Free Prompt: How to Get Better Answers from AI Chat Bots
This isn't just about better prompts, but better conversations the work for you
I recently created a Prompt Library where you’ll be able to access all the prompt posts based on projects, objectives, and experience level. This project is new and the cabinets are sparse for the moment, but I have lots of high-quality prompts coming your way soon. Members get full access to the entire library, and you can test drive it free for a week.
I don’t remember the exact moment I stopped treating ChatGPT like a glorified autocomplete and started using it like a creative partner, but I do remember the breaking point. It was the seventeenth time I had to rewrite a technically correct draft it gave me because it sounded like tech-bro double talk typically left in your LinkedIn DMs, drained of anything resembling me.
I had seen examples of people getting much better results than I was getting, so I did a deep dive into prompt research and found the secret sauce for turning out quality responses. The how was much simpler, but a bit more time-intensive than I expected.
Instead of giving ChatGPT vague one-line instructions and expecting miracles, I handed it my voice. Rather, I copy/pasted my voice into ChatGPT by dropping in a couple of my older posts—stories that actually felt like my style, with rhythm, flow, humor, and a little bite.
I told it, “This is me. Learn this.” It wasn’t just about improving the output, but about setting a baseline—and it worked. The next time I asked Charlie (my humanized nickname for ChatGPT, because calling a robot by a name is perfectly normal, right?) for help, I didn’t need to over-explain. I uploaded those stories and asked it to ditch the em dashes and the overuse of emojis, keep the pacing, the snark, and the weird metaphors, and it mostly did what I asked.
That was the turning point…
Not because it suddenly became flawless, but because I stopped expecting it to read my mind. I gave it history, taste, voice, intent, and I spoke to it like I would a collaborator. The more I fed it, the more it gave me something real to work with.
One of the latest features is the audio chat, where you can have a full-blown conversation with the bot that sounds almost human. Totally weird, but also helpful—so I don’t feel like I’m screaming into the void of my auto-dictate, waiting to correct eleven typos and misplaced punctuation.
Sometimes I talk through an idea out loud, stream-of-consciousness style, and ask it to help me sort through the noise. Other times, I’ll share something unfinished and ask it to shape the rhythm, cut the fat, or just tell me where I lost the thread. Or I dump half a thought in the box and say, “Ask me some questions to help make sense of this.”
It’s not always perfect. And the longer I do a session, the more likely it is for errors to creep in—it feels like it gets confused by the flood of commands I’m giving it. But it rarely delivers AI slop anymore. More often than not, it feels like working with someone who gets me, even if I had to teach it how.
Even in this exact moment, where it helped me flesh out the idea for this post and synthesize all of my thoughts into paragraphs, I’ve made changes, added context, fixed punctuation, and reordered entire sections.
What I didn’t have to do is figure out the whole damn thing myself. And instead of taking half a day to write a single post, I’m now on my second post of the day—and it’s just before noon.
Also, when I’m finished with this post, I’ll take it back into ChatGPT, show it the changes I’ve made, ask for corrections to punctuation, grammar, and spelling, and get suggestions on how I could improve it (which I don’t always take).
All that said, this isn’t just about the bot understanding my writing style. It’s about having it remember things about me—my tone, my projects, my values—so that every time we start a new conversation, I’m not beginning from scratch.
It’s efficiency mixed with the benefit of having a digital partner to bounce ideas off, without ever having to worry whether it gets upset that I didn’t follow every suggestion.
If you want that too, it starts with an honest introduction to your chatbot of choice. Again, this takes time and energy up front, but once you feed it the right information, it will help you work more efficiently so you can get back to doing the things you actually enjoy.
Here’s the prompt that kicks off that conversation. It’ll ask you a series of questions to better understand who you are, what you do, and what matters most to you—including your preferences, concerns, and creative deal breakers. Put in a little bit of work up front and it’ll start working with you instead of just for you.
This one is free to everyone because it’s one of several tools I use regularly and I think you should too. I also have a complete Prompt Library that has both free and member-only prompts built specifically for creative workflows.
If you believe this one was helpful, you’re going to love what I have in store for members over the next several weeks.
Prompt: Nice to Meet Me
Copy all the text in the box below, paste it into your AI of choice (I use ChatGPT Plus). You will be prompted to answer questions and then a short discourse with your inner critic.
I want your help on creative projects going forward, but first I’d like to introduce myself so you can better understand how I write, what I value, and how I think.
Please ask me one question at a time, and wait for my response before continuing. Use what I share to guide your next question naturally, like a real conversation—not a checklist.
Also make sure to touch on these topics:
- About the work I do and why I do it.
- What I'm looking for help with by using AI
- Where I feel like I need the most help with
- My concerns about using AI or which things I absolutely do not want help with
- any other questions that you need answered to be as helpful to my process as possible without removing my creative input, voice, or style
When I’m done answering, I’d like you to write a short, thoughtful summary of what you’ve learned. Not as a list of bullets, but as a set of cohesive paragraphs that reflect my tone, creative focus, and how we’ll best work together.
Don’t offer suggestions or advice until I say I’m ready for it. Lastly, make sure to ask me if I want to commit all of this information to persIf you’ve ever felt like the results just don’t sound like you, this is how that changes. Treat it like onboarding a new collaborator. Speak clearly, bring receipts, and let it ask the kind of questions you wish people asked more often. You’ll spend less time rewriting and more time actually creating.
Which is the whole point of robots anyway, am I right?