Automating Repetitive Tasks

The real power of ChatGPT isn't in flashy one-off tasks — it's in eliminating the repetitive work that quietly eats hours from your week. In this lesson, you'll learn how to build reusable prompt templates that handle emails, summaries, data cleanup, social media, and more.

The Automation Mindset

Before you start automating with ChatGPT, you need to identify what's worth automating. Most people jump straight to the tool without first auditing their time. That's backwards.

Start by tracking your tasks for one week. Write down everything you do and how long it takes. Then apply the "3x Rule":

• If you do a task 3 or more times per week, it's worth creating a ChatGPT template for it.
• If the task follows a predictable pattern (same structure, different details each time), it's a perfect automation candidate.
• If the task requires writing but not deep creativity, ChatGPT can handle 80% of it.

Common candidates include: email responses, social media posts, meeting notes, data entry, report formatting, client updates, and invoice follow-ups. Most people discover they spend 5–10 hours per week on tasks that ChatGPT can reduce to under 1 hour.

Email Drafting & Responses

Email is the biggest time sink for most professionals. Instead of writing each email from scratch, create prompt templates with brackets for the details that change each time.

Sales Outreach Template

"Write a professional sales outreach email. Details: My name is [YOUR NAME]. My company is [COMPANY]. We help [TARGET AUDIENCE] solve [PROBLEM] by [SOLUTION]. The recipient is [RECIPIENT NAME] at [THEIR COMPANY]. Keep it under 150 words, friendly but professional, and end with a clear call to action to book a 15-minute call."

Follow-Up Template

"Write a polite follow-up email. Context: I sent [RECIPIENT NAME] an email about [TOPIC] on [DATE] and haven't heard back. Keep it short (under 100 words), reference the original email, and suggest a specific time to connect. Tone: friendly, not pushy."

Customer Support Response Template

"Write a customer support response. The customer's issue is: [DESCRIBE ISSUE]. Our policy on this is: [POLICY]. The resolution we're offering is: [RESOLUTION]. Tone: empathetic, professional, and solution-focused. Acknowledge their frustration before presenting the solution."

Save these templates in a document. When you need to send an email, just fill in the brackets and paste it into ChatGPT. What used to take 10 minutes per email now takes 30 seconds.

Meeting Summaries & Action Items

Meetings generate a lot of information but rarely produce clear next steps on their own. ChatGPT can fix that instantly. After any meeting, paste your notes or transcript into ChatGPT with this prompt:

"Here are my notes from a meeting. Please create a structured summary with the following sections: (1) Key Discussion Points — bullet points of the main topics discussed, (2) Decisions Made — any decisions that were finalized, (3) Action Items — a table with columns for Task, Owner, and Deadline, (4) Open Questions — anything that still needs to be resolved. Here are the notes: [PASTE NOTES]"

This works with rough notes, voice transcripts, or even just bullet points you jotted down during the call. The output is something you can immediately share with your team or file for reference.

Pro tip: If you use a meeting recorder like Otter.ai or Fireflies, you can paste the full transcript into ChatGPT and get an even more detailed and accurate summary with speaker attribution.

Data Formatting & Cleanup

Messy data is everywhere — inconsistent formatting, duplicate entries, unstructured text that needs to be organized. ChatGPT handles this surprisingly well.

Reformatting CSV Data

Paste your messy data and ask ChatGPT to clean it up:

"I have the following data in an inconsistent format. Please clean it up and output it as a properly formatted CSV with columns for: Name, Email, Phone, Company. Standardize phone numbers to (XXX) XXX-XXXX format. Here's the data: [PASTE DATA]"

Standardizing Addresses

"Standardize the following addresses to USPS format (Street, City, State ZIP). Fix any abbreviations, spelling errors, or missing information where possible: [PASTE ADDRESSES]"

Extracting Info from Unstructured Text

"Extract the following information from this text: company names, contact names, email addresses, and phone numbers. Output as a table. Here's the text: [PASTE TEXT]"

These tasks would normally take 30–60 minutes of tedious manual work. With ChatGPT, you get clean, structured data in seconds. Just double-check the output for accuracy before using it in production.

Social Media Scheduling Prep

Instead of staring at a blank screen every day trying to think of what to post, batch-create an entire week's worth of content in one ChatGPT session.

Here's the prompt that does it all:

"Create 7 social media posts for [PLATFORM] for my [BUSINESS TYPE] business. Target audience: [AUDIENCE]. Brand voice: [DESCRIBE TONE]. Each post should include: the post text (under 280 characters for Twitter, under 2200 for Instagram), 3–5 relevant hashtags, and a suggested posting time. Mix content types: 2 educational, 2 promotional, 2 engaging (questions/polls), 1 behind-the-scenes. Theme for the week: [TOPIC]."

You'll get a full week of content in about 30 seconds. Review it, make tweaks to match your voice, and drop it into your scheduling tool (Buffer, Hootsuite, Later, etc.). What used to take 2–3 hours on Sunday night now takes 15 minutes.

Content Repurposing

One of the most powerful automation strategies is turning one piece of content into many. Write a single blog post, then let ChatGPT transform it into multiple formats for different platforms.

Use this prompt after writing or generating a blog post:

"I've written the following blog post. Please repurpose it into these formats: (1) A Twitter/X thread — 5–7 tweets that capture the key insights, with a hook first tweet, (2) A LinkedIn post — professional tone, 150–200 words, focused on the business lesson, (3) An email newsletter — friendly tone, includes a personal intro and a call to action to read the full post, (4) An Instagram caption — casual and engaging, under 300 words, with a strong first line and 10 relevant hashtags. Here's the blog post: [PASTE CONTENT]"

With one prompt, you've created content for four platforms. That's a week of social media from a single blog post. This is how prolific creators seem to be everywhere at once — they're not creating more, they're repurposing smarter.