☕ Day 4: Automating the Everyday – Let AI Handle the Repetition

Discover how AI can take the grind out of repetitive tasks, giving you more time to focus on strategy.

Happy 4th AI Day!

Now that you’ve explored how AI can support your daily tasks, today we’re stepping into the world of automation—where AI tools take on repetitive processes entirely, freeing you to focus on strategic priorities. ☕🚀

🧠 How Automation Works

Automation with AI doesn’t mean replacing people—it means letting technology handle predictable, repetitive processes that follow a clear set of rules or patterns. With the right setup, AI can do things like:

  • Trigger actions on a schedule (daily, weekly, monthly)
  • Pull data from one source and summarise or format it
  • Respond to specific inputs or conditions (e.g., “no response in 7 days”)
  • Deliver results in a consistent format (email, dashboard, doc)

The magic happens by combining three simple ingredients:

  • A clear trigger — e.g., every Friday at 4PM
  • A defined task — e.g., summarise this week’s regional student enquiry data
  • A delivery method — e.g., email it to the regional recruitment team

These are the building blocks that power AI tools like ChatGPT Tasks.

💡 Automation in Practice: ChatGPT Tasks

One powerful example of automation in action is the ChatGPT Tasks feature (available in ChatGPT Plus, Team, and Pro). This lets you schedule recurring tasks that your AI will complete automatically.

Here are real use cases specifically for education:

  • 🌍 Regional News Updates: Receive daily or weekly digests of education, visa, and policy news relevant to your assigned regions.
  • 📈 Weekly Recruitment Insights: Generate summaries of the latest research on a particular topic from a particular source.
  • 🧾 Competitor Monitoring: Monitor public updates from competitor institutions in your region and receive alerts about programme changes or new initiatives.

Building on these, what we can expect to become very easy in the near future includes:

  • 📊 Monthly Engagement Summaries: Automated reports on campaign performance, outreach activity, or regional email engagement.
  • 📬 Follow-Up Triggers: Sending reminders or drafting follow-up emails based on student inactivity or missed touchpoints with partners.

🛠️ How to Set It Up

  1. 🔍 Identify a task that’s repetitive and time-based.
    Example: Finding the latest news in Education Technology every morning.
  2. 🔗 Go to ChatGPT (you need the Plus version) and from the model selection choose ChatGPT Tasks.
  3. 📥 Prompt ChatGPT to set up the automation you need (keeping in mind the prompting best practices we discussed in previous lessons).
    Example prompt:
    Every morning at 8 AM I need you to summarise the latest news in Education Technology relevant for Higher Education in the UK. Make sure to only use reputable news sources and exclude personal blogs. Structure every report with the following sections: 1) Main Headlines, 2) Impact on the sector, 3) Practical implementations of new technology.
  4. 🔄 Monitor the daily reports and tweak your prompt or sources to improve performance over time.

✨ Today’s Action Step ✨

Set up a ChatGPT Task that sends you a weekly or daily summary of news and updates relevant to your needs.

Then, think of another automation that would make your life easier—even if ChatGPT Tasks can’t yet do it. It’s very likely this will become possible soon, and having a clear use case now will position you to benefit early.

What’s Next?

Tomorrow, we’ll explore the next frontier: Agentic AI—systems that can not only automate but begin to act strategically on your behalf.

Enjoy your coffee break,
Cato ☕✨