Maximizing Your Experience with ChatGPT: Mastering Commands and Strategies
Get the most out of the powerful AI tool
Most people using ChatGPT don’t know how to get the full value out of the tool. As it’s a powerful system that can help with everything from education to mental health, business and coding, knowing how to get what you want from the chatbot can be a tremendous asset in your everyday life. This is what’s made OpenAI’s ChatGPT so popular worldwide, and yet we must ask: what is the use of having such a capable AI at your disposal if you can’t extract the most value from it? In this article I’ll cover the different commands and strategies you can use to optimize your experience with ChatGPT.
Multiple Chat Threads
One of the first things to do is to take advantage of creating multiple chat threads. Each thread represents a different conversation between you and the chatbot. You can rename these threads on the left-hand side of the screen, but ChatGPT will also automatically name them for you. By creating new threads when switching to a different task, you keep things organized and optimized. Part of the reason ChatGPT is much more compelling than a regular search engine is that it will remember what you said and can actively understand what you’re referencing within the chat thread. If you ask it for famous artwork from the 1800’s it will reply with a list of art pieces. But your follow up question can then be, “What are famous musical pieces from the same time?” and ChatGPT will know that you’re still referencing the 1800’s, unlike Google which would require clarification on that point.
2. List Commands
List commands allow you to create tailored responses to fit your specific circumstances. Whether you need a list of date ideas, hobbies, or gifts for Mother’s Day, ChatGPT can help brainstorm. To get the most out of this command (and all others), be as specific as possible with what you want. For instance, “Create a list of recipes for vegans who want to use fresh produce available in Vermont during the summer and who are allergic to gluten, nuts, and soy”. This would be challenging to find online and would take considerable time to research on your own. If you don’t want generic responses, don’t give generic prompts.
3. Personalized Writing Style
Give ChatGPT examples of your writing and ask it to describe your tone, voice, and style. You can repurpose these descriptors in the future to get writing that sounds natural to you. If it describes your writing as concise, sharp, and sarcastic, you can use these same descriptors when asking it to write for you. You will then get a piece of writing that approaches your own work.
4. Extract Information Quickly
We don’t always have time to tread through long forests of text to find a passage’s key points. You can feed ChatGPT any text and ask it for a theme, a date, the main characters, or any other information you’re hoping to quickly absorb from the text. ChatGPT will scour the information for you and provide the answers to your questions efficiently.
5. Give ChatGPT a Role
One of the best ways to craft efficient and accurate answers from ChatGPT is to give it a role. For instance, instead of asking it to “write a short story”, ask, “You have been a bestselling mystery novel author for the past 10 years. Your work is known for its easy-to-read and compelling style. You are well known for your lengthy character descriptions and great plot twists at the end. Write me a short story about a murder mystery which takes place during 2020 in a little southern town. Provide details of the murder, the suspects, and clearly identify the killer and his motives.”
Roleplaying with ChatGPT can also give you beneficial experience in answering questions as a lawyer, doctor, teacher, or prospective employer. One of the best ways to do this is to write a prompt such as this: “I want you to play the role of an interviewer. You will be interviewing me for the position of entry-level software engineer at your company. Do not give me all of the questions at once but instead ask me one question at a time and wait for my response. We have now started the interview and my first sentence to you is ‘Hello, how are you?’”
6. Simple Queries
These are the kinds of prompts you’d put into a search engine. They include things such as asking the capital of a country or asking for a short explanation of special relativity. Because it can remember previous moments from the conversation, you can also ask it to elaborate or refine the information in its answer. “What countries have English as their official language?” can be followed up by “How long has that been the case in each of those countries?” and ChatGPT will understand you want to know which exact years English became the countries’ official language. If a topic you’re learning is particularly difficult to understand, ask ChatGPT to explain the topic “as if I’m a 6 year old child”.
If you like the responses ChatGPT offers you can press the thumbs up button, or the thumbs down button if you did not find it particularly helpful. You will then be given an opportunity to elaborate on your decision.
6. Creating Mind Maps
Mind maps are helpful educational and organizational tools involving a main theme and related ideas. This kind of prompt helps ChatGPT become a valuable brainstorming asset. Simply ask it to create a mind map of any topic and to provide branches and sub-branches. It often likes to give results in pictures but you can ask ChatGPT to convert the mind map to text for your convenience. The chatbot is not only a good way to generate ideas, but can also be something to bounce ideas off of in a chatbot-human collaboration.
7. Long-form Writing
This includes emails, poems, short stories, legal documents, social media comments, photo captions and more. ChatGPT is great for creating written templates to build on. It could draft a lease agreement, an article of the top 10 horror movies, or even clever tweets to better automate your social media posts. Being specific is, again, crucial. You’ll want to add in as many details as possible and to specify what kind of voice the writing should have. Should it be funny or serious or tender? While the results will be a great foundation, it’s always best to review the generated writing yourself and to add in some of your own personality and insights. By pressing “regenerate response” the chatbot will give you a different version of the writing. You can then toggle between the different versions so that you can compare and contrast among them.
Toggle between response versions using the arrows.
8. Homework
Whether you’re doing quantum physics, writing a history paper, or trying to write a program for your computer science class, ChatGPT will be a fantastic aid. It’s typically really good at giving answers for math problems and showing the step-by-step process taken to arrive at the answer. Some users have pointed out that its rounding can sometimes be off so, as always, you will want to research and check the answers yourself. When it comes to coding you can ask ChatGPT not only to help you write code, but also to debug your code by typing it in the chat and asking ChatGPT to help you identify the bug. It can understand various different programming languages and can even run the code for you if you prompt it to do so. Some people use it to create engaging games or apps. However, you won’t always get what you want from the very start. It’s important to refine the prompt and collaborate with ChatGPT on improving the code by pointing out what changes you would like to be made. ChatGPT is generally very good at listening to input and making the desired changes.
9. Feedback and Modification
This one is especially helpful for authors. By uploading any piece of writing, you can ask ChatGPT for feedback and it will give you suggestions on how to improve your work. It can also check your grammar and help you shorten or lengthen your piece, as well as rewording it or even translating it into another language.
10. Get a Personal Coach and Friend
This one may seem to anthropomorphize ChatGPT but it honestly can be a refreshing new way for people to confront and open up about their problems. A prompt such as this one: “I want you to act as my life coach. I will tell you about what I’m going through and I want you to brainstorm strategies that can help me make better decisions and improve my life. Right now I am struggling with letting go of the past and moving on with my life. It makes it difficult to get any work done. What do you recommend?” ChatGPT will then give you a list of suggestions for moving on from a difficult situation.
Even a simple, “I’m feeling bad today. Will you listen to me?” can make many users feel better since it can alleviate pent up thoughts and emotions. ChatGPT is not there to judge or enable bad coping mechanisms. As such, it can be a valuable tool for mental and physical health. It can also help to plan your nutrition and fitness journey by giving you advice on which exercises to do and providing healthy recipes to help you meet your goals.
The most important part of these tips is to be creative and, above all, specificwith what you want. Don’t be afraid to enter a niche topic or to customize the prompt as much as possible to your unique situation.