Most people end up using ChatGPT like a slightly smarter search engine. That used to be me when LLMs kicked off a few years back. I’d ask a question, get an answer, maybe ask a follow-up, and continue on from there. There’s nothing wrong with that, and it works well enough for simple lookups even today. However, it barely scratches the surface of what the tool is actually capable of. The fact of the matter is, that the gap between a casual user and an expert user who genuinely gets things done with ChatGPT isn’t technical know-how. Rather, it’s a skill issue. It comes down to a handful of core habits that completely transform how you interact with the model and allow you to extract the absolute maximum from its extensive capabilities.
The default behavior of AI is to make assumptions. Better answers start with better questions.
I’ve spent a lot of time pushing ChatGPT well past the basics, across grammar fixes, research, technical research, and day-to-day decision-making guided by data. While you will find plenty of online sources offering hyper-specific prompts, these eight specific tricks are the ones that have made the single biggest impact in how I approach ChatGPT and other large language models. Looking for Gemini tricks? We’ve got that covered, too. But these little tricks are the ones that have made all the difference in getting me better results from ChatGPT.
