How to get the most out of ChatGPT in 2024

By Jeremy Caplan

This article is republished with permission from Wonder Tools, a newsletter that helps you discover the most useful sites and apps. Subscribe here.

ChatGPT is the most powerful AI tool. It’s useful for dozens of daily tasks—from idea generation to editing suggestions.

To get ChatGPT to do what you want, you have to give it clear, detailed instructions. Use a framework I call POP to consistently get useful responses:

    Persona: Tell ChatGPT what role you want it to play. That helps ensure it brings a useful perspective to whatever you want it to do.

      Examples: “Act as an expert podcast interviewer adept at developing thoughtful, engaging questions.” Or “Act as an experienced college educator skilled at providing simple, scaffolded instructions to students who face executive functioning challenges.”

      Why this matters: When it knows the perspective you’re seeking, the AI can provide you with a more relevant response. 
    Objective: Give ChatGPT a clear summary of what you’re seeking. Be as specific as possible and include as much context as you can.

      Examples: “Suggest 7 key questions helpful to consider when making a decision about X in the context of Y”; “Provide potentially engaging alternative headlines/subject lines/descriptions for a story/email/video that addresses X, Y, and Z and makes the following key points: A, B and C.”
    Parameters: Provide guidelines that ensure ChatGPT’s response is useful.

      Examples: If you want headlines that are four words or less, say so. If you want a response worded to be understood by an 11-year-old who speaks only Italian, explain that. If you are brainstorming for learning activities that take only 20 minutes and are suitable for a particular age group or subject matter, specify those constraints.

      Provide models: Share examples of what you’re looking for to help the AI generate a great response. How? Toward the end of your prompt add an example of what you consider to be a good headline, clear explanation, or whatever else you’re focusing on so the AI has a clearer sense of your preferences.

Bottom line: If you tell ChatGPT what success looks like, you’re more likely to get a relevant, valuable response. 

Here’s what ChatGPT is most useful for:

Language

ChatGPT is a language engine, not a knowledge engine. That means it’s at its best when you ask for words, phrases, analogies, explanations, or examples. Here’s a few other elements it’s especially good at:

    Descriptions, headlines, and subject lines. Given a prompt, it will instantly provide you with a strong set of words or phrases in your language or nearly any other. Direct it to be playful or professional, concise or creative to get the kind of wording you want.

    Explanations. It can break down a concept in many different ways, at any level of complexity, to help you understand it or communicate it to others.

    Analogies, riddles, jokes. Coming up with games, puzzles, icebreakers, quiz questions, and other playful language can be time-consuming and challenging. AI can help with these, framing concepts in inventive ways.

    Editing. Try using AI on a clunky writing passage. Ask for help rewording a phrase or sentence to be more concise or clear, or to sound more confident, casual, or professional. Alternative: DeepL Write can also help with this.

Ideas

Trained on millions of examples of documents, books, and resources of all shapes and sizes, ChatGPT can act as a helpful assistant in generating starting ideas or sample material to stimulate your thinking.  

    Questions to ask in an interview or a decision-making process 

    Topics to cover in a presentation or discussion 

    Ways to organize a project or presentation for clarity, consistency, or to meet standard expectations in a particular professional context  

    Pitfalls to avoid in whatever you’re focusing on

Perspectives

One of the most useful ways to use ChatGPT is to seek out blind spots. Share an idea, an outline or paragraph, or anything else you’re working on. Prompt the AI to note what you might accidentally have left out or what perspective you may have unintentionally ignored.

    Critic. What would a critic say is missing from this? What is the weakest element? 

    Accessibility. Who might find this confusing or incomprehensible? Which aspect of this might not be accessible to some portion of my colleagues or community? Who might be left out? 

    Creativity. What are three wildly different approaches someone might take to this project or presentation? What are surprising elements that could potentially be added or considered? What boring or predictable elements could be removed? 

What it’s not: ChatGPT isn’t a replacement for Google or specialized research tools. If you’re looking for sources or factual information, look elsewhere. ChatGPT-4 now has access to Bing’s search engine and can provide web citations, so it’s less out of date than it used to be.

Alternative: If you’re looking for links or citations, try a new service like Perplexity, which provides web links, citations, and AI summarization.

Caveats

    Cost. You need a $20/month ChatGPT Pro subscription to access advanced features. These include plug-ins and the new Custom GPTs, as well as DALL-E 3 for generating images. If that expense isn’t feasible, access ChatGPT’s basic AI capabilities for free, or try one of the free alternative services below.

    Privacy. Be careful about inputting private or sensitive information. OpenAI may use data, images, or text you submit to train its AI models.

Alternatives to ChatGPT

Lots of other AI services have launched since ChatGPT’s public launch in November 2022. Here are several worth exploring.

This article is republished with permission from Wonder Tools, a newsletter that helps you discover the most useful sites and apps. Subscribe here.

    Persona: Tell ChatGPT what role you want it to play. That helps ensure it brings a useful perspective to whatever you want it to do.

      Examples: “Act as an expert podcast interviewer adept at developing thoughtful, engaging questions.” Or “Act as an experienced college educator skilled at providing simple, scaffolded instructions to students who face executive functioning challenges.”

      Why this matters: When it knows the perspective you’re seeking, the AI can provide you with a more relevant response. 
    Objective: Give ChatGPT a clear summary of what you’re seeking. Be as specific as possible and include as much context as you can.

      Examples: “Suggest 7 key questions helpful to consider when making a decision about X in the context of Y”; “Provide potentially engaging alternative headlines/subject lines/descriptions for a story/email/video that addresses X, Y, and Z and makes the following key points: A, B and C.”
    Parameters: Provide guidelines that ensure ChatGPT’s response is useful.

      Examples: If you want headlines that are four words or less, say so. If you want a response worded to be understood by an 11-year-old who speaks only Italian, explain that. If you are brainstorming for learning activities that take only 20 minutes and are suitable for a particular age group or subject matter, specify those constraints.

      Provide models: Share examples of what you’re looking for to help the AI generate a great response. How? Toward the end of your prompt add an example of what you consider to be a good headline, clear explanation, or whatever else you’re focusing on so the AI has a clearer sense of your preferences.
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