Don't accept the first answer

Workshop · 5 of 7 · The conversation is the skill

The biggest gap between casual users and skilled ones isn't the prompt. It's what happens after the first answer arrives. Casual users take it or leave it. Skilled users treat it as what it actually is: a first draft from a brilliant colleague who writes instantly and doesn't mind criticism.

Make it critique itself

The single most useful follow-up in the language: “What's weak about this?” The model is remarkably good at finding real flaws in its own output the moment you ask — arguments it hedged, cases it skipped, numbers it guessed. Ask for the critique, then ask for the version that survives it. Two messages, and you're somewhere the first answer never reaches.

Ask for options, not answers

When the shape of the thing matters — a headline, a plan, an approach — don't ask for one. Ask for three, genuinely different. Picking between real alternatives tells you what you actually want faster than critiquing a single take ever will. Then steer with an example: showing one paragraph of what “good” looks like beats a page of adjectives describing it.

Give feedback like an editor

“Make it better” gets you shuffled words. Editor-grade feedback gets you a better draft: shorter; more concrete; drop the hedging; keep the second paragraph, cut the rest; the tone is right, the structure isn't. The model takes direction unusually well — most people just never give any.

Know when to start clean

And when a long exchange goes sideways — wrong assumptions piling up, corrections on corrections — stop arguing inside the wreckage. Everything in the window shapes what comes next, including the mess. Start a fresh conversation, load it properly this time, and ask again. One clean restart routinely beats ten rounds of “no, that's not what I meant.”

The prompt starts the work. The conversation does the work.