You’re using ChatGPT wrong
About this video
Jeff Su covers five ways people use ChatGPT wrong. Mistake 1: over-stuffing custom instructions.Because they act as an umbrella over all use cases, making them hyper-specific (values, learning style, city, preferred apps) degrades outputs elsewhere. Instead, the top box should be just three sentences: who you are professionally (he is a product marketing manager in tech), your secondary persona outside work (he creates online content), and your personality/interests (efficiency, productivity, self-improvement). For the bottom ‘how to respond’ box, take two blog posts or newsletter pieces from an articulate creator you admire and prompt ChatGPT to produce instructions matching that tone, style, humor, reading level, and delivery — then cherry-pick only the ones you like. Mistake 2: not using ChatGPT to write code for automation despite having no coding background. He had it write a Google Apps Script adding a button to his Google Docs one-on-one meeting notes that generates a new page with the date, notes bullet points, and an action items numbered list; ChatGPT also gives step-by-step setup instructions via Extensions > Apps Script, and he made a similar Slides button that standardizes speaker-notes fonts. Mistake 3: the ‘first try fallacy’ — expecting a perfect answer from the initial prompt. The fix is appending ‘ask me five questions that would improve the response you’ll be giving me,’ so ChatGPT clarifies things like whether Apps Script is acceptable or real-time conversion is needed (his example: automating currency conversion to USD in Sheets). Mistake 4: the ‘summary only shortfall’ — asking only for summaries instead of applying content to your role for actionable next steps, or holding a Q&A session with a document: he has ChatGPT play a senior business analyst with over 20 years of experience and answer targeted questions about an uploaded PDF report instead of reading it himself. Mistake 5: the ‘prompt overload paradox’ — saving endless prompts but using none. Fix: have ChatGPT act as an experienced prompt engineer and generate 10 prompts tailored to your role and objective; pick at most three to use daily, and refine just those for 2 weeks.
Key takeaways
- Keep custom instructions broad: three sentences covering your professional role, your outside-work persona, and your personality/interests
- Set your response style by having ChatGPT analyze two writing samples from a creator you admire, then cherry-pick the resulting style instructions
- Ask ChatGPT to write automation code (e.g., a Google Apps Script button for meeting notes) even with zero coding experience — it also supplies setup instructions
- End prompts with ‘ask me five questions that would improve the response you’ll be giving me’ to replace the first-try fallacy with useful clarification
- Go beyond summaries: ask how content applies to your specific role, run a Q&A session over an uploaded document, and commit to just three daily prompts for 2 weeks
Episode details: published February 6, 2024 · 9:31 long. Summary written by Self Growth Videos from the episode itself. Business results and any income figures mentioned are Jeff Su’s own claims, shared for education — they are not typical or guaranteed.
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