Most guidance about AI tools covers writing. The uses that consistently save time in ordinary life are different and less discussed.
Understanding documents
Paste a contract, a policy, a medical letter or a technical manual and ask what it means, what to watch out for, and what questions to ask. It will not always be right and it will nearly always get you oriented faster than reading cold.
Translating between formats
Turning a wall of notes into a structured list. Turning a table into prose. Turning a rambling recording into a summary with action items. This is the most reliable category because the output is easy to check.
Extracting from images
Photograph a receipt, a handwritten note, a label, a screenshot of a table. Getting text out of images was a specialist task and is now trivial.
Explaining things at your level
Ask for an explanation assuming you know nothing, or assuming you know a related field. Adjusting the level of an explanation is something a textbook cannot do and a model does easily.
Rubber-ducking a decision
Describe a problem and ask what you have not considered. The value is not the answer; it is being forced to articulate the situation clearly.
Where to be careful
Anything factual you cannot verify. Anything about your health, your legal position, or your money, where the confident wrong answer is expensive.
And anything confidential, which should not be pasted into a service you have not checked the terms of.