Treat It Like a Brilliant New Colleague Who Knows Nothing About You
Why do other people get stunning results from AI while your questions land flat? Ninety percent of the gap isn't in the AI — it's in how you ask. This lesson gives you one mental model and one formula you can use right away.
Imagine a new colleague joins your company: top-school graduate, knows every field, executes brilliantly. But today is his first day on the job — he doesn't know you, doesn't know what you're responsible for, doesn't know who this thing is for or what it will be used for.
You walk over, drop a "write me a leave request", and walk away. What can he possibly produce? Only something invented from imagination. It's not that he isn't smart — it's that you told him nothing.
AI is that new colleague. And more extreme still: every new conversation is his first day on the job, all over again.
Scenario: you want to sell a used bicycle in your neighborhood group chat. Starting from the laziest possible ask, light up the four blocks of information below one by one and watch the AI's output improve step by step.
Who I am, in what situation
Your role, the occasion, who will read it, what it's for. This is the information the new colleague is missing most.
What exactly I want
The task + key details. The more concrete the details, the less room it has to make things up.
What counts as done
Tone, length, format, what to avoid. Give it acceptance criteria and it lands in one pass.
✅ What this lesson wants to share with you
- AI = a brilliant new colleague who doesn't know you — and every new conversation is his first day again
- Mediocre answers usually mean not enough information yet: give one unit of info, get one unit of answer
- The formula: context + request + constraints — who I am, what I want, what counts as done
- Rambling at AI is free: thirty extra seconds of typing saves ten minutes of rework