Yes, you CAN use ChatGPT and your brain at the same time.

Like pretty much everyone in the world, I have been using ChatGPT and Gemini a lot over the last year or so, both in my job as well as in the rest of my life.

Vocal itself has now a feature that allows writers to clarify if a content is AI-generated or not, as well as a bunch of issues in publishing articles that seem AI-generated even when you (forcefully) admit that they are AI-generated, even if that's not actually the case.

However, I'm not here to rant about this platform's issues, but to give my two cents on a doubt that pretty much everyone has had during the rise of AI: will it replace my job?

While the answers seem very pessimistic in most cases, and some fields seem to be already facing the consequences of this change, I also think that, if we were to consider "useless" every single activity that can be done by AI, then most of us would not just be unemployed, but we would have almost no hobbies at all. This very article would not even exist, because what is the point of writing if there's AI that can generate a bunch of text to post?

Now don't get me wrong, I think ChatGPT is an amazing tool that has helped me a lot in my life, but I'm also a fan of using my brain as well.

I am also a soon-to-be-replaced person in so many aspects: some of my hobbies include learning languages, planning my trips and writing, I'm a travel agent which is a dying profession, I majored in modern languages and translation, might as well throw myself in a pit and die, right?

Obviously not. The idea for this article was sparked by this quote:

This was the missing piece of my thoughts on AI: yes, it's amazing, but for many of us it's still unclear how to use it without feeling ridiculous for having hobbies or jobs that can be replaced by AI-generated content and softwares.

If we think about the history of humanity, discoveries and inventions had as a primarily goal to solve an existing problem and, therefore, to improve people's life in some way.

Most inventions, however, had a set of funcions that was way more limited in comparison to AI chats, so people knew the exact scope of an invention as they learnt its functioning and purpose. With AI it's the exact opposite: it offers a lot of uses, more than we could have ever imagined, and while this is an amazing quality, it can cause some confusion on the most proficient way(s) it can be used.

The same thing could be said about the Internet and, in 2025, there are people who use it in a way deemed "wise" and other that use it in ways that we would define "not so wise". There are university students who can finally find a paper without having to spend hours at the library, weirdos buying organs in the dark web, and anything inbetween.

But what people seem to have forgotten about both the Internet and ChatGPT is that they are supposed to make your life easier, not harder. Nobody in their right mind would equate "making your life easier" with "still having to do all your house chores yourself", but many of us would equate it with "finally having more time for my hobbies", and many more of us would definitely equate it with "helping me review the tone of my email so that it is well-received by that one important client".

The first time I've heard about AI was in fact in the Instagram posts of @workhap and @antiworkgirlboss, where they shared tips on how to make effective resumes more quickly and how to use ChatGPT to make your workload less overwhelming. As you can see, for me it started off as something to simplify your life, be it at your actual job or during your job hunting session.

Then, I found out about Midjourney AI and the possibility of AI creating art, which also raised awareness of the ethical implications of some functions of AI: in order to work, it draws data from actual art, thus making it possible to entirely steal someone's creation or personal art style, which implies that someone's hard work could be stolen and they could potentially lose profits from it.

Another field that raised some questions on the usage of AI is its use for war and security systems, especially for its concerns on the possibility of reinforcing racist biases towards specific groups, especially people of color, and for the high chance of making potentially fatal mistakes. Additionally, further concerns were raised about the concerning possibility of using AI for creating deepfakes, thus exhacerbating this issue.

Then, we have the issue of AI replacing most human activities completely. Mind you, this is the order in which I got to know about these issues, and is therefore not the accurate order in which the problems actually emerged, but it is to be intended as the overall context as to how I came into contact with AI.

We also have to consider that AI has its limits: its mechanism for generating content is heavily based on preexisting data and patterns as well as details on the given context, so it's not guaranteed that it will always process implicit information. I've noticed this when generating texts and translations for my job: although it saves me a lot of time, which is crucial to be able to balance out all my tasks, the final content still needs to be revised to some extent.

This makes it clear that we still need to use our brain even when AI is involved, but, in case this was not enough, youtuber Drew Gooden pointed out how relying too much on AI can be detrimental to our creativity in one of his latest videos.

So how can we balance brain usage and AI usage?

For me, the overall premise was to implement Maciejewska's quote as much as possible. So one of the things I asked myself was: what are my "chores" and my "pleasant activities"?

I will take my 5-to-9 after my 9-to-5 as an example: the biggest "chore" I had was actually planning my hobbies in a way that was sustainable. Indeed, I was having a very demanding study routine for my languages and I was going to bed very late at night in order to finish everything, so I was in desperate need of a routine change.

However, I also tend to end up being so tangled into planning when I could use to take some action instead.

Therefore, AI came handy to ease the planning process so that I can fully put my energy into actually doing my hobbies.

You can do this, too: firstly, identify a part of your life that you consider a "chore" or somewhat an obstacle to dedicating your energy into doing what you really enjoy, especially those actions that trigger issues like decision fatigue.

Once you have identified said issues, I recommend drafting a question that is as thorough as possible. In my case, I inserted in my request:

- my day-by-day usual routine with specific hours for every activity that was already planned, like the time I wake up and the time I start end end my work day;

- all the learning materials and apps that I was using at the time for every language;

- the days where I feel the most fatigued and the days that I consider "lazy days" or "rest days".

Then, you have to paste your request on ChatGPT and, once the first proposal is fully generated, ask more questions to adjust it according to your wishes.

Once it's perfect, I suggest pasting the whole plan or proposal into an offline document just in case and integrating it into your other organization tools (be it a paper planner, your Google Calendar or others).

ChatGPT had suggested me to review my language learning plan after two weeks, and surprisingly for all the extreme AI enthusiasts, the plan was in fact not perfect and needed some polishing.

Obviously, I'm grateful for the basis that ChatGPT gave me, but this only shows that not even one of its most basic funcions can generate a 100% perfect result. It's a good starting point, and it laid the basis to integrate other hobbies as well, but it also proves that, at the end of the day, you're still the only one that is capable of fully understanding your needs and demands.

And if that's not a reason to keep doing your "pointless" hobbies, then I don't know what else should be.

Now, when it comes to business ideas and jobs, it makes perfect sense to monitor how AI is changing certain fields, but it's important to be mindful of overly catastrophic views on this. Yes, your job might be completely different from now, and you might find yourself working a completely different one. However, if you work a 9-to-5 job, you also have to adapt to specific procedures, especially if you work a corporate or office job.

This is not necessarily a bad thing, but this might also mean that you might have to use AI more than you would want to, for tasks that are close to your interests and that you would gladly do by yourself.

As per your free time, instead, you have way more control over how you want to carry out your hobbies or day-to-day tasks, so you can also control the amount of AI help you need or want. You can literally choose where and when to use AI in your free time, and you might actually need it less than you think.

In my case, indeed, I used it to draft a sustainable language learning plan that could leave room to other interests. Once it was time to add other hobbies, however, I did not turn to AI again. Instead, I planned them around my language learning plan, filling in some of the moments that I had left "empty", and it all worked out easily, much more smoothly than by asking ChatGPT to implement the new activities in my routine.

This all leads back to the title: yes, you can use both ChatGPT and your own brain and you can definitely choose how to implement it in your free time (and in any time frame that you have full control over) so that it can help you with anything that you deem a "chore", and not so that it can "steal" your hobbies and the activities that bring you joy.

So, what are your thoughts on ChatGPT, and how do you balance them with your brain in your daily life? Feel free to tell me your own opinions in the comments!