Picture this. You're staring at chat GPT, wondering if you're barely scratching the surface of what's possible. Maybe you've dabbled with generating a few emails, or perhaps you're already using it daily, but like most of us, there's that nagging feeling you could be doing so much more. At south By Southwest, Sydney last year, I remember futurist Brian Johnson dropped a truth bomb that stuck with me. He said, AI is not taking your job. It's a human who
is using AI who's taking your job. That hit home and for the past two years I have been living and breathing jen Ai, making it an essential part of my toolkit, and through my consultancy Inventium, I've seen firsthand how proper AI training that we've been doing with many
of our clients can transform the way people work. That is why I'm thrilled to bring you something special over the next four tuesdays, I am going to be joined by Inventium's resident at Genai Guru Neo Applin, and together we'll share some game changing tips that will help you level up how you use Genai. Just quickly, before we get into today's episode if you want to go defilt and learn how to work with Ai instead of worrying about being replaced by it. I have something that I
think you will love. But my consultancy Inventium, We've created the Genai Productivity System. It's a self paced online course designed to help you boost productivity and save literally hours every week by using Jenai a whole lot smarter. In just a few hours, you'll go from Jenai dabbler to Jeni expert with practical tools you can start using immediately. Head to inventium dot com, dot au, forward slash Jenai
to check it out and get started today. Welcome to How I Work, a show about habits, rituals, and strategies for optimizing your day. I'm your host, doctor Amantha Imber. So many people assume that Jenai should just get it right from the start. What is the biggest misconception about how Ai understands prompts.
The biggest misconception is actually that Jenai will get it right from the start and it will understand exactly what you really want to achieve from the words you've actually written within that prompt, so it will make an assumption trying to make it easier for you. So you need to give the context behind what you're trying to achieve and all the backgrounds so it can do a great job.
And so the misconception is unless you that it will give that great answer without you giving all that background.
So there's quite a counterintuitive approach that you said in terms of getting Ai to interview us instead of just giving it instructions. So can you tell me a bit about how this works and why it is so effective.
Yeah, it's like using a Jenai like a person. So if you've got a work colleague or you've got an expert you've brought in to do something, you don't just say, hey, look i'd like you to do this and then just let them go. There's always a conversation involved, so they're asking what you wanted to achieve, what the background is.
They'll ask you clarifying questions about it. Treating Jenai like that expert or like someone within your team changes the mindset of you, the person working with Jenai, so that it'll then have a conversation with you so you can give the information to it. That way, you don't have to feel like you're writing a massive tome before you put a prompt in so you can say, hey, look, ask me as many questions as you need so you
can do a great job. And then we've got those questions going with a conversation going, then it understands the background and it'll do a much better because of it.
So let's take a real world example. Say I'm writing a sales email to a prospect. How would you suggest that I prompt AI in order to get the best results to get this amazing sales email.
Yeah, okay, So the first thing I do is say, these are the goals that I want to achieve with this sales email. Don't go straight to the sales email content itself. The reason for that is that GENAI then knows loosely what the outcome needs to fulfill, what the goals that it needs to fulfill are. Then tell it what you're wanting to achieve. Look, I want a sales email with these and these and these information in it.
And then you'll say, hey, before you do any work, don't do any work, But before you do any work, what I want you to do is ask me is many clarifying questions that you need until you're ninety five percent confident that you can do a job right now, people ask me why ninety five percent, And it's about a problem with English language, Like if you say I want you to be kind of confident or mostly confident,
how confident is that? Whereas if you're really specific and you're saying ninety five percent confident, it means don't ask me a thousand questions, ask me enough questions until you've got a good background and you feel very confident you can do the job right, So ask me as many questions as you as you need so you're ninety five percent confident in getting the job done well.
So what kind of questions does the AI tend to ask when we use this technique.
It's a blend of kind of one oh one questions and really detailed ones, so it's clarifying on the goals and things like audience and things like that. It'll ask, but it will also ask particular specific things about the topic you've got. So if it's a sales style example we're going through, for example, it will ask questions on
the client, the client's problem. It'll may ask questions on the budget, even those kind of things, because it wants to have a full basis of all the background so it can give you the best result.
What happens if the AI asks me a question that I just don't know how to answer, what should I do?
Yeah, you got two choices there. One is you can say I'm not sure and that's enough and that's fine, there's no problems with that. The other one I use a lot is I'm not sure, but I would like some suggestions on different avenues. We can go here, and I want you to give me those suggestions, and so then it'll know that it has another conversation and other round of questions and answers for you.
So is it important to add specific areas for the AI to probe, like, you know, around what's my brand voice or industry terminology for example. That's up to you.
I'd say that for probably fifty percent of the time, I just say the ninety five percent confidence and that's enough. But other times, when I'm working on something very specific, I will get it to do questions in a very specific area, particularly if i'm so if it's a deep analysis, then it might be I want you to ask questions in this particular direction so I know that I've got
the analysis right. So or it might be for writing it will be very much on the style or tone, making sure that that matches my audience, those kind of things.
And is there a limit to how many rounds of Q and A we should go through or like, you know, because I feel like I could just keep refining and refining until we hit that ninety five percent confidence level. But how many rounds am I going through?
Up to you, And it really depends on the work you're doing. What I've found is that a lot of the Jenai will just ask that one round of questions, you answer it, and then it'll just go great and done. What I've found is if I get the responses back from the Jenai and I've got a bit of a gut feeling that potentially it may not know everything, or potentially it might be going in a different direction, what I'll do then I'll say, do you have any more questions?
So it's actually you need to prompt it more to ask you questions that it's unlikely that it'll just want to ask questions forever and ever. So it's more of a work hard to get more questions than get fewer.
Okay, So for someone listening today who wants to try this technique, what is one simple way to just get started.
Yeah, ask your prompt, and then at the bottom of you prompt, just the normal prompt you'd put in, So don't worry about the prompt, just do your normal work there, and then at the bottom you say, before you respond, ask me any questions you've got until you're ninety five percent confident in doing a great job. That's it.
I love that and I personally use this technique multiple times a day. It's completely transformed how I use Jenai. So I hope that for people listening that you have the confidence now to try and apply this today. If you're keen to learn even more Genai tricks and hacks, check out Inventium's Genai Productivity System. It's a self faced course to transform you from a Jenai dabbler to jenaipro in just a few hours. Head to inventium dot com a forward slash jnai to check it out and get
started today. If you like today's show, make sure you hit follow on your podcast app to be alerted when new episodes drop. How I Work was recorded on the traditional land of the Warrangery people, part of the kul And Nation. A big thank you to Martin Nimber for doing the sound mix,