AI IQ—Busywork? Give it to AI.

By Iflora Elghanayan

The internet started off as a whisper, slowly gaining its voice. AI, on the other hand, started off singing opera. The AI revolution is advancing at rapid speed; companies are building massive data centers, new AI-related and AI-adjacent jobs are coming into existence, and AI is becoming a must-have tool to excel at any job. If you’re not already, it’s time to get comfortable with AI, and we’re here to help with this new series. You can thank us later.

The to-do list keeps getting longer, your inbox fills up while you’re sleeping and deciding what’s for dinner feels like a daily crisis. Life is full of tiny tasks that don’t seem like a big deal on their own, but together add up. Luckily, AI shines as an everyday assistant. From organizing projects and automating repetitive tasks to planning meals and managing your schedule, these four AI tools can make life a little simpler.

Problem:

Little tasks consume your day. Copying information between apps, creating calendar events, saving attachments and updating your to-do list only take a few minutes on their own—but together they steal hours from your week.

Solution:

Zapier automates repetitive tasks by connecting all the apps you already use. It can create tasks from meeting notes, turn emails into calendar events and keep your apps in sync, so you spend less time on busywork and more time getting things done. Instead of constantly switching between platforms or remembering every small task, you can let your workflows run automatically in the background. The result? Fewer manual tasks, fewer things slipping through the cracks and more time to focus on work that actually requires your attention.

Problem:

Your inbox is out of control. You sit down to answer a few emails, but one response turns into 10 more. Before you know it, you’ve spent an hour in your inbox, and it still feels like you haven’t made a dent.

Solution:

Superhuman helps you work through your inbox faster by summarizing email threads, drafting replies and highlighting what needs your attention first. It cuts down on time spent sorting through messages so you can get back to work that matters. What once took an hour (or more) of inbox cleanup can often be handled in minutes, making email feel far less like a full-time job.

Problem:

Dinner has become a dreaded daily dilemma. You’re tired of making the same meals every week. Your kids refuse to eat Trader Joe’s lasagna for the third night in a row and you just don’t know what to do with that wilting kale and leftover chicken in your fridge.

Solution:

ChefGPT is your new sous chef. Tell it what you have in your fridge and pantry, your dietary preferences and/or your nutrition goals, and it will generate personalized recipes, weekly meal plans and grocery lists. It’s an easy way to save time, reduce food waste and finally answer the nightly question “What’s for dinner?” without having a panic attack.

We tip our hats to: Notion AI

Organizing is taking longer than the work itself, and your work is scattered everywhere.
Your meeting notes live in one app, your to-do list is in another and the document you need is buried in a folder somewhere—and no matter the search words you enter, you simply cannot find it.

Notion is like having a personal assistant built into your digital workspace by combining notes, documents, calendars and projects in one place. Then, thanks to AI, you can receive summaries of your meeting notes, answers to questions about your own files, email drafts and to-do lists. No more hunting through folders or starting from scratch—that’s now Notion’s job. It’s that whole “work smarter, not harder” concept realized.

This article was edited by Isabella Aranda Garcia and fact-checked by Julie Schwietert Collazo. The artist used Adobe Creative Suite.

This article was published in the September/October 2026 edition of Connect to Northern Westchester.