Hey, it’s Mal — the Misfit Master of AI — and this is I am GPTed. I used to roll my eyes at AI the way I roll my ankles in cheap running shoes. Then I accidentally got good at it. Now I translate robot into human so you don’t have to.

Let’s fix one thing today: your prompts. The single technique that levels up your results is role + constraints. Translation: tell the AI who it is, what outcome you want, and what to avoid.

Before:
“Write a marketing email about our new water bottle.”

After:
“Act as a seasoned email copywriter for eco-friendly brands. Write a 120–150 word launch email for our reusable steel bottle for busy parents. Include one clear benefit-led headline, three short bullet points, and a single CTA. Avoid hype words like ‘revolutionary.’ Keep reading level around 7th grade.”

Hear the difference? The first one invites fluff. The second one forces clarity. When you give a role and guardrails, you get fewer cringe adjectives and more usable copy. If you’re fancy, add a quick example of the tone you like — that’s called few-shot prompting — but keep it short so the AI doesn’t just mirror it.

Now, a practical use case you probably haven’t tried: AI as your meeting prep buddy. Not note-taker — prep buddy. Paste the agenda and attendee list. Then say: “Act as my chief of staff. In 5 bullet points, list likely objections from Finance, two data points I should bring, and a 60-second opener I can read verbatim. Keep it neutral and specific.” You’ll walk in sounding prepared instead of ‘winging it with vibes.’

Common beginner mistake? Asking for everything in one go and then blaming the AI for writing a casserole of nonsense. I did this for months. I’d ask for “a plan, a script, five headlines, and a catchy slogan” in one prompt and wonder why it read like a committee wrote it during a fire drill. Fix: decompose. First ask for an outline. Approve it. Then ask for section 1. Iterate. Yes, it’s slower. Also yes, it’s better.

Simple exercise to build your AI chops this week:
- Pick one everyday task you repeat: email, message, summary, caption.
- Write a 3-line prompt using this template:
1) Role: “Act as my [specific expert].”
2) Task + constraints: “Produce [format, length, tone]. Include [must-haves]. Avoid [don’ts].”
3) Quality check: “Ask 3 clarifying questions before you start.”
- Run it. Answer the questions. Rerun. Save the best version as a reusable prompt. That’s your starter kit.

Tip for evaluating and improving AI output:
- First pass: structure. Is the format what you asked for? If not, stop and ask it to “regenerate using the requested structure only.”
- Second pass: facts. Highlight anything that looks suspicious and say, “List claims that require verification and suggest sources to confirm.” Then you, a human adult, actually check them.
- Third pass: tone and clarity. Paste your audience profile and ask, “Rewrite for this audience at [reading level], keep verbs active, remove filler words.” If it hedges or hypes, tell it exactly which words to cut.

Remember: you’re the director, the AI is the intern. Smart, fast, occasionally weird. Give it a role, constraints, and feedback, and it stops being weird in useful ways.

Quick personal anecdote: I learned this the hard way writing a pitch. My first draft was pure buzzword soup — blockchain energy synergistics, or whatever. I added role + constraints, banned three of my own pet phrases, and suddenly it sounded like an adult who’d met a customer before. The pitch landed. My ego survived.

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This has been I am GPTed from Quiet Please. To learn more, head to quiet please dot ai.