TLDR;
This video provides an updated guide to effective ChatGPT prompting techniques for 2025. It covers best practices, prompt engineering strategies, and practical applications. The guide includes tips on specifying output formats, assigning roles to ChatGPT, using iteration loops, and leveraging projects for personalized interactions. It also shares prompts for simplifying life and business, upgrading hobbies and skills, enhancing critical thinking, and utilizing secret ChatGPT modes.
- Best practices for prompting include specifying output formats, assigning roles, providing detailed instructions, and using iteration loops.
- Projects allow for custom instructions and file uploads, enabling personalized interactions.
- Prompt engineering techniques include tree-of-thought exploration, self-consistency voting, and reflection/self-critique loops.
Intro [0:00]
The video introduces an updated ChatGPT prompting guide for 2025, focusing on current best practices and effective techniques. It promises to share practical strategies and insights to help users maximize their ChatGPT experience. The content aims to provide valuable information without wasting the viewer's time.
Best Practices for Prompting Like a Pro [0:36]
To get the desired output from ChatGPT, it's important to provide specific details on the desired format, such as a checklist, table, JSON, or YouTube script. Assigning a role or persona to ChatGPT, such as "financial advisor" or "drunken pirate," can influence its responses. Specificity in instructions is crucial; instead of asking for general ideas, request "five video title ideas under 50 characters that focus on FOMO." Iteration loops, where the model critiques and improves its own drafts, can also enhance output quality.
How I Personally Use ChatGPT [2:14]
The presenter uses ChatGPT primarily through projects, which are subfolders containing chats with their own files and custom instructions. For instance, a "new video game" project includes instructions for ChatGPT to act as an expert game designer and developer inspired by roguelike games. This setup allows for more context-aware and relevant responses. Projects can also incorporate uploaded files for additional context. Examples include projects for journaling, health coaching, and explaining complex topics.
Prompts That Simplify Life and Business [11:13]
The video shares prompts to simplify daily tasks, including wellness habits and content creation. One prompt lists three powerful wellness habits for better sleep, digestion, and mental clarity, broken down into morning, midday, and evening routines for a busy person. Another prompt turns a story into a 10-slide carousel with a story arc and built-in engagement prompts. The presenter also uses ChatGPT for recipes, avoiding the unnecessary life stories often found on recipe websites.
Prompts That Upgrade Your Hobbies & Skills [14:15]
ChatGPT can help users level up their hobbies by providing structured learning plans and quizzes. One prompt generates a 30-day plan for learning a new hobby, such as aerial drone photography, outlining daily tasks and goals. Another effective prompt quizzes users on a topic, such as the history of AI, to reinforce learning.
Critical Thinking Prompts That Reveal Blind Spots [16:30]
ChatGPT can be used for critical thinking and self-reflection. One prompt asks, "I believe blank. What hidden assumptions am I making? What evidence might contradict this?" Another prompt helps evaluate decisions by asking for compelling arguments against a plan. Additionally, ChatGPT can identify potential second and third-order consequences of a decision. The model's memory of past conversations allows it to point out personal blind spots.
Secret ChatGPT Modes (Reddit 'Cheat Codes') [24:33]
The video shares several "cheat codes" or shortcuts for prompting ChatGPT, found on the chat GPT prompt genius subreddit. These include "ELI5" (explain like I'm five), "TLDDR" (summarize long text), "jargonize" (add more jargon), "humanize" (tone down the jargon), and "Fineman technique" (for understanding complex topics). These shortcuts simplify prompting and allow for quick adjustments to the output.
Prompt Engineering Techniques [26:19]
The video transitions into more advanced prompt engineering techniques to maximize ChatGPT's capabilities.
Prompt Engineering Techniques: Tree‑of‑Thought Exploration [26:33]
Tree-of-thought exploration involves exploring multiple potential branches for solving a problem before finalizing a solution. For example, when addressing job loss due to AI, the model outlines three distinct solution branches, evaluates their quality, and justifies the choice of the best option.
Prompt Engineering Techniques: Self‑Consistency Voting [28:50]
Self-consistency voting involves generating multiple independent reasoning paths for a task and then voting on the final answer with majority support. For instance, when training AI without stealing the hard work of others, the model generates five independent reasoning paths and chooses the answer with the most support, explaining the winning rationale.
Prompt Engineering Techniques: Reflection / Self‑Critique Loop [29:58]
The reflection self-critique loop involves drafting an answer to a question, identifying flaws and gaps in the response, and then fixing those issues to produce an improved final answer. For example, when asked about the causes of climate change, the model identifies flaws in its initial draft, such as a lack of evidence and oversimplification, and revises the answer with additional information.
Prompt Engineering Techniques: Automation‑Workflow Finder [31:27]
To identify opportunities for automation, ChatGPT can act as a senior automation consultant. It asks diagnostic questions to uncover repetitive tasks and then ranks the top five automation opportunities, suggests the ideal tooling stack, and provides a step-by-step implementation plan.
Creative Mode: Build Your Own World [33:15]
ChatGPT can be turned into a world engine to create interactive stories. By giving it a genre and instructions to maintain a dynamic world state, narrate scenes, and offer branching choices, users can engage in a text-based game that unfolds in real time.
Final Thoughts [35:36]
The video concludes by emphasizing that the techniques shared are meant to inspire further exploration and experimentation with ChatGPT. The goal is to empower users to improve decision-making, automate workflows, and enhance their lives and businesses through effective prompting.