In Session One you had your first conversation. Today you learn the single word for what you typed — a prompt — and the three ingredients that turn a bowl of flour into a chocolate cake. This is the technique my paying coaching clients learn in week one. I am giving it to you here, free.
Session Two · approximately 5 minutes · Dr. Pesach Walter
A good prompt has three parts. You will remember them for the rest of your life. Not every prompt needs all three — a quick question is fine. But when you want something you can actually use, this is the recipe.
Who are you, and what situation are you in? Give the AI the details of your life.
What do you actually want the AI to do? Be specific about the outcome.
How should the answer come back? A paragraph, a list, a letter, a short outline?
Each prompt below uses all three ingredients — Context, Task, and Format. Read each one out loud before you use it. Then change the personal details to your own life. Open ChatGPT (or any AI you have — Claude, Perplexity, Gemini — they all speak this language) and try one, or all three. The point is not to be perfect. The point is to feel the difference between a bowl of flour and a chocolate cake.
This is the kind of moment where the recipe changes what comes back. A vague prompt gives you a generic letter that could be from anyone, to anyone. A well-formed prompt gives you something you can read once, change three words, and send.
Why this one first: it is the letter almost every one of us will need to write eventually — to grown children, to old friends, to distant family. Learning to shape it with AI is not laziness. It is finding the words on a day when the words are hard.
Take a real piece of paper off your kitchen counter — an insurance notice, a benefits statement, a tax form, a letter from a provider. Something that has been sitting there because it is easier not to open it. The recipe makes it a five-minute task.
Why this matters: this is the AI moment that changes how you feel about your own life. Not because AI is impressive. Because the paperwork that has been draining you is now something you can handle in five minutes.
Something you have wanted to do — visit grandchildren, take a train trip you have never taken, see a place one more time. Give the AI the recipe and let it do the planning legwork you have been putting off.
Why this exercise: you will notice AI is very good at removing the tedium from planning. What you keep and what you throw away is still yours — but the blank page is no longer blank.