ChatGPT Tutorial for Beginners: How to Actually Get Work Done with AI

0:00Most people who've tried ChatGPT have asked it something simple. Maybe you've had it rewrite an email or answer a quick question and it's impressive. But there's a big difference between using ChatGPT as a fancy search engine and actually using it to get real work done. Hi, I'm Garrick and in this video in partnership with Zapier, I'm going to show you how to use ChatGPT step by step. from the basics like writing and summarizing to more powerful features like analyzing files, doing research, and organizing your work with projects. By the end of this video,

0:35you'll know how to use ChatGPT to actually get work done and not just chat with it. And it's free to get started. Most of what I'm going to show you today is available on the free plan. And I will call out any features that require a paid subscription as we get to them. First, head to chatgpt.com. Now, you could just start asking questions right from here. But if

0:55you don't sign in or create an account, you won't have access to some useful and important features. So, if you want to dig into the abilities of ChatGPT, it's a good idea to at least create a free account by clicking sign up for free. Or if you already have an account, be sure to log in. And once you're in, this is what the main screen looks like. In the middle, you have the prompt field. This is where you type what you want ChatGPT to do. The menu on the right side of

1:19the field is the model selector. This allows you to choose which version of ChatGPT you're using. For most tasks, the default is fine. Over on the left hand side is the sidebar where your past conversations are saved, so you can always come back to your work. You'll also find other features you can access like projects, which we'll get to later. And up here, you can start a new chat.

1:40By the way, if you don't see the sidebar, you can toggle it open and closed with this button here. So, it helps to think of ChatGPT less like a search engine and more like a collaborator that you can have an ongoing conversation with. You're not just typing one question and getting one answer. You're having a back and forth. So, let's start with one of the most common things people use ChatGPT, which is writing. Let's say I work for a company called Colvento and I need to send an email to one of our clients letting them know that their project is on track and summarizing what we've completed so far. So, instead of staring at a blank page,

2:14I'll ask ChatGPT to write a first draft for me. So, I'll click in the prompt field and I'll type write a professional email to a client letting them know their Q3 website redesign project is on track. We've completed the design phase and are now moving into development. Estimated completion is end of October. Then I can press enter or click the send button.

2:36And there it is, a complete professional email generated in just a few seconds. Now, maybe this email is close, but it's a bit formal for how I communicate with this client. I don't have to start over, though. I can just ask ChatGPT to adjust it. So, down below, I'll type make this a bit warmer and more conversational, but keep it professional.

2:58And now you can see it's updated the tone while keeping all the important details. And that's a key thing to understand here. The best results usually come from a back and forth conversation instead of trying to write the perfect prompt the first time. And I could continue from here by asking it to make it shorter, add a specific call to action, or change the signoff. And once it's close, I can click the copy button down here

3:22and paste it into my email app. But I never send any text AI writes for me as is. Yes, it wrote an entire email, but you should always take the time to carefully read through it, finesse the wording, and make sure it actually sounds like you. AI gets you most of the way there, but that last bit of editing is what makes it yours. And it's also the part that

3:41can save you embarrassment from accidentally sending out wrong or inappropriate content. Now, let's look at another really common use case, working with files. Let's say your manager sends you a long report and you need to pull out the key information quickly. I have an example file here on my desktop. And this is a pretty meaty report. It's eight pages long and full of data. Instead of reading through the whole thing yourself, you can hand it to ChatGPT. I've started a new chat. And this time I'm going to upload a file. I can click the plus icon here and choose

4:13add photos and files to browse for the file or I can just drag the file right into the chat window. You can see now that it's been uploaded to ChatGPT and I'll type a prompt. summarize this report and give me the three most important takeaways.

4:30So, ChatGPT reads through the entire document and pulls out the most important points. Instead of reading through dozens of pages yourself, you can ask ChatGPT to help you find what's important. And it doesn't stop at summarizing. I can keep asking questions. What were our top performing services this quarter? And it pulls that answer right from the document.

4:53Notice it even gives me some executive insight summaries down here at the bottom. Another question I always like to ask is what insights might I not be noticing in this report or something like that. This is a great way to find perspectives you might not have considered. And as you can see, it's given me nine different insights here that I can look through and I can determine whether any of these are worth digging further into. And this works with all kinds of files, PDFs, word documents, spreadsheets, presentations. If you can attach it, ChatGPT

5:22can read it. Now, in addition to writing and summarizing, ChatGPT can also help you research. Let's say I'm trying to help Colvento choose a new project management tool. Our team has been looking at a few options and I need to compare them before making a recommendation. So, here in the prompt field, I'll type compare Asana, monday.com, and notion as project management tools

5:43for a small team of about 20 people. focus on ease of use, pricing, and collaboration features. So, this is a two sentence prompt where I'm asking it to compare three different services, but I'm also writing a follow-up sentence to let ChatGPT know what's important to me in that comparison. And let's see what we get. And again, after just a few seconds, ChatGPT

6:04has pulled together a clear comparison across all three, covering things that I actually care about. So, it isn't just generating text, it's helping me research and evaluate information. Now, one thing to keep in mind, ChatGPT has a knowledge cutoff. So, it might not have the very latest pricing or features. In many cases, it knows to automatically search the web to give you the latest information,

6:27which you can see in this case it has because it's given me a list of the sources that it used. And I can click on any of these sources to go to the website where it pulled this information from. But if you're not sure the information is up to date, you can also specifically ask it to search the web for the most current information. Just add something to your prompt like, "Search the web for the latest pricing on these tools." And it'll pull up recent results. And again, I can dig deeper with follow-up questions like, "Which of these has the best free plan?" And it gives

6:56me a rundown of each product's free plan, as well as what makes them good for different scenarios. Or maybe I have a specific question to narrow down the choice myself, like, "Which would you recommend for a team that's been using spreadsheets for everything up until now?" And you can see it's now giving me a direct recommendation with reasoning and explanations based on the information I provided. One of the biggest productivity gains you'll get from ChatGPT is using it to create structured documents and plans from scratch. So you don't have to start with a blank page every time. Let's say, for example, Colvento is launching a new

7:30service and I need to create a 90-day marketing plan to go with it. In a new chat, I'll type, "Create a 90-day marketing plan for a small company launching a new service, social media management for local businesses. Include monthly goals, key activities, and suggested channels." So, again, I'm telling it what I want, a 90-day marketing plan for a small company, and I'm also telling it what I want it to focus on or to include,

7:53which in this case are monthly goals, key activities, and suggested channels.

