You’re using ChatGPT wrong

Summary

This video script debunks common misconceptions about using ChatGPT, emphasizing the importance of personalized and efficient usage rather than following generic advice. It guides viewers on setting up custom instructions that align with their professional and personal identities, leveraging the power of emulation for style and tone in writing, and utilizing ChatGPT for code automation without prior experience. Additionally, it introduces strategies to enhance interaction with ChatGPT, like asking for clarification questions to refine responses and extracting actionable insights from content rather than mere summaries. The script also tackles the pitfalls of prompt overload and offers solutions to optimize ChatGPT prompts for increased productivity and relevance in users' tasks.

Takeaways

• 😀 Avoid overly specific custom instructions in ChatGPT; aim for broad usability covering both professional and personal interests.
• 👩‍💻 For custom instructions, provide a brief professional snapshot, your interests outside of work, and your personality traits or interests.
• 🔍 Utilize online content from creators you admire to guide ChatGPT in mimicking their style and tone for your own writing.
• 🤖 Even without coding experience, you can use ChatGPT to automate tasks, like creating scripts for Google Docs.
• 🎯 Adding a prompt for ChatGPT to ask you five clarifying questions can significantly improve the relevance and accuracy of its responses.
• 📊 Rather than just summarizing information, ask ChatGPT for actionable insights specific to your role or industry.
• 🔑 Use ChatGPT for dedicated Q&A sessions to efficiently extract insights and analyses from lengthy reports or documents.
• 🚀 Avoid 'prompt overload' by selecting and focusing on a few highly relevant ChatGPT prompts to enhance productivity in your specific job function.
• 💡 Regularly refine your use of ChatGPT prompts based on feedback and outcomes to continuously improve the quality and relevance of the assistance.
• 🌟 Embrace the versatility of ChatGPT by exploring its potential in various applications, from writing assistance to task automation and knowledge extraction.

Q & A

Why is being overly specific in custom instructions for ChatGPT considered bad advice?

Being overly specific in custom instructions can limit the AI's ability to provide relevant outputs across a broader range of use cases. Instead, it's recommended to keep custom instructions more general to cover all potential use cases effectively.

How can one optimize the use of ChatGPT for different aspects of their life?

Optimize use by keeping the initial custom instructions simple, covering professional background, personal interests, and preferences. Additionally, incorporating writing styles or tones from admired creators can help tailor ChatGPT's outputs more closely to one's preferences.

What is a practical application of ChatGPT for users without coding experience?

Users without coding experience can use ChatGPT to write scripts for automating tasks, such as generating meeting notes in Google Docs, demonstrating that with clear instructions, ChatGPT can enable anyone to create useful automation.

How can adding a prompt for ChatGPT to ask clarifying questions improve its responses?

Asking ChatGPT to ask five clarifying questions can significantly improve the relevance and accuracy of its responses by allowing it to better understand the context and specific requirements of the request.

What is the 'first try fallacy' in using ChatGPT, and how can it be overcome?

The 'first try fallacy' is the unrealistic expectation of getting perfect answers from ChatGPT on the first attempt. This can be overcome by prompting ChatGPT to ask clarifying questions, enhancing the quality of its responses.

Can ChatGPT be used for tasks beyond summarizing information?

Yes, ChatGPT can be utilized to distill actionable insights from information, automate workflows, and generate creative content, demonstrating its versatility beyond mere summarization tasks.

How does one ensure that ChatGPT's outputs remain relevant to their specific needs?

Ensuring relevance involves setting up custom instructions that broadly cover your interests and needs, using examples or styles you admire, and refining prompts based on specific tasks or goals.

What is the benefit of using ChatGPT for generating Google Apps scripts?

The benefit is that it allows individuals without programming knowledge to automate tasks within Google applications, showcasing ChatGPT's ability to democratize access to automation and coding.

How can one personalize ChatGPT's responses to align with specific writing styles or tones?

Personalization can be achieved by providing ChatGPT with examples of the desired writing style or tone, such as blog posts or articles, and asking it to mimic these in its outputs.

What strategy is recommended for selecting custom instructions to enhance productivity with ChatGPT?

It's recommended to pick and choose aspects of advice that resonate with your preferences and needs, rather than adopting every suggestion, to tailor ChatGPT's functionality to your specific use cases.

