I finally stopped wasting time writing AI prompts like I'm asking a human

For months I'd write these long, polite prompts saying 'please' and 'could you maybe' to get ChatGPT to do stuff. Then I watched a coworker in Denver just type 'Fix: grammar, make shorter' and get perfect results in 2 seconds. That's when it clicked - I was treating the AI like a person who needs small talk, not a tool. Now my prompts are like 5 words max and I get way better output. Anyone else have that aha moment where they realized they were overcomplicating their prompts?

2 comments

2 Comments

the_claire7d ago

Oh man, same here! I used to write whole paragraphs like I was emailing my boss or something. Then I realized I was just adding all this fluff that the AI doesn't even care about. It's like when people at the grocery store say "sorry" to a self-checkout machine when it beeps at them. We just default to treating everything like a person even when it's not. The polite words don't make the machine work faster you know? Once I dropped all the "please" and "thank you" stuff my outputs got way cleaner and faster too. It's honestly kind of freeing once you accept you're talking to a calculator with extra steps.

val_shah7d ago

Totally agree, it feels weird at first but then you realize you're just wasting your own time.