8:01And there we have it. In just a few seconds, we have a complete organized plan. And this is just a starting point. I could now, for example, ask it to expand on any of these sections. For example, add more detail to month one. What specific actions should we take in the first two weeks? And again, just like that, we now have a month one detailed action plan. And you can see it's broken down the plan by day. And you can do the same thing with a project timeline, a training outline, a presentation structure, a content calendar. Basically, anything where you need to go from zero to a useful first draft quickly. And I do want to emphasize that it's important to keep in mind that

8:42the goal isn't for ChatGPT to do your thinking for you. Think of it more like a thought companion. Its job is to give you something you can react to, a draft you can read, edit, and shape into something that reflects your actual thinking. That review step is an essential part of the process. Now, once you start using ChatGPT regularly, you'll run into a limitation. Every time you start a new chat, ChatGPT doesn't remember what you were working on before. You have to re-explain your context every time. That's where projects come in. And this is one of the paid features of ChatGPT. It's not available on the free plan, but it's one of the most useful things ChatGPT offers,

9:18so it's worth knowing about. Over in the left sidebar, I'll click on projects. And here, I'll create a new one. Let's say I just started a new job at Colvento and HR has sent me a stack of documents to read through things like an employee handbook, a benefits overview, a remote work policy and so on. I'll call this project Colvento onboarding and I'll click create project.

9:43Next, I'll go to sources and you can see it says give ChatGPT more context. I can upload sources, link drives or connect apps. So, I'll click add sources. And here on my desktop, I have a folder of onboarding files. I'm just going to select them all and drag them into the sources area. You can see they're being uploaded.

10:05And there they are. Now, all of these files are available to ChatGPT inside this project. So, anytime I need to ask questions about those files, I just go into projects to onboarding. You can see my sources are still there. And now instead of sitting down to read through a stack of HR documents, I can just ask questions like what benefits am I eligible for as a new employee?

10:31And ChatGPT pulls the answers straight from the documents that I uploaded. Notice it even provides citation letting me know that some of the information has come from the employee manual document. This information has come from the benefits overview and this information has come from the remote and hybrid work policy document. So maybe I want to ask it something like what is the remote work policy and it gives me again detailed information with citations and I might even ask what should I expect in my first week and again it pulls all that information for me. So instead of re-explaining everything in a new chat you can keep your files and conversations together inside a project. ChatGPT uses all of that context

11:11automatically with no re-explaining required. So projects give ChatGPT context about your work, but sometimes you also want ChatGPT to access live information from the tools you already use, like your actual calendar, your real emails, and your team's documents. That's where today's partner, Zapier, comes in. With a paid ChatGPT Plus account and Zapier, you can connect ChatGPT to thousands of apps and services you already use.

11:39things like Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Drive, Notion, Slack, HubSpot, and many more. Once connected, you can ask ChatGPT questions about your live data in those tools right from the chat. So, instead of jumping between apps, you could ask something like, "What meetings do I have tomorrow?" and get an answer pulled straight from your calendar. Or you might ask,

12:01"Find the most recent email from our client at Apex Solutions" and have it search your Gmail. You control exactly which apps you connect and what ChatGPT can and can't do with them, so you're always in charge. ChatGPT is powerful on its own, but Zapier gives you access to thousands of apps, many more than ChatGPT connects to natively, so you can bring all of your tools

12:22into the conversation. You can get started for free with the link in the description. Let's take a look at one more feature that I think is worth knowing about, and that's memory. Now, this is also a paid feature, so if you're on the free plan, you won't have access to it yet, but it's worth it if you use ChatGPT a lot. Beyond projects, memory lets ChatGPT remember

12:42things about you across all your conversations. Just go to settings and then personalization. And here you'll find the memory section. First, make sure that it's enabled. And as you have conversations with ChatGPT, it will start keeping important information about you and the way you like to work in its memory. You can see what ChatGPT has already picked up about you by clicking manage.

13:08And here I can see the memory it's generated from my brief conversations with it so far. If anything here is inaccurate, you can just type in the prompt area below to tell ChatGPT what's wrong and how to fix it or to delete something from its memory. You're always in control of what it remembers. For example, I might tell it, "I prefer concise communication. Don't overly praise

13:29me. Challenge my assumptions when appropriate. And remember that I'm in the Eastern time zone."

13:37And you can see it's added that information both to the overview and here under professional communication. Notice that highlighting text also lets me make a correction directly or to not mention this again. So basically, memory helps ChatGPT tailor its responses. And the more you use ChatGPT, the more it remembers and adapts to how you work. Now, the real power of ChatGPT isn't any one of these features that we just looked at. It's more about

14:04combining these capabilities into a complete workflow that helps you get work done faster. Just remember, always review what it gives you. It can and it does make mistakes from time to time. Be sure to edit, refine, and make the content your own. The best results come when you treat ChatGPT as a collaborator and not as a replacement for your own judgment.

14:26I'm Garrick. Thanks for watching and we'll see you in the next video.