AI strategy consulting

Stop Copying and Pasting, ChatGPT Can Now Schedule Your Tasks

Ryan Flanagan
May 19, 2025By Ryan Flanagan

A few months ago, a client told me they were still setting calendar reminders to copy notes from ChatGPT into their CRM. Every morning.

Same client. Same request. Same copy-paste job. Over and over again.

This kind of repetitive, manual friction isn’t just a nuisance—it’s where most businesses lose time, forget steps, and kill momentum.

That’s why a small but important update to ChatGPT is worth paying attention to:

Scheduled Tasks.

Here’s what it does, why it matters, and what it unlocks for small teams and service businesses.

What Are Scheduled Tasks?
Put simply: you can now ask ChatGPT to do something later—and it will.

Think of it like setting up a calendar entry, but instead of a reminder for you, it’s a job for ChatGPT.

For example:

  1. Send a summary of today’s sales calls every day at 5pm
  2. Create tomorrow’s LinkedIn post every morning at 7am
  3. Re-run a report every Monday using updated data
  4. Email a reminder to staff before your Monday stand-up

These tasks are set in advance, triggered on a schedule, and happen automatically. You don’t have to log in and prompt ChatGPT manually.

Right now, this feature is available to ChatGPT Plus and Team users with GPT-4o and works best when paired with custom instructions or memory settings already in place.

Why It Matters
The practical benefit? Less busywork. Fewer missed steps. More consistency.

If you're running a small firm, a startup team, or a professional service business—this matters. You don’t have time to babysit another app.

Most people use ChatGPT reactively:
“Hey, write me an email.”
“Help me draft a response.”
“Summarise this meeting.”

But with scheduling, it flips the model. You shift from reactive prompting to proactive systems.

That’s a big mental shift. It turns ChatGPT from a helpful assistant into a lightweight operations layer—especially when paired with tools like Zapier, Google Sheets, or Notion.

What to Watch Out For
This isn’t fully hands-off just yet. A few things to keep in mind:

  • You’ll need to write clear prompts and set up task logic in advance.
  • It works best when ChatGPT has memory of your preferences, tone, brand, and task formatting.
  • If you haven’t yet enabled memory or custom instructions, you’ll want to do that first.
  • Tasks are created within the Explore GPTs area—so it’s still a bit hidden if you don’t know where to look.

OpenAI’s guide here breaks down the steps clearly: https://help.openai.com/en/articles/10291617-scheduled-tasks-in-chatgpt

OpenAI is quietly turning ChatGPT into a workflow engine. Not just something you chat with, but something you rely on.

If you’re in a service business—legal, finance, travel, consulting, education—this unlocks a new type of automation without needing to write code or build custom software.

And if you're still doing things manually—note summaries, weekly planning, status updates—it’s time to ask:

Could this be scheduled?

Need help setting this up properly?
We work with service businesses to build out low-code AI workflows using tools like ChatGPT, Zapier, Make, Notion, and your existing tech stack.

If you’re ready to stop copying and pasting and start building something more consistent, get in touch.

PS – A few signs your business is ready to use Scheduled Tasks:

  • You do the same admin tasks at the same time each week
  • You manually prompt ChatGPT to do repetitive jobs
  • Your team forgets to send follow-ups, recaps, or routine updates
  • You want to build automation without hiring developers

You don’t need to overhaul your systems. You just need to start small, with the tasks you already repeat.