Have it ask back

What this technique does

Throw a short request at an AI and it will imagine the missing information and fill it in itself. That is how you get a plan written without knowing the audience or the budget. Get ChatGPT to ask questions first and that guesswork turns into questions, so you find out what you left out before the answer arrives.

It is most useful when you do not know yourself what you ought to be telling it. The minute it takes to answer two or three questions saves the time of getting the wrong thing back and rewriting from scratch.

Good example / bad example

Bad

write me a plan for a company workshop

Good

I want to put together a plan for a company workshop. Before answering, if any information that would significantly change the result is missing, ask me first. Ask at most three questions.

The bad example hands over a finished plan straight away, but with conditions like thirty attendees and a budget of a thousand decided on its own, so nearly all of it has to be rewritten. The good one starts by asking about headcount, purpose and budget, so even the first answer fits how your company actually works.

How to write it

• Before answering, if any information that would significantly change the result is missing, ask me first. Ask at most three questions.
• If there is anything you cannot judge from what I have given you, ask rather than guess.
• Show me the list of questions first, and write the text once I have answered.

Watch out

Attach it to work where the conditions are obvious, like translating or summarising, and you get questions every single time, which only slows you down. Use it where the result could go in very different directions.

Without a set number of questions it asks ten of them and the conversation turns into an interrogation. Write the ceiling in alongside — “at most three”.

Unfamiliar terms? See Aha AI: prompt

Turn on Ask first in the builder to add this sentence: “Before answering, if any information that would significantly change the result is missing, ask me first. Ask at most three questions.” Open the builder →