ChatGPT's Prompting Revolution: Embracing Simplicity for High-Quality Content

It turns out that simple prompts often work best

It used to be the case that getting good content from ChatGPT required creating a sophisticated and highly constrained prompt. While that strategy still does work, you can occasionally get away with simple prompts which elicit comprehensive and sophisticated responses¹.

By “highly constrained” I mean a prompt which provides ChatGPT with a lot of background information and context about the user’s use case, expectations, etc. In other words, a highly-constrained prompt is one which attempts to constrain the universe of possible ChatGPT responses to a set of responses relevant to the prompt. And an unconstrained prompt would be a much simpler prompt, which does not include any contextual or background information. An unconstrained prompt essentially provides ChatGPT with no information about the user’s intent.

In the past, uconstrained prompts would generate insipid, and often irrelevant or inaccurate, information. But something seems to have changed lately with ChatGPT. For a wide variety of prompts, context and constraint no longer seem to matter.

As an example, let’s compare its responses to a highly-constrained prompt and an unconstrained prompt. The topic here is brainstorming with ChatGPT, and as you will see, you get equally good output from ChatGPT whether you provide it with a constrained or unconstrained prompt.

Highly-constrained prompt: I want you to help me come up with a list of tips for using ChatGPT to brainstorm. Imagine that I am a student about to do some research for an essay I have to write. Can you provide me a list of 10 tips to help me use ChatGPT to brainstorm the initial outline of the essay?

I call this a highly-constrained prompt because it provides a bunch of context: the person asking the question is a student, and she is preparing to do some research for an essay she has to write. (The prompt could be made even more constrained by providing information about the topic of her essay, etc. But adding these additional constraints doesn’t appreciably change ChatGPT’s output.) Here’s its output²:

1. Set clear objectives: Begin by defining the specific goals of your brainstorming session. What is the main topic of your essay, and what are the key points you want to explore? This will help focus your conversation with ChatGPT.

2. Break down the topic: Divide your main topic into subtopics or questions you want to answer in your essay. Provide ChatGPT with these subtopics to generate more specific and relevant ideas.

3. Use open-ended questions: When asking ChatGPT for input, use open-ended questions that encourage a wide range of ideas. This will help you uncover various perspectives on your topic.

4. Be specific: Provide ChatGPT with as much information as possible about your essay requirements, such as word count, format, and citation style. This will help generate a more tailored outline for your essay.

5. Embrace the iterative process: Use multiple iterations with ChatGPT to refine and expand upon your initial ideas. Don't be afraid to rephrase or ask follow-up questions to get more detailed information.

6. Encourage creativity: Ask ChatGPT to provide creative, out-of-the-box suggestions that might not have crossed your mind. This can help you discover fresh angles and unique approaches to your topic.

7. Organize and prioritize: As you gather ideas from ChatGPT, create a list or mind map to organize them. This will help you identify the most important points and create a logical flow for your essay.

8. Combine ideas: Look for connections between the ideas generated by ChatGPT. Combining or synthesizing ideas can help you develop a more comprehensive and coherent essay outline.

9. Verify information: While ChatGPT can provide useful information and ideas, it's important to verify the accuracy and relevance of the content. Cross-check information with reliable sources and update ChatGPT with corrected data if necessary.

10. Reflect and refine: Once you have a draft outline from ChatGPT, take time to reflect on the ideas and consider how they align with your essay goals. Refine your outline as needed, and don't hesitate to ask ChatGPT for further assistance in refining or expanding your outline.

But it turns out that, at least when you ask ChatGPT how best to use it for brainstorming, you don’t need a constrained prompt to elicit useful information from ChatGPT.

Unconstrained prompt: Tell me the best way to brainstorm with you.

Here’s its output to this much simpler, context-free, prompt³:

Brainstorming with me can be a collaborative and creative process. Here's a suggested approach to get the most out of our brainstorming session:

1. Clearly define your objective: Start by clearly articulating the problem or topic you want to brainstorm about. The more specific and focused your objective is, the better we can tailor the brainstorming session.

2. Prepare background information: Gather any relevant information or context related to the topic. This can include research, data, previous ideas or solutions, and any constraints or limitations.

3. Identify key questions: Generate a list of key questions or prompts that will help guide the brainstorming session. These questions can be used to stimulate ideas and uncover different perspectives. For example, "What are some unconventional approaches to solve this problem?" or "How can we improve efficiency in this process?"

4. Engage in a free-flowing conversation: Start the brainstorming session by sharing your thoughts, ideas, and questions with me. You can provide a brief summary of your objective and any relevant information you've gathered. Feel free to ask open-ended questions, explore different angles, and encourage me to generate ideas or provide insights.

5. Embrace divergent thinking: During the brainstorming process, encourage the exploration of a wide range of ideas without judgment or evaluation. Emphasize quantity over quality and aim for a high volume of ideas. Unconventional or seemingly wild ideas can often serve as catalysts for innovative solutions.

6. Build on ideas: As ideas emerge, expand on them by asking follow-up questions or encouraging me to explore the potential implications, feasibility, or implementation details. You can also suggest combining or modifying ideas to create new possibilities.

7. Capture and record ideas: Throughout the brainstorming session, it's essential to capture and record all the ideas generated. You can take notes or use a digital tool to document the ideas. This ensures that no valuable ideas are lost and provides a reference for future analysis and evaluation.

8. Evaluate and refine: Once the brainstorming session is complete, review the ideas together. Assess the feasibility, effectiveness, and potential impact of each idea. Consider refining, combining, or selecting the most promising ideas to further develop and implement.

Remember, the brainstorming process is a dynamic and iterative one. Feel free to adapt and modify the approach based on your specific needs and preferences. I'm here to assist you throughout the entire brainstorming process and help generate creative and innovative ideas.

This output isn’t much different from that generated by the constrained prompt. It’s equally sophisticated and comprehensive. This response only provides eight tips, and the tips are phrased differently, but you get essentially the same information that you get from the more constrained prompt.

Given this, my recommendation is to try a simple prompt first. If it does not give you a good response, iterate on the simple prompt by adding more constraints and context. You will find that the degree of prompt constraints required for good output varies, significantly, across topics. But there’s no easy way to know ahead of time which topics allow for unconstrained prompts, and which topics require a higher level of constraints. As with everything related to ChatGPT the best way to figure all of this out is through trial and error. If a prompt doesn’t generate a good response, revise it and try again. Each prompt is nearly costless to you, and as you create more prompts you become more skilled at generating prompts and anticipating ChatGPT’s reaction to them.

1. I will note here that Brian Roemmele has created the notion of “SuperPrompts”: highly complex prompts which do impressive things with ChatGPT. While there is a place for his highly complex prompts, it’s also the case that a lot of simple prompts generate great output. Knowing when a particular situation calls for a highly complex prompt or a simple one is key to becoming an expert ChatGPT user.

2. The bold formatting was added by me. Aside from that change, this is an unexpurgated quote of ChatGPT’s response to the prompt.

3. Again the only change I made to this output was to format certain parts of the response in bold.