This is one of the most useful and well-structured breakdowns of prompting I’ve seen, thank you for sharing it so clearly! 🙌 Your use of SALT and Chain-of-Thought is spot on, especially for non-technical professionals who want to go beyond surface-level results.
If I may add a couple of extra tips that have helped me (especially with GPT-style models):
Keep conversations short. The longer the thread, the higher the risk of hallucination or drift. Don’t hesitate to start fresh often.
Save your winning prompts. If you’re repeating similar tasks, keeping a simple .txt file with your most effective prompts can save time and help you stay consistent.
For multi-step activities, go one step at a time. If your tool allows uploads or multi-modal context (like ChatGPT’s 'Projects'), share your full plan upfront, but guide the AI through each step with clear references like “step 2 of 5.” Otherwise, it will start forgetting things after just a few turns, even key goals or constraints.
Thanks again for writing this, it’s a goldmine for anyone trying to use AI intentionally, not just casually. Following!
Alex, thank you so much for adding these extra tip. I’ll definitely keep this in mind for a future follow-up post. That part about keeping conversations short, I’ve fallen in that trap so many times, probably cause I’m generally struggling with being brief :)) but yeah, so true!
We have all been there.. Claude that I use for coding is simply stopping you and politely asking to start a new chat. Frustrating but helps a lot.. my guess is that it will take another year before proper engineering will eliminate this need.
Agree. It’ll definitely get fixed at some point, and with how fast things are moving, probably sooner than we expect. but i still think prompting will stay valuable. It kinda forces you to slow down and get clear on what you actually want. which honestly… is a good exercise with or without AI.
Thank you so much, Neil, really glad it was useful! Let me know if there’s anything specific you’re working on. Always happy to explore more use cases in future posts.
Great breakdown! I’m once I started asking AI to play “an expert marketer/copywriter/consultant/ceo” etc, I started getting way better results.
I’ve used it to find and categorize faq industry tech questions for people with different job titles and it was ok for a first pass. Digging into Reddit/ etc would give bettter results.
One of my fave recent use cases though is taking pictures of all my messy, handwritten notes and uploading them. Chat turned them into legible files with key themes and takeaways in seconds. 🤯
How do you usually discover these things though? Is it like you have a problem and go down the reddit rabbit hole for a solution or you just come across a tool and think “huh wonder if this could help”?
Btw, if you’ve got any stuff you’re stuck on right now or things you’re curious about, let me know, always looking for real problems to explore and turn into posts that actually help
In one of my upcoming posts I’ll break down how to create custom GPTs for your most repetitive tasks, so you don’t have to keep reprompting or copy-pasting saved prompts. I’ve learned a ton from Ethan Mollick around that. He's one of the best in this space.
About the AI agent, I haven’t nailed it yet. Still a few shots away from getting it to feel smooth and intuitive 😅 Building products with the OpenAI API is very different than using ChatGPT directly. The quality just isn’t quite the same, since ChatGPT is its own product with layers we don’t get through the "raw" API. But once I figure it out, I’ll write about it.
Re the AI agent, I don’t know what I don’t know but one problem I’d like to solve is a way to automate moving the stuff chat and I develop into Notion so I can see where things are in development.
Right now chat’s building the initial board but I’ll want to add to it.
I don’t know if an agent is the right course of action. But it seems possible.
And since you asked, I’m building a platform for companies with large commercial teams (sales reps, account managers, etc.) that helps them level up their negotiation skills through AI role-play, fully customized to each company.
It can be used in a few ways, not just training. Teams can use it to simulate real client situations, test how people handle objections, and prep before high-stakes negotiations. But also: it’s great for hiring (you can see how a candidate handles a real scenario, not just talk about it) and for onboarding new people, so they can get familiar with typical challenges, client types, and company processes before they’re thrown into the deep end.
Basically, it’s like giving them a smart practice partner that knows your business and gets better over time.
Still early stage, but that’s the direction it’s going.
