Asking a Better Question (to ChatGPT)
What I'm Up To (Writing), What's Occupying My Mind (CHATGPT) and What I Reflected On (TRICKING MYSELF) - all part of Allen's Friday Flights
Welcome to my Friday Flights.
Happy Friday the 13th! Welcome back to my Friday Flights where I talk about a random collection of things.
Cheers!
Past Publications
What I’m Up To
TL;DR: Fun with way too many AI tools.
The Things
Publishing one Atomic Essay per day since January 7 as part of the Ship30for30 cohort. Atomic Essays are a way for me to hone in my digital online content writing skills, and provide oddly specific takes and advice that are useful for another oddly specific person.
I bought Age of Mythology Remastered. Bring back the childhood!
Finished His Dark Materials on HBO Max, which I have to say, it has a faithful Season 3 adaption.
I got to meet a David H.M. and a Bob this week. Anyone need some bad ass blockchain professionals? I know a full-stack developer and a business & operations generalist.
I was featured on WriteWeb3 Twitter Space where the subject matter was “How to get organized as a writer”. Click the link for the twitter thread takeaway and recording.
Finished Book 5 of the Expanse Series and never did I thought I’d enjoy a Human Martian riding a Torpedo through space but here we are.
RIP to SILOG, one of my favorite Filipino Fusion restaurants. It’s still alive, but they changed their business to do traditional-style Filipino food, and it’s not as unique anymore - not at all fusion. :(
Fresh Install of Windows 11 on my PC. Realizing I do this annually…
What’s On My Mind
TL;DR: I used ChatGPT, an AI Tool, for a week, and found out a neat hack for everyone.
Asking a Better Question (to ChatGPT)
2023 is the year of Disruptive AI
In November of 2022, ChatGPT was launched by Open.Ai. To say it’s been disruptive to the technology world is putting it lightly. It will be obnoxiously in your face in every possible way, in the same energy of crypto was in your face in 2018/2019 and 2021.
Yet unlike blockchain, which is solving the world’s more boring problems (I like boring), ChatGPT is solving communication and thinking problems.
Until this week, I hadn’t really “used it” and thought of it as a bot that gives funny answers.
That’s not fair.
So I decided to intentionally use ChatGPT this week and I have to say, it’s one of the most profound technology tools I’ve ever come across, and the best part is that I, and YOU, can use that right now.
An observation I made when using the tool is this: The better your question (request), the better the answer. Yep, EY Consulting slogan.
One thing I noticed is that the more open ended your request is, and the more vague your expected output is, the worst it will perform.
Just like a human.
So here’s what I do to get very specific outcomes that are highly effective for my research needs:
Ask it to give you links
Ask it to give you X amount of t takeaways
Ask it to give you action plans or step-by-steps
When asking a question or giving a command to ChatGPT, be specific like you were giving instructions on what your end result is to your client process owner who has never once seen this in their life. By explicit where you need to be.
Here’s an example prompt of mine:
The more specific your prompt to ChatGPT, the better. You may also ask it follow up questions to expand on your first request without having to retype your prompt.
An easy, an effective, research tip is to mention “add a link” or a “yelp link” to your question.
Here’s an example of me researching food places:
Here’s another example of identifying specific tools.
What if you have a request that’s more of a convergent thought, where you need to summarize multiple different takes?
Example of doing a “Top 5” search and figuring out the difference between them.
Example of doing a comparative summary of 3 influential people, with a “I’m an idiot” sign attached.
Example of how I specifically listed the different types of demographics I’m interested in understanding better, with additional resource links.
Here is the second best prompt I’ve ever given it. I find it effective.
Enjoy.
What I Reflected On
TL;DR: Tricking Myself to Adopt Skills
The Two Conditions for Me to Adopt a Skill
I have found many ways to trick myself into adopting new skills.
I used to think that I could quickly pickup skills by “immersing myself” in the subject matter, signing up for as many newsletters and classes as I can.
Turns out, that’s a sure fire way to either quit, or get into guilty-debt with yourself on “not opening any of the stuff you bought to study”. (like my Woobles…)
So how do I not do that for things that matter?
One thing I’ve learned about myself is that I need two conditions to adopting a skill
Low energy barriers (I’m lazy, and I don’t want to spend so much energy to start. It shouldn’t be exhausting to think about. etc)
Knowing that I can story tell it (show my work)
Low Energy Barriers
When it came to running - I realized I was focused on vanity optimization metrics such as how fast or how far can I run, when in actuality what was more beneficial was setting a goal of only running 1 minute a day until slowly it became 10 minutes, then 20, and now I do a persistent 30 minutes of running a day.
In many ways, I surrendered being “the best” and “go big and go home”, and instead of making it anything remotely competitive, I simply focused on my own progression, 1 minute at a time. I couple that with making it incredibly easy to start.
After all, I just put on shoes and run a minute. Don’t even need a song yet.
Showing My Work
Something I found damaging was unintentionally thinking the “end” is only what matters. I call it the by product of retail capitalism which is to focus purely on direct outputs. When things “never finished”, I would never give it any value or credit. In 2020 I adopted the “Show Your Work” mentality, and I have to say - that’s probably the best point of view for me to do anything really.
There is significant value in showing work-in-progress, from scratch to almost finished. When it came to writing and being an “Expert in a domain area”, I realized that there is tremendous value in being the person showing how they are thinking, how they are learning something, as opposed to not saying anything at all until I feel I had a doctorate in it.
Work In Progress Note
And speaking of showing my work, I’ve ran out of allotted time I have given myself for this piece. Perhaps I’ll pick up it up later.
Cya!