Outlines

00:00

🔍 Maximizing ChatGPT's Custom Instructions

This segment emphasizes the misuse of ChatGPT, particularly in the implementation of custom instructions. The advice often given to new users to be overly specific in their custom instructions is critiqued for its potential to narrow down ChatGPT's usefulness across various applications. Instead, a more generalized approach is recommended, where users provide a brief overview of their professional background, interests, and the type of persona they embody outside of work. Furthermore, it introduces a hack for enhancing ChatGPT's output by using the writing style of admired online creators as a model for ChatGPT to emulate. This is achieved by analyzing their blog posts or articles to inform ChatGPT on how to match their tone, style, and delivery. The goal is to tailor ChatGPT's responses to be more relevant and useful across all of the user's activities without being overly restrictive.

05:01

🛠 Overcoming Common ChatGPT Usage Mistakes

This paragraph identifies several common mistakes users make with ChatGPT and offers practical solutions to each. First, it addresses the 'first try fallacy,' encouraging users to prompt ChatGPT to ask clarifying questions for better-tailored responses. It then criticizes the 'summary only shortfall,' where users rely solely on ChatGPT for summaries, missing out on extracting actionable insights. By adjusting prompts, users can receive personalized advice relevant to their specific roles and challenges. The segment also tackles the 'prompt overload paradox,' a scenario where users collect but fail to effectively utilize various prompts. A methodical approach is suggested, where users focus on a few highly relevant prompts, refining them through usage to enhance productivity. Additionally, the script mentions the underutilization of ChatGPT for automating tasks, demonstrating how even those without coding experience can leverage ChatGPT to create functional scripts for practical applications, thus broadening the scope of ChatGPT's utility beyond mere content generation.

Keywords

💡Custom Instructions

Custom Instructions refer to a feature that allows users to tailor the AI's responses according to specific personal or professional needs. In the video, it's suggested that overly specific instructions can limit the usefulness of the AI across different contexts. Instead, a balanced approach with a general overview of the user's professional background, interests, and preferred communication style is recommended. This concept underlines the video's theme of optimizing interaction with AI to enhance productivity and relevance of outputs.

💡Productivity

Productivity, in the context of this video, is about maximizing efficiency and output in both professional and personal tasks using AI. The script emphasizes the importance of using ChatGPT to automate routine tasks, such as generating documents and tracking payments, to save time. The video highlights various strategies to leverage AI for improving productivity, including customizing prompts and automating workflows.

💡Automation

Automation is a key theme in the video, referring to the use of technology, specifically AI and scripts, to perform tasks with minimal human intervention. The video provides examples like creating a script for Google Docs to automatically generate meeting notes, showcasing how non-coders can use ChatGPT to automate their work processes, thereby enhancing efficiency.

💡Efficiency

Efficiency in the video script is about doing tasks in the most effective way with the least waste of time and effort. It's closely related to productivity but focuses more on the method of completing tasks. The video suggests using AI to streamline tasks and decision-making processes, such as summarizing information or generating code for automation, to achieve greater efficiency.

💡Content Creation

Content Creation is highlighted as a significant use case for ChatGPT, where the AI assists in generating online content with specific tones, styles, and structures. The video suggests analyzing the writing style of admired creators to inform the AI's output, facilitating the creation of content that aligns with the user's brand or personal voice.

💡Follow-up Questions

Follow-up Questions are proposed as a strategy to refine the AI's responses. By prompting ChatGPT to ask questions that clarify the user's request, the AI can deliver more accurate and tailored information. This approach is presented as a solution to the 'first try fallacy,' where users might expect perfect answers without providing sufficient context.

💡Personalization

Personalization refers to customizing the AI's responses to fit the user's specific needs, interests, and preferences. The video stresses the importance of providing ChatGPT with a snapshot of the user's professional identity, hobbies, and preferred communication style to enhance the relevance and applicability of its outputs.

💡Actionable Insights

Actionable Insights involve deriving practical, actionable advice from information processed by ChatGPT. The video encourages moving beyond mere summarization to extracting insights that can inform decision-making and strategy, especially in professional contexts like marketing.

💡Script Writing

Script Writing, as discussed in the video, involves the use of ChatGPT to generate code or scripts for automating tasks. This capability is presented as a way for individuals without programming experience to create functional scripts for applications like Google Docs, showcasing the AI's utility in bridging skill gaps.

💡Self-Improvement

Self-Improvement is a recurring theme, with the video suggesting that ChatGPT can be a tool for personal growth and efficiency. By leveraging AI for tasks ranging from content creation to task automation, users can focus on improving other areas of their professional and personal lives. The video implies that understanding and utilizing technology effectively is a form of self-improvement.

