtime story example with ChatGPT tasks.

Conclusion

While the potential of ChatGPT tasks is impressive, it's important to acknowledge that the feature is still in beta and not without its imperfections. We encountered some limitations and inaccuracies in scheduling complex tasks, highlighting the need for continuous refinement.

However, this also suggests that the technology is only going to get better from here, underscoring that any setbacks experienced now are likely the worst they'll ever be. Imagine how useful it will be when, instead of reminders, we can ask it to perform actual tasks, for instance, not only getting a weekly meal plan but having it actually order the groceries to our doorstep and print the recipes to our printer.

To continue your learning, I recommend watching this video overview:


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Author
François Aubry
LinkedIn
Teaching has always been my passion. From my early days as a student, I eagerly sought out opportunities to tutor and assist other students. This passion led me to pursue a PhD, where I also served as a teaching assistant to support my academic endeavors. During those years, I found immense fulfillment in the traditional classroom setting, fostering connections and facilitating learning. However, with the advent of online learning platforms, I recognized the transformative potential of digital education. In fact, I was actively involved in the development of one such platform at our university. I am deeply committed to integrating traditional teaching principles with innovative digital methodologies. My passion is to create courses that are not only engaging and informative but also accessible to learners in this digital age.
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