After weeks of going deep with AI tools, I've accepted that my first prompt is always terrible.
Not slightly off. Not "needs tweaking." Completely, embarrassingly wrong.
I'll spend twenty minutes crafting what I think is the perfect prompt and get back something that makes me question whether the AI and I are even speaking the same language.
Here's what I learned about prompting that nobody talks about:
Note: I use Claude but you can substitute any mention of Claude for ChatGPT etc.
"Natural language" doesn't mean "read my mind"
The biggest misconception? You talk to these systems like you'd talk to a human colleague.
That's like saying a piano has keys just like a computer keyboard, so typing skills transfer directly to playing music.
I spent my first week sending prompts like: "Write me a blog post about AI tools for marketing."
What I got back was generic fluff that read like it was written by someone who'd never touched an AI tool. Technically correct, completely useless.
The problem wasn't the AI.
This led me to look online for inspiration, which led me to find everyone's "this prompt will save you" screenshots.
Don't fall for "steal this prompt" templates
And they don't work.
People who post screenshots of their innovative prompts with "Steal this" are street hawkers outside a sports arena. These don't work. 99% of these people didn't create them.
You take inspiration. Nothing more.
Then I decided to ask AI to give me a prompt.
Cheat code: Ask AI for the prompt
Finally an unlock.
Prompt your AI: "I'd like you to help write a blog post, but I want to ensure I get the best results. Do you have an outline of requirements that you need for me to maximize our project? And don't forget to give me a list of things that are easy to forget."
Another example that I used most recently: "I'm creating a website in Replit. Give me a list of all the things I need to tell Replit to do so that my website is SEO friendly, secure, looks great in a browser, works on mobile and anything else easy to forget."
It gives you an incredible head start.
It's also a good example of rewiring that we need to do. It's not intuitive (at least for me) to start by asking AI to build a project plan.
Dictation changes everything
When I figured out dictation + asking AI for help, then I really unlocked AI. (See a theme here?)
Sometimes the space from brain to fingers is too far. I have a great idea but I struggle to get the words right on paper. I leave frustrated.
With dictation, I ramble and it works. I set up my Mac so that double-clicking control enables dictation. (ChatGPT has a mic option, but I like the flow of just using Mac.)
With dictation I can be super open about what I'm trying to do. It doesn't have to make sense. When I type, I feel I'm stressing each word and reordering it. Now I'm just telling it what I want to do, all the things I think I want, and then asking a bunch of questions that I need help with.
One callout—for big projects, I'm using dictation combined with Claude to build really good prompts that I'll then go use later on. I'm not one-shotting an audio ramble into a big project for Claude.
Ready to showtime? Use Projects
I rarely do anything meaningful in a random chat. Everything is in projects because my first step is always getting the "instructions" right. Instructions are your pre-prompt that ensures all work inside the project works for you.
For writing, I have one that has all my tone guidelines.
For Brixo brainstorming, I have all our deep research items and internal docs.
For Brixo product writing, I have tone guidelines and our core messaging.
I recommend giving each project "intention" and ensuring the guidelines fit the intention.
Building your prompting muscle
The only way to get better at prompting is to do it badly first. A lot.
I find myself constantly redoing things weeks later because I discovered a new way to guide the model to my needs.
In some ways, my prompts feel like trade secrets.
I do believe "reskilling" with AI is a real concept, but a worthwhile pursuit.
I hope these tips aren't duplicative of every other prompting guide post. If you found anything helpful, let me know!
Almost forgot... Did I use AI to write this? Sort of. Here's my process:
While on a walk, I rambled for 10 minutes about my experience.
Later, I pasted the transcript into my project for writing. This project has my strict tone guidelines.
I told Claude that this is a transcript for a blog post. Can you please organize my thoughts into a compelling narrative and outline?
Then I took that and started writing.
Once done, I ran it back through Claude for proofreading.
Voila!