Most people use ChatGPT the same way every time — open it, type a question, read the answer, close it. Which is fine. But it’s roughly equivalent to using a professional kitchen to make toast.
The prompts below aren’t clever tricks. They’re practical starting points that produce reliably useful outputs across situations that come up constantly in real work. Save the ones that apply to you. Adjust the details. Use them repeatedly.
For Thinking and Decision-Making
1. The steel man prompt «I’m considering [decision]. Make the strongest possible case against it — not a weak objection, but the argument someone who genuinely opposes this would find most compelling.»
Forces you to confront the best version of the counterargument before committing.
2. The assumption audit «Here’s my plan: [plan]. List every assumption this depends on being true, ranked from most to least critical.»
Decisions fail at the assumptions level more often than the execution level. This surfaces them before they become problems.
3. The second-order effects check «If [decision or change] happens, what are the likely second and third-order consequences that wouldn’t be immediately obvious?»
Useful before any significant change — in a business, a product, a personal situation.
For Writing
4. The voice-preserving editor «Edit this for clarity and tightness. Cut anything redundant, fix anything confusing, but don’t change my voice or add formality I haven’t used. Here’s the text: [text]»
The explicit instruction to preserve voice is what separates useful editing from outputs that sound like everyone else’s AI content.
5. The reader’s first impression «Read this as someone encountering it for the first time with no prior context. What’s confusing, what’s missing, and what would make you stop reading?»
Particularly useful for anything that will be read by people who don’t share your assumptions about the subject.
6. The subject line test «Write ten subject lines for this email. Range from direct and professional to attention-grabbing and informal. Here’s the email: [email]»
Ten options in fifteen seconds, covering more range than most people generate in twenty minutes of staring at a blank field.
For Learning
7. The expert explainer «Explain [concept] as if I already understand [related field] but have never encountered this specific topic. Skip the basics, focus on what’s non-obvious.»
Cuts through beginner-level explanations when you just need the parts you’re actually missing.
8. The gap finder «Here’s what I understand about [topic]: [your explanation]. What have I got wrong, what have I oversimplified, and what important aspects am I missing?»
Writing out your current understanding and asking for corrections is one of the fastest ways to identify exactly where the gaps are.
For Work Tasks
9. The meeting debrief «Here are my notes from a meeting: [notes]. Extract: the decisions made, the open questions, the action items and who owns them, and anything that was discussed but not resolved.»
Takes disorganised notes and turns them into something actually usable in under a minute.
10. The difficult conversation planner «I need to have a conversation with [person] about [situation]. My goal is [outcome]. Draft three different opening approaches — one direct, one indirect, one that leads with their perspective rather than mine.»
Having options going into a difficult conversation changes how it starts. How it starts usually determines how it ends.
How to Get the Most From These
None of these prompts are magic in their current form. The variable in square brackets is where the real work happens — the more specifically you describe your actual situation, the more precisely the output fits it.
Save them somewhere accessible. A notes app, a text expander, a pinned document. The prompt you have to search for is the one you don’t use.