AI for Everyone · Part Two · Free · No signup

How to ask.

If your first answer was vague and a little bland, that was not the tool failing. It was the question. Three small additions fix it permanently: role, goal, and format.

Part 2 · 3:19 · captions available · Dr. Pesach Walter, Ed.D.

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Role, goal, format

Not every question needs all three. But when you want something you can act on this week, this is the shape.

Role

Who do you want it to be? A discharge nurse, a patient writing teacher, an academic advisor. You are not pretending. You are aiming.

Goal

Not the topic — the outcome. Not “tell me about downsizing,” but the decision you are actually trying to make.

Format

The shape of the answer. Five bullets, a one-page letter, a table with three columns, questions to bring to your doctor.

Practice · Part 2

Do this today.

Read each step, then actually do it. Ten to twenty minutes. The point is not to be perfect — it is to finish having done it yourself.

The template

Copy this and fill in the blanks

Four lines. Write them out the first several times, until the shape becomes automatic.

You are [role].
My situation is [your age, background, constraints, what is already true].
My goal is [the decision or outcome you want help with].
Give me the answer as [bullets / a table with these columns / a one-page letter / questions to ask].

Example One

The weak version, so you can hear the difference

Send this first. Read what comes back. It will be pleasant and forgettable.

Tell me about returning to school later in life.

Example Two

The same question, built properly

Now send this one. Same subject, completely different answer — and this one you could act on before the week is out.

You are an academic advisor who works with adults over sixty. I am sixty-eight, I have a bachelor's degree from 1979, and I am considering a master's program in history. My goal is to decide whether this is realistic in the next year. Give me a table with two columns: what would likely be difficult for me, and what would likely be easier for me than for a twenty-five-year-old. Then give me five questions to ask an admissions office.

Notice what changed: a role, real details, a decision to help with, and an exact shape. Sixty-eight years old. Degree from 1979. History. One year. Details are not clutter — they are the entire difference between generic and useful.

Example Three

A harder conversation

Change the names and details to your own. This is the kind of thing the template was made for.

You are an experienced family mediator. My situation: I am seventy-one, I have three adult siblings, and our mother needs more help at home than she will admit. Two of my siblings live out of state. My goal is to raise this at Thanksgiving without it becoming an argument. Give me an opening I could actually say out loud, in under sixty seconds, plus three things I should avoid saying.

Your turn

Build one prompt of your own, then revise once

Take something you genuinely want to think through this month — a decision, a letter, a conversation you are dreading, a plan. Write all four lines. Send it. Then ask for exactly one revision.

“Now make it shorter.”
“Now assume I only have twenty hours a week.”
“Now write the email for me.”

A first answer is a first draft. You are the editor, and editors keep asking.

The four lines

Use your browser's print command to put this page on paper. The video and buttons will not print — only what you need.

You are … (role)
My situation is … (details, constraints, what is true)
My goal is … (the outcome, not the topic)
Give me the answer as … (the shape you want)

“You are not learning a technology. You are learning a new language of asking — and that is a very old skill.”

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