Highlights

Custom instructions should cover all use cases, not just be overly specific to one domain.

Keep the top box of custom instructions simple with a three-sentence snapshot covering professional background, secondary persona, and personal interests.

Use the writings of admired online creators to guide the tone and style of your outputs.

Avoid the fallacy of expecting perfect answers from the first try; use follow-up questions to refine outputs.

Utilize coding scripts to automate tasks, even without prior coding experience.

Implementing scripts in Google Docs and Slides to streamline workflows.

Overcoming the 'first try fallacy' by asking ChatGPT to clarify with questions for better responses.

The 'summary only shortfall' where users miss out on distilling actionable insights from summaries.

Customizing prompts to extract personalized insights and actionable steps relevant to one's role.

Saving time with dedicated Q&A sessions with ChatGPT, assuming roles of experienced professionals.

Avoiding the 'prompt overload paradox' by selecting and refining a few effective prompts for daily use.

The benefit of assuming specific roles to enhance the relevance and specificity of ChatGPT's responses.

Encouragement to experiment and refine prompts for increased productivity and task automation.

The importance of continuous interaction and refinement with ChatGPT to get the most out of its capabilities.

Highlighting the versatility of ChatGPT in professional, personal, and creative applications.

Transcripts

you're using chat GPT wrong but it's not

your fault whenever a new feature gets

released self-proclaimed experts share

their best practices to capitalize on

the hype that's all fine and well except

at that point most of their advice

haven't gone through enough testing to

produce consistently good results let's

take custom instructions for example a

powerful feature available for both paid

and free users you might have heard it's

best to be as specific as possible

include your values and principles

you're learning in style the city you

live in the apps you prefer to use this

is terrible advice because custom

instructions acts like an umbrella that

should cover all of your use cases for

example if my custom instructions were

super specific and optimized for writing

YouTube scripts the relevancy of the

Chach PT outputs for my work and

personal life will actually decrease

here's what to do instead for the first

box up top keep it simple with three

sentences first a snapshot of who I am

professionally I'm a product marketing

manager in Tech second insert your

secondary Persona who are you outside of

work in my spare time I create online

content on these topics and third my

personality and my interests I'm all

about efficiency productivity and

selfimprovement that's it the bottom

field is extremely important and here's

a hack find an online Creator who's

articulate smart capable Charming

charismatic basically someone you

respect admire and want to emulate let's

go with Ali abdall head on over to his

newslet page and open up the last two

links one two then head on back to chat

gbt start a new chat and input this

prompt I'm going to share two blog posts

written by Ali abdall analyze the blog

post and give me a set of instructions I

can use to write in exactly the same

tone writing style humor reading level

and delivery here are the blog posts

blog post one paste blog post two paste

and hit enter obviously it doesn't have

to be a newsletter it could be an online

art articles LinkedIn posts or even

speech transcripts from your favorite

comedian you got to hit the like And

subscribe button if you're also a fan of

Trevor Noah by the way if not hit the

dislike button twice now instead of copy

pasting all of this into your custom

instructions pick and choose the ones

you Vibe with the most for example use

casual language bakeer post into

digestible sections definitely good ones

to include uh light sarcasm cheeky

remarks might not be for everyone right

you get the idea copy paste the ones you

select into the second custom

instruction box down here now chat gbt

knows just enough about your background

and preferences to provide relevant

outputs for any and all of your use

cases moving on I'm 100% sure those of

us with no coding experience have made

the second mistake with Chachi BT not

writing code to automate tasks to give

some context I studied business in

college and the closest I've ever gotten

to writing code is typing in cheat codes

in Warcraft 3 not not that I cheat I

needed to cheat to win I want every game

I was a pro that was great and yet with

the help of chat BT I've written a

script that allows me to click a button

in Google Docs to generate a new page

before every single one-on-one meeting I

have with my manager and I have no idea

what any of this code means all you have

to do is to tell Chacha BT hey write a

Google app script for my 101 meeting

notes in Google Docs that does the

following add a new page with heading

two that says date today's date add a

heading three notes followed by three

bullet points add a heading three action

items followed by a numbered list create

a button I can click before every

meeting to generate this new page and

not only will chbt generate the entire

script without you having to make any

edits it will also provide step-by-step

instructions on how to implement this

for yourself I won't bore you with the

details but basically within most Google

applications you can click on the

extensions menu to open up the apps

script copy and paste the code jbt

