Co-creating with artificial intelligence can make your work better. What used to take days can now take hours, what used to require trawling through freelancers can be created in a few clicks. For individual creators, an AI copilot makes a lot of sense. But rather than outsourcing every part of your work to ChatGPT, use it for the preparation and the ideation. Use it for those grunt work tasks that you don’t really enjoy.
Rowan Cheung is founder of The Rundown, a fast-growing AI newsletter providing an in-depth look at the latest developments in AI. In less than 4 months, The Rundown has gained a following of over 170,000 subscribers who rely on its content to stay informed about the latest advancements in artificial intelligence. Cheung is on a mission to inform millions of people about the latest advancements in AI and highlight how technology is transforming the world. His AI database, Supertools, records the best tools mentioned in the newsletter.
Cheung shares eight ChatGPT prompts to finish hours of work in seconds, to supercharge your output without breaking a sweat.
1. Explain like I’m a beginner
Perhaps there’s a concept you haven’t fully grasped, but it’s fundamental to whatever you’re writing or working on. Rather than struggle away trying to wrap your head around what it means, ask ChatGPT to find an explanation that resonates. After using this prompt, your entire project might make more sense, opening a clear picture of the way forward.
Here’s the prompt: “Explain [topic] in simple terms. Explain to me as if I’m a beginner.” What follows should be basic concepts, simple analogies and memorable ways of demystifying the field.
2. Create unique content ideas
Perhaps you’re right at the beginning of your content creation journey and you need the ideas to get you started, optimized for a certain platform. If you have your topic and you know your audience, ask ChatGPT to come up with ideas of how you can most effectively share, in such a way that the content could go viral. Discard the bad ideas and move forward with the best.
Here’s the prompt, according to Cheung: “Topic: How to [go viral on Twitter, write a viral blog post] talking about [your topic]. Come up with unique and innovative content ideas that are unconventional for this topic for the medium of [Twitter, article, LinkedIn, etc].”
3. Quiz yourself
So you’ve been learning a new subject but you’re not sure it’s sticking. In school, you’d learn and revise to pass a test. Now, you can use ChatGPT to create that test. Ask for a quiz to test your existing knowledge on a topic, to figure out your gaps and how much is left to learn. Or, ask for a quiz about a topic you know nothing about, perhaps before you begin a project on that topic, to set the scene and motivate you to conquer it.
Cheung recommends using this very simple prompt: “Give me a short quiz that tests me on [what you want to learn]” and be sure to fact-check, because the program has been known to deviate from the facts.
4. Change the writing style or tone
Imagine you wrote something in a bad mood and now it shows in the tone. Or you sent a bio in first person and someone wants it in third. Whatever you have made can be transformed with this prompt, saving you the time of doing it manually.
The prompt: “Change the writing style of the text below to [style or tone]” then paste the text, hit return and see the new version. If you need further edits, ask for them too.
5. Consult an expert
When you know there’s room for improvement in what you have written, get ChatGPT to be your trusted editor. Whether you want it to play the part of a lawyer, subject matter expert or simply a proofreader, ask for commentary from that point of view.
Cheung prompts ChatGPT in the following way: “I will give you a sample of my writing. I want you to criticize it as if you were [role]” Then add your writing, submit to ChatGPT and brace for its critique. Take the parts you agree with and ask it to rewrite the text with them in mind.
6. Train it to learn your writing
Not only can you train ChatGPT to learn your writing style, you can train it to create its own prompt to write in your style. And who better to create prompts for ChatGPT than the program itself? It will be instructing itself in its own preferred way of learning, a self-guiding method that brings you the best results.
The prompt is simple: “Analyze the text below for style, voice, and tone. Create a prompt to write a new paragraph in the same style, voice, and tone.” After adding your text, what follows will be the prompt that you can paste into future instructions to write in your style.
7. Specify the audience and purpose
Let’s imagine you’ve asked ChatGPT to write some articles on a certain topic, but it’s missing the mark. Or imagine you’ve written the content yourself but you know it could be better. Here’s where more specific prompting can bring forth more detailed work, that resonates far better with your audience
Within this prompt, specify the audience, tone and goal. Cheung’s example on an article with, “Topic: How to grow your Twitter following,” was to add, “Audience: Twitter users trying to grow their account. Tone: Inspiring Goal: Inspire audience to feel excited about growing their Twitter following and teach them how to do it in simple terms.” Now, the text will be reworked to fulfill that goal, without any further input from you.
8. List long articles in bullet points
Much of the content on the internet is simply curation. Academics and philosophers did the research and the thinking, and the rest of us are turning those vast studies into bite-sized nuggets that our audiences can consume. As with most tasks of this nature, there’s a prompt for that.
This prompt for ChatGPT, according to Cheung, is to: “Summarize this paragraph into bullet points that a beginner would understand.” You then copy a paragraph or more from any given text and see a summary. This summary might be used as a social media post, a LinkedIn carousel, or simply used to help you paraphrase in a way that suits your style and medium.
Don’t get stuck with writer’s block, chained to your desk struggling for inspiration to start, keep going or finish. Use these simple prompts to expand your reach, unlock new ideas and create more consistently. Build a habit of co-creating with AI and take steps in the right direction of prolific production.
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