I gave ChatGPT my schedule to make a weekly wellness routine — and it struck the right balance between health and productivity

(Image credit: Shutterstock) I’m constantly in the market for the sort of routines that can put me in a comfortable physical and mental state.Beginner exercises that get the blood flowing, mid-afternoon strolls around the neighborhood during my work breaks and nightly handwritten/typed “braindumps” have done a lot for me this year alone. With my professional responsibilities, it does get a bit hard to mix in those sorts of practices in between my hours of researching, writing, editing, taking meetings and conducting interviews. So I went ahead and told ChatGPT about my weekly schedule in hopes of it building a wellness routine I could realistically implement within it that’s easy to stick to.My digital assistant took this challenge head-on and emerged with the sort of wellness regimen that gave my five-day work schedule an extra element of physical and mental maintenance.And on top of that newfound routine, ChatGPT also recommended some additional habits that were a bit out of the norm yet equally handy.Building a routine that protects my energy, physical health, focus, sleep and mental bandwidth (Image credit: Shutterstock)I presented my request to ChatGPT with the following prompt:“I work five days a week as a digital journalist from 9 am to 5 pm (three days from the office and two days at home). Build me a realistic weekly wellness routine that can help me stay in a good to great physical and mental state.”Not only did the chatbot lay out a series of useful physical exercises and methods meant to keep me mentally balanced, but it also gave me different ones to utilize for all of my workdays. As an example of what it set out for me to do, here’s all of the Monday activities (entitled “Ease Into The Week”) it gave me for the morning through late afternoon and evening hours:Get instant access to breaking news, the hottest reviews, great deals and helpful tips.Morning: 7:00 — Wake up, drink water, get some natural light. 7:15 am — 10–15 minutes of mobility/stretching. 7:30 — Breakfast with protein + fiber. 8:00 — Get ready/commute. 9:00–5:00 — Work. Take a 5-minute movement break every 60–90 minutes. Walk, stretch, get water, or simply step away from the screen.Evening: 5:30–6:15 — 30–45-minute workout. Make Monday a strength session. 6:30 — Dinner. 7:30–9:00 — Free time. No productivity requirement. 9:00 — Start reducing work/news/social-media stimulation. 10:30–11:00 — Bed.Mental Goal: Don't start Monday at 100%. Start at 70–80% and build momentum.The rest of the weekdays came with their own themes and assorted practices.Tuesday is all about cardio & employing a mental reset; Wednesday is aimed at prioritizing strength training & sustained recovery; Thursday is set aside for fitness methods that are a bit more fun (such as a pick-up basketball game, for instance); Friday is set aside for planning for the week ahead & skipping hard workouts.I also made sure to keep the mental goals for each subsequent day in mind while I performed a combination of physical conditioning and cognitive stimulation:Tuesday Mental Goal: Tuesday is your "decompress from the internet" day. You're exposed to information all day for work; don't feel obligated to consume more of it at night.Wednesday Mental Goal: Wednesday is about preventing the midweek crash rather than trying to maximize productivity.Thursday Mental Goal: Put something on your calendar that you look forward to every Thursday.Friday Mental Goal: Create a psychological boundary between journalist mode and weekend mode.Unconventional methods that also worked like a charm (Image credit: Shutterstock)I wanted to get even more tips on how to maximize my productivity while also tending to my physical/mental prosperity, so I asked it to give me some alternative methods. These three practices stuck as the main ones I could easily adopt into my pre-made wellness routine:Create a "phone exile zone": Pick one location in your home where your phone doesn't belong. For example: Dining table = phone-free. Or: Bedroom = phone-free. If you need an alarm, use a cheap alarm clock. The physical distance is much more powerful than simply telling yourself, "I'll try not to look at it."Schedule "anti-journalism" time: Once a week, deliberately spend 60–90 minutes doing something completely unrelated to your professional interests. If you normally read about technology, don't read tech. If you write about AI, don't experiment with AI. If you're constantly thinking about consumer technology, go cook something. The purpose is to prevent your professional identity from swallowing your personal curiosity.Establish a "Sunday night curiosity ritual": Instead of spending Sunday night thinking about Monday, spend 30 minutes exploring something purely because you're curious about it. A documentary. A strange Wikipedia rabbit hole. A book. Astronomy. Architecture. History. Cooking. Music. You're still learning—but unlike journalism, there's no assignment at the end.The takeawayAfter inserting ChatGPT’s wellness routine into my weekly agenda, I got used to doing it without even having to remind myself of what it was.Making a concerted effort to get up out of my computer chair (and stay up!) for five to ten minutes at a time, doing a bit of cardio to break up the monotony and doing a bunch of pre-planning on Friday after my workday comes to an end became some of my most reliable practices.Simply standing upright, stretching for a few minutes, deciding what to do next and actually leaving the confines of my workspace to go do it energized me enough to come back to my laptop with renewed vigor.ChatGPT said it best when it summarized everything its wellness routine is supposed to do for me:Don't use wellness to become more productive. Use wellness to make your life better even when you're not working. That distinction is particularly important for knowledge workers. Otherwise, it's very easy to turn exercise, sleep, nutrition, meditation, and even leisure into another performance dashboard. Follow Tom's Guide on Google News and add us as a preferred source to get our up-to-date news, analysis, and reviews in your feeds. Subscribe to Tom's Guide on YouTube and follow us on TikTok.More from Tom’s Guide7 things to share with ChatGPT to get better answers immediatelyI tested popular AI humanizers — and they made my writing much worseMy 12-year-old noticed a missing Amazon shopping feature — so I tried to build it with AI Elton Jones covers AI for Tom’s Guide, and tests all the latest models, from ChatGPT to Gemini to Claude to see which tools perform best — and how they can improve everyday productivity.He is also an experienced tech writer who has covered video games, mobile devices, headsets, and now artificial intelligence for over a decade. Since 2011, his work has appeared in publications including The Christian Post, Complex, TechRadar, Heavy, and ONE37pm, with a focus on clear, practical analysis.Today, Elton focuses on making AI more accessible by breaking down complex topics into useful, easy-to-understand insights for a wide range of readers.