generated rename it click save and run

the script it's that easy Pro tip you

can even make simple tweaks yourself for

example this scripts outputs a date

whenever you click on the button in this

long date format month date year I can

change this to a shorter month date year

save

run we can now all apply for software

engineer roles at Google you're welcome

Jokes Aside we're now only limited by

our imagination for example I also

created a button Google slides that

standardizes the font and font size for

all speaker notes since different

colleagues might copy and paste their

slides into one presentation super Handy

by the way this video is not sponsored

but it is supported by those of you who

subscribe to my paid productivity

newsletter on Google tips Link in the

description to learn more the third way

we're using Chad GPT wrong is falling

into the first try fallacy this is the

unrealistic expectation that we get

perfect answers from Chachi BT after

just our initial prompt yes Jeff I know

we should follow up but it takes so much

time and there's no standardized

framework for following with chbt it's

just too much extra effort good news

instead of all that extra effort all you

have to do is to add this sentence at

the end of your prompts ask me five

questions that would improve the

response you'll be giving me for example

as a marketing manager I pay my vendors

in a variety of currencies and I keep

track of all these payments in Google

Sheets I ask Chachi BT is there a way

for me to automate tracking so that even

if I input the amount in its original

currency there would be a column that

automatically converts the amount to US

dollar USD ask me five questions that

would improve the response you'll be

giving me instead of responding to my

request immediately Chachi clarifies his

understanding by asking me questions

like hey are you cool with using App

script if yes I'll write you a script

you no C genius

if not we'll stick with formulas you

lowly peasant or other questions like do

you need real-time currency conversion

if yes we'll use option A if not then

option b after I provide this secondary

round of input chat jpt gives me an

extremely relevant response if you don't

believe me try using the same prompt

without the hey ask me five questions

sentence and compare the results the

fourth mistake I see is what I call the

summary only shortfall where the

majority of users are still only using

chachy BT to summarize information

instead of distill ing actionable

insights for example let's say you come

across this article on holiday shopping

insights you can select all text copy

ask chachy BT to summarize the article

paste and it'll do a fine job but there

are two small changes you can make to

get exponentially better outputs first

to get personalized insights that are

specific to you try this I'll share an

article Below on holiday shopping

insights how does the information in

this article apply to a insert your role

paid media marketing manager responsible

for increasing brand awareness here is

the article and you paste the article

I'm now provided with actionable next

steps like focusing on gen Z Shoppers

using YouTube because more than half of

genen Z use YouTube for holiday shopping

wow I guess that's not too surprising

Pro tip instead of copy and pasting paid

users can upload a PDF onto chb directly

and the prompts work in the exact same

way use case number two is my favorite

it saved me so much time and it's to

have a dedicated ated Q&A session with

the written content type this into

Chachi BT assume the role of a senior

business analyst with over 20 years of

experience for the rest of this

conversation I like to engage in a Q&A

session where you'll provide insights

analyses and answers based on the

uploaded report imp pedf format if you

understand please respond with yes great

now instead of spending 30 40 minutes

reading this entire report by LinkedIn I

can simply ask targeted questions hey

does the report provide any evidence

there be layoffs because of AI and chbt

responds citing what it has read in the

report I can even stress test this by

asking for something I know is not

included in the report hey does a report

mention AI tools like Google Bart or

perplexity AI since LinkedIn is owned by

Microsoft I highly doubt those two tools

will be mentioned and here we see that

uh yes the report focuses on the impact

of chbt but the report does not

specifically mention Google Bart or

perplexity the fifth mistake I see

people making the prompt overload

paradox where we consume a lot of chbt

related content we save them offline

somewhere but we forget to optimize or

even use those prompts in our daily

tasks here's a simple solution and no

it's not to click out this video you got

to keep watching step one tell Chachi BT

to assume the role of an experienced

prompt engineer with over 20 years of

experience I am a insert your role

working on insert your responsibility

with the goal of your objective give me

10 Chachi BT prompts that will help me

become more productive in my job step

two pick a maximum of three prompts you

can see yourself using every day at work

for me that would be this competitor

analysis one for sure uh this audience

Insight one and this Crea a survey to

get feedback from my audience then focus

on using those three prompts at work for

2 weeks and refine them using the

perfect prompt formula I'm made entire

video here so that you can actually

become more productive see you on the

next video in the

meantime have a great one