Use AI Tools to Conquer Work Overwhelm

By: Sarah Pita

Is this what your desk feels like right now?

Fall can be an overwhelming time for fundraisers. Between events, grant deadlines, and gearing up for the biggest fundraising month of the year (psst: it’s December, and it’s a little over two months away), there is a lot going on. At times, it can feel like you’ve stumbled into the middle of somebody else’s spirited game of dodgeball.

AI can’t make the overwhelm go away (believe me, I’ve tried!), but you can use it to help you get things under control again.

It starts with laying all the overwhelming things out on a (metaphorical) table and taking a look at them.

Open a new chat in ChatGPT or Claude. Explain that you are overwhelmed by work and/or life, and that you need help organizing, prioritizing, and generally dealing with it all. Tell it to ask clarifying questions before offering advice.

Depending on how much your AI knows about you, you may need to explain who you are, what you do, and where you work. And then tell your tale of woe.

[Important: whatever tool you are using, for this exercise, do not put anything sensitive or confidential in the AI. If you’re using personal tools, this could include things that shouldn’t leave restricted work spaces, like donor information. If you’re on enterprise-owned tools, this could include anything you wouldn’t want IT, administrators, or your boss to see.]   

For ease and speed, consider dictating instead of typing (in Claude or ChatGPT, it’s the tiny microphone in the chat interface.) When you’re done talking, click the check mark (Claude) or square button (ChatGPT) at the bottom right of the chat window. You can then edit it before you hit “enter” if you don’t get it all exactly right (or if it drives you crazy seeing just how often you say “ummm” and “like.”)

Haven’t been outside in a while? You can do this part with your phone and headphones while out on a walk, if you have the app for your AI of choice installed. It’s better to unplug and be one with nature, of course, but sometimes a working walk is the alternative to no walk at all. You can dictate, or use voice mode, which is more interactive (the AI will also talk. You get to choose the voice.)

Once you’ve dumped it all into the chat, it’s time to get to work.

First, ask the AI to summarize the tasks and obligations you have described. Check its work and revise as needed (you can just tell it: that’s actually due on October 1, not November 1. It will fix the list).

Once the list is accurate, ask the AI to help you prioritize. Expect some back and forth as you will probably need to explain more about some of the tasks. You can have it sort this list in a way that makes sense to you— by date, importance, or perhaps type of task.

Now comes the fun part. Ask it to help you figure out what you can let go of, and what you can hand off to somebody else. Have it update the list to indicate where these tasks are going. 

Sometimes difficult decisions are the roadblocks, and writing/chatting about them will help you work through all the angles and get moving again.

“Break it down into smaller pieces” is not new advice for dealing with an overwhelming problem, but an AI assist can focus it and speed it up. As you look at something on your list that is genuinely enormous, challenge your AI thought partner to help you break it down into smaller tasks. Keep shrinking the pieces, if necessary, until you have something you can do right now.

What form should the end result of this process take? That’s up to you. Do you need a list with a bunch of subheadings, maybe some check boxes? Some sort of dashboard? Ask for what will be helpful, and iterate.

If you have an enterprise-level subscription at work, or have enabled your tools to access your email, calendar, and documents, depending on your plan you may be able to take this a step further and allow the AI to schedule things and set reminders to help you maintain your plan. Just remember that connecting AI to your accounts gives it access to everything in them. 

Keep in mind that AI is predisposed to be positive and supportive— sometimes too positive and supportive. If its assessment of a situation seems not grounded in the reality you know, challenge it. Provide more information.  And remember that AI doesn’t actually know anything about your relationship to time. It may not be right if it says you can do all of your preparation for the next board meeting in a block of 15 minutes.

Sometimes just having the conversation— allowing yourself to take the time to talk through all the things that are stressing you out, with an audience that will not judge you or get bored— is enough. Maybe it’s the act of writing, or talking, that gets you all the way down to the smallest possible building blocks. What’s different here, though, is that once you get all that information out in the open, analyzed and sorted, AI can use that raw material to make tools and structures that will actually help. It won’t fetch you a latte or give you a hug, but maybe it’ll give you a little more time to enjoy those things for yourself.

Just don’t step on them.

About the Author:

Sarah Pita is a fundraising professional with 25+ years of experience and a dynamic speaker who makes AI approachable and immediately useful for nonprofit teams. She leads practical, engaging trainings and workshops on using AI for fundraising and has presented at groups such as Women In Development NYC and at the AFP GPC Leading Philanthropy conference, among others. Sarah is currently Director of Development at the Center for Independence of the Disabled, New York.

Interested in an AI workshop or training? Contact Sarah here.