Giving Good Instructions

The idea

The quality of the answer follows the quality of the ask. This is the one skill that separates people who find these assistants useful from people who find them disappointing, and it takes about twenty minutes to learn.

Good instructions carry four things:

1. Who and what. Who is this for, and what am I making? “A note to the forty members of the garden club.”
2. Background. What does it need to know that it could not possibly guess? “We meet the first Tuesday. Attendance has been dropping since spring. Most members are over sixty.”
3. An example. Paste something you liked — last month’s note, a letter you admire, two sentences in your own voice. This single move does more work than anything else you can add.
4. What done looks like. How long, what tone, what shape. “Under 150 words, warm but not cute, one short paragraph and then three bullet points.”

A set of instructions like this has a name in the tech world: a “prompt.” Now you know the lingo. It is a fancy word for what you asked for.

The analogy

You are briefing a capable new hire, and you have done that a hundred times.

You would never walk up to a new employee and say “handle the newsletter.” You would tell them who reads it, roughly how long it runs, what tone the group expects, and you would hand them last month’s copy and say “something along these lines.” Then you would let them go.

Do exactly that. The whole skill is remembering that you are briefing a person, not typing into a search box.

Watch it improve

Here is the same request written three ways.

Thin

Write a note about the neighborhood picnic.

What comes back: a cheerful, generic announcement with a made-up date and a slightly hollow tone. Nothing is wrong with it. Nothing in it is yours either.

Better

Write a short note to my neighbors announcing our block picnic on Saturday the 14th at 4 p.m. in the Millers’ back yard. Keep it under 120 words and friendly.

What comes back: the right details, the right length, a reasonable tone. You could send this. You would probably rewrite two sentences first.

Good

Write a short note to my neighbors announcing our block picnic.

Details: Saturday the 14th, 4 p.m., the Millers’ back yard. Bring a dish to share; we provide drinks and chairs.

Background: about thirty households, mostly families and retired couples. Several new neighbors moved in this spring and I want them to feel genuinely invited rather than merely informed.

Tone: warm and plain, the way a neighbor talks over a fence. Not an advertisement.

Length: under 120 words. Shape: one short paragraph, then the details as a short list.

Here is how I write, so you can match it: [paste two sentences of your own]

What comes back: something you send as it stands, or close to it. The difference between the first version and this one is four minutes of typing.

Keep talking

The first answer is a draft, not a verdict. You are allowed to keep going, in ordinary words:

• “Shorter.”
• “Warmer. That reads like a form letter.”
• “Take out the second paragraph.”
• “Give me three versions and let me pick.”
• “Now write it as though I am speaking to one person, not thirty.”

Most people stop after the first answer and decide the whole idea is overrated. The second and third pass are where the useful version shows up.

One more move worth knowing

If you are not certain how to describe what you want, hand the problem back:

Before you write anything, ask me five questions that would help you write this well.

A good assistant asks sharp questions, and answering five sharp questions is often quicker than writing the brief yourself.

Next: getting it to hand you a finished thing instead of a conversation about the thing.