I think Zapier might be the simplest way to do what you’re describing. It should let you connect ChatGPT with Notion, and you can set up what they call a “Zap” to automate the whole process. Basically, every time ChatGPT generates something new (like a draft or a plan), it can automatically send that into your Notion board. You can set it up to create new entries or update existing ones, super handy for tracking where things are in development. There are a bunch of other ways to do this too (some more customizable, if you’re up for a bit of scripting), but I feel like Zapier is the fastest way to get started without too much setup.
I only wish I had enough time to test all the ideas I get :)) At first it was mostly from reading and following what a lot of creators in the space were sharing. But what really changed the game for me was working on building AI agents or tools around AI. Once I got into that, it pushed me to be way more intentional with how I prompt.
Now it’s kind of like when you’re talking to someone and ideas just start bouncing. The more I explore and play with it, the more I go - wait, what if it could help with this too?
I rarely look at Reddit. I’m just constantly exploring and experimenting. And the handwritten notes thing is a long-time bugaboo of mind - my handwriting is messy and I’ve been dancing around the same ideas for years. But Chat is dragging me out of the overthinking trap and helping me create pathways. This weekend I’ve drafted 2 newsletters, a lead magnet, and outlined an ebook which I’m going to test first as an email course - so yes, it outlined that for me too.
I’m using it as a “thinking partner” throughout my days.
This is exactly the kind of proof that shows how AI can really scale your thinking and work for you. Tbh, I barely handwrite anything these days besides my diary, but now you got me thinking I should try that with it, would be wild to see what patterns or insights it pulls out. This is what I love about it, the possibilities are endless :))
This is one of the most useful and well-structured breakdowns of prompting I’ve seen, thank you for sharing it so clearly! 🙌 Your use of SALT and Chain-of-Thought is spot on, especially for non-technical professionals who want to go beyond surface-level results.
If I may add a couple of extra tips that have helped me (especially with GPT-style models):
Keep conversations short. The longer the thread, the higher the risk of hallucination or drift. Don’t hesitate to start fresh often.
Save your winning prompts. If you’re repeating similar tasks, keeping a simple .txt file with your most effective prompts can save time and help you stay consistent.
For multi-step activities, go one step at a time. If your tool allows uploads or multi-modal context (like ChatGPT’s 'Projects'), share your full plan upfront, but guide the AI through each step with clear references like “step 2 of 5.” Otherwise, it will start forgetting things after just a few turns, even key goals or constraints.
Thanks again for writing this, it’s a goldmine for anyone trying to use AI intentionally, not just casually. Following!
Alex, thank you so much for adding these extra tip. I’ll definitely keep this in mind for a future follow-up post. That part about keeping conversations short, I’ve fallen in that trap so many times, probably cause I’m generally struggling with being brief :)) but yeah, so true!
We have all been there.. Claude that I use for coding is simply stopping you and politely asking to start a new chat. Frustrating but helps a lot.. my guess is that it will take another year before proper engineering will eliminate this need.
Agree. It’ll definitely get fixed at some point, and with how fast things are moving, probably sooner than we expect. but i still think prompting will stay valuable. It kinda forces you to slow down and get clear on what you actually want. which honestly… is a good exercise with or without AI.
Really useful tips here!! Thanks
Thank you, Grace! Happy to hear that. Let me know if you try any of them out.
Very good post. Very practical and useful
Thank you so much, Neil, really glad it was useful! Let me know if there’s anything specific you’re working on. Always happy to explore more use cases in future posts.
Great breakdown! I’m once I started asking AI to play “an expert marketer/copywriter/consultant/ceo” etc, I started getting way better results.
I’ve used it to find and categorize faq industry tech questions for people with different job titles and it was ok for a first pass. Digging into Reddit/ etc would give bettter results.
One of my fave recent use cases though is taking pictures of all my messy, handwritten notes and uploading them. Chat turned them into legible files with key themes and takeaways in seconds. 🤯
Love that use case with the handwritten notes!
How do you usually discover these things though? Is it like you have a problem and go down the reddit rabbit hole for a solution or you just come across a tool and think “huh wonder if this could help”?
