How I Manage My Chaos with ChatGPT Projects

The Setup That Changed My Workflow

I Don’t Need Another Productivity Tool. I Need a Whole Team.

Last week, I opened ChatGPT and realized I had the same conversation about content planning four separate times. In four different chats. With zero memory of what we had worked on last time.

That’s when it hit me: I wasn’t using AI wrong. I was using it like it’s 2023.

See, most of us treat ChatGPT like a really smart search bar. Ask question, get answer, forget everything, repeat tomorrow. Meanwhile, we’re drowning in scattered conversations about the same five problems, starting from scratch every single time like we’re stuck in some productivity Groundhog Day.

But here’s the thing about ChatGPT Projects: they’re not just folders for your chats. They’re actual workspaces where AI remembers everything: your goals, your preferences, that specific way you like information explained, and yes, even what you said you’d accomplish by now.

Think of ChatGPT Projects as hiring specialists who never forget a conversation. One handles your content strategy and remembers every piece you’ve written. Another manages your learning goals and knows exactly where you left off with that skill you’re building. A third runs your meal planning and stops suggesting recipes with ingredients you’ve told it sixteen times you hate.

Each Project builds on itself, getting smarter about how I work, what I need, and what actually moves the needle. No more restarting from scratch or re-explaining context. Just ongoing workspaces that evolve with you. It’s controlled chaos. But organized and color-coded.

Setting them up takes maybe ten minutes. Writing custom instructions that actually work, choosing the right memory settings, uploading the files that matter – there’s a specific way to do it that makes the difference between a slightly better chat experience and having an AI that actually knows your work.

The best part? You can have project-only memory that keeps your client work completely separate from your personal stuff. No more worrying that your casual newsletter voice is bleeding into formal proposals. No more ChatGPT randomly mentioning your sourdough obsession in a business strategy session.

Important: You can only set project-only memory when you first create the Project. Once it’s created, you can’t switch. So think about how you want this Project to work before you hit ‘Create.’

This isn’t about having the perfect system from day one. It’s about building something that evolves with your work, learns from what you create, and stops making you explain the same things over and over. Let me show you exactly how to set these up so they actually work.