ChatGPT: Easing Tiny Troubles
ChatGPT is an excellent secret weapon for easing little emotional struggles that you might not always notice, but that add up over time.
Here's an example from just this morning.
I was reading one of the (many) AI newsletters I'm now subscribed to. The author was talking about a line of code he uses in the browser window to turn the window into a simple text editor (which will NOT save, or do anything really, except be a place to type):
data:text/html,<html contenteditable>
This caught my eye - one of my pet peeves is all the "untitled document" files I have in my Google Docs, because of quickly whipping open doc.new to have a quick place to write, just for a moment, while that text is ultimately destined for some other location.
I saw this and was like, that's awesome! I'm gonna bookmark that! ... But my phone wouldn't let me, womp womp sad trombone.
So I got ChatGPT to help me turn it into an html file that includes a sans-serif fonts, margins (because prettier), a locked in view size so it doesn't try to zoom when I first start typing ... it’s this perfect little text editing window I can now bookmark, that will never ever save the text in it (which is sooo weird that I actually want that, but here we are).
And y'know, I could have totally figured this out on my own. I used to know all that code, I just don't anymore off the top of my head. So ... I wouldn't have. I'd stick with the sea of Untitleds and feel just a little bit gross every time I make a new one.
But here, ChatGPT removed the emotional burden of having to "figure something out."
Taking away these little moments of stress or strain - where it's really not TOO big a deal, but weighs on you just a little - can help make the bigger things easier to handle.
Here’s the code
If you’d like your own little text editor window, here’s the code - save it as an .html
file somewhere that you can access it, and enjoy! Just remember this does NOT save, so watch that window refresh 😅
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>Type</title>
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1, maximum-scale=1, user-scalable=no">
<link href="https://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Nunito&display=swap" rel="stylesheet">
<style>
body {
font-family: 'Nunito', sans-serif;
margin: 20px;
font-size: 18px;
}
</style>
</head>
<body contenteditable="true">
</body>
</html>
It Happens Again … and Again …
Here’s another example of relieving emotional strain. I’m terrible at coming up with strong titles for articles like this one. I’ll write something I think is clever, but by itself is kind of meaningless until after you’ve read the article. Which, y’know, doesn’t actually help anybody. 🤪
So I gave ChatGPT the article, and asked it for 10 example titles. I didn’t use any of them, but I used the format from one and the alliteration from another. Most importantly, the stress of “coming up with a title” is relieved and saved for another battle elsewhere.