Hey,
Most people using ChatGPT or Claude are burning 30 minutes on drafts that need a full rewrite.
Last Thursday, 12 of us spent an hour fixing that in the first REPOSITION workshop. One technique stood out. It cuts prompt-and-pray down to prompt-and-ship.
Here's the pattern that kept coming up when I reviewed what people actually type into AI:
Write me a status update for my project.
That's not a prompt. That's a wish. Here's what works instead. Three layers, every time:
Layer 1: Context. Who you are, what you're working on, what you've already tried.
Layer 2: Task. Exactly what you need, in what format, for what audience.
Layer 3: Constraints. What to avoid, what tone to use, how long the output should be.
Before/after from the workshop:
Bad: "Write me a lesson about photosynthesis."
Good: "I teach 8th grade biology. My students struggle with light-dependent reactions. Create a 30-minute lesson plan with a hands-on activity. Include a materials list and 3 assessment questions."
Same topic. The second one produces something you can use on Monday morning.
Copy this, fill in the brackets, paste it:
I am a [role] at [company type]. I'm working on [project].
>
I need you to [write/analyze/summarize/recommend] [exact deliverable].
>
Constraints: [tone], [length], [format], [what to avoid].
Try it on one thing this week that normally takes you 30 minutes to draft. If it doesn't get you to a usable first draft in under 5 minutes, reply and tell me what went wrong.
"Build Your First AI Workflow" goes live May 28 at 6 PM CEST. We'll take the prompting patterns from Workshop 1 and turn them into a working automation. Hands-on, 60 minutes, no experience needed.
If you've ever copy-pasted code files into ChatGPT, stop. Claude Code is a terminal tool that reads your entire project automatically. It understands your codebase, your dependencies, your tests. No pasting. No context limits. It's what I use for everything from debugging to building entire features.
Until next week,
Merryl