Btw, if you’ve got any stuff you’re stuck on right now or things you’re curious about, let me know, always looking for real problems to explore and turn into posts that actually help
Yes! It’s that’s bouncing of ideas. I haven’t tried building an ai agent…yet. Got any good resources you’d recommend for a non technical person?
In one of my upcoming posts I’ll break down how to create custom GPTs for your most repetitive tasks, so you don’t have to keep reprompting or copy-pasting saved prompts. I’ve learned a ton from Ethan Mollick around that. He's one of the best in this space.
About the AI agent, I haven’t nailed it yet. Still a few shots away from getting it to feel smooth and intuitive 😅 Building products with the OpenAI API is very different than using ChatGPT directly. The quality just isn’t quite the same, since ChatGPT is its own product with layers we don’t get through the "raw" API. But once I figure it out, I’ll write about it.
What kind of agent are you thinking to build?
Good idea, thanks. I haven’t tried connecting Notion with Zapier. I last tried to make a couple of zaps with something else and I forgot what it was.
I’m still waking up this morning but will keep this in mind. Thanks 🙏🏼
No rush, whenever you’ve got a clearer idea of what you’d like to automate or streamline, we can chat more over DM. Just ping me
Thanks for rec, I’ll check out Ethan.
Re the AI agent, I don’t know what I don’t know but one problem I’d like to solve is a way to automate moving the stuff chat and I develop into Notion so I can see where things are in development.
Right now chat’s building the initial board but I’ll want to add to it.
I don’t know if an agent is the right course of action. But it seems possible.
What about you?
And since you asked, I’m building a platform for companies with large commercial teams (sales reps, account managers, etc.) that helps them level up their negotiation skills through AI role-play, fully customized to each company.
It can be used in a few ways, not just training. Teams can use it to simulate real client situations, test how people handle objections, and prep before high-stakes negotiations. But also: it’s great for hiring (you can see how a candidate handles a real scenario, not just talk about it) and for onboarding new people, so they can get familiar with typical challenges, client types, and company processes before they’re thrown into the deep end.
Basically, it’s like giving them a smart practice partner that knows your business and gets better over time.
Still early stage, but that’s the direction it’s going.
That’s a GREAT idea!
I think Zapier might be the simplest way to do what you’re describing. It should let you connect ChatGPT with Notion, and you can set up what they call a “Zap” to automate the whole process. Basically, every time ChatGPT generates something new (like a draft or a plan), it can automatically send that into your Notion board. You can set it up to create new entries or update existing ones, super handy for tracking where things are in development. There are a bunch of other ways to do this too (some more customizable, if you’re up for a bit of scripting), but I feel like Zapier is the fastest way to get started without too much setup.
Yeah, I thought of Zapier but I’ve never gotten it to work. Zapier makes me feel like an idiot. 😭
Oh, sorry to hear that - what were the parts that tripped you up?
What about you? How do you find ideas to feed it?
I only wish I had enough time to test all the ideas I get :)) At first it was mostly from reading and following what a lot of creators in the space were sharing. But what really changed the game for me was working on building AI agents or tools around AI. Once I got into that, it pushed me to be way more intentional with how I prompt.
Now it’s kind of like when you’re talking to someone and ideas just start bouncing. The more I explore and play with it, the more I go - wait, what if it could help with this too?
I rarely look at Reddit. I’m just constantly exploring and experimenting. And the handwritten notes thing is a long-time bugaboo of mind - my handwriting is messy and I’ve been dancing around the same ideas for years. But Chat is dragging me out of the overthinking trap and helping me create pathways. This weekend I’ve drafted 2 newsletters, a lead magnet, and outlined an ebook which I’m going to test first as an email course - so yes, it outlined that for me too.
I’m using it as a “thinking partner” throughout my days.
This is exactly the kind of proof that shows how AI can really scale your thinking and work for you. Tbh, I barely handwrite anything these days besides my diary, but now you got me thinking I should try that with it, would be wild to see what patterns or insights it pulls out. This is what I love about it, the possibilities are endless :))