What do you do when you need a quick topic for the afternoon? Ask ChatGPT for ten tips for ChatGPT on how to maximize its benefit!

I decided to give ChatGPT a simple prompt to see what it would do, as follows: “Please give me ten tips for how to get the most benefit out of using ChatGPT.”

In response to the prompt, ChatGPT actually gave me two lists of ten tips for ChatGPT with the ability to select the list I like better. Here is the one I chose:

1. Be Specific and Clear in Your Requests: The more detailed and precise you are, the better the results. Instead of saying “Help me write a blog,” try “Help me write a 500-word blog post on how AI is transforming healthcare, targeting general business readers.”
2. Give Context Whenever Possible: Background information helps tailor the response to your needs. For example, mention your audience, goals, industry, or any special circumstances you’re working with.
3. Set the Tone, Style, or Format You Want: If you want something formal, conversational, bullet-pointed, persuasive, academic, humorous, or any other style, say so upfront. Example: “Please write this in a professional, concise tone, suitable for a LinkedIn post.”
4. Ask for Iterations and Refinements: Don’t hesitate to ask for rewrites, expansions, summaries, or different versions. Treat ChatGPT like a collaborative partner — it shines when you guide and iterate.
5. Break Complex Tasks into Steps: If you have a big project (like creating a white paper, strategy plan, or presentation), break it into smaller parts: outline first, then draft sections, then polish the final.
6. Use Follow-Up Questions Strategically: Build on prior answers by asking for deeper dives, examples, clarifications, or alternative perspectives. Each follow-up makes the conversation smarter and more aligned to what you want.
7. Experiment with Different Prompts: Sometimes small tweaks to your prompt can yield very different, and often better, results. Try rephrasing or exploring from different angles if the first answer isn’t quite right.
8. Ask for Tools, Frameworks, or Templates: When you’re working on structured tasks (like planning, writing, analyzing), ask for suggested frameworks, templates, or checklists. These give you a strong starting structure to work from.
9. Combine ChatGPT’s Help with Your Expertise: The best outcomes happen when you use ChatGPT’s capabilities as an enhancer — not a replacement — for your own knowledge, experience, and intuition. Think of it as your co-pilot.
10. Tell ChatGPT How You Like to Work: If you prefer outlines before drafts, bullet points over paragraphs, or pros and cons instead of essays, say so. The more you customize the interaction to your work style, the more powerful it becomes.

After generating the ten tips for ChatGPT on how to maximize its benefit, ChatGPT also asked me if I would like a bonus tip or two specifically for power users – of course, I said “yes”. Here are two bonus tips:

Bonus Tip #11: Use Role-Playing to Shape Responses

You can ask ChatGPT to adopt a role to frame answers exactly how you want.

Examples:

• “Act as a litigation consultant and help me draft cross-examination questions.”
• “Pretend you’re a product manager writing a launch plan for a GenAI app.”
• “You’re a professor — explain this to me like I’m a graduate student.”

👉 This anchors the voice, depth, and framing in a very specific way, making outputs sharper and more useful.

Bonus Tip #12: Build Complex Prompts Using “Few-Shot” Examples

Instead of just describing what you want, show it with examples first.

Example:

First input: “Here’s an example of the kind of summary I like: [paste a 3-sentence example]. Now, write a new summary in the same style about [new topic].”

👉 By feeding a “sample,” you train the model in the moment — massively improving quality, style, and structure alignment.

Without prompting, ChatGPT then created a “simple visual cheat sheet summarizing all 12 tips so you can easily refer back to it!”

Exciting, right? Well…

The image it created included 13 tips, only five of which were numbered. Two of the tips were repeated twice: one of those – “Tell ChatGPT How You Like to Work” – was cut off the second time. And it missed one of the bonus tips. Unusable.

Oh well, you can’t have everything! 🤣

Regardless, most of you have probably heard many of these tips, but if at least one is new to you, then great!

So, what do you think? Do you have any other tips for how to get the most out of ChatGPT? If so, please share them! And please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

Image created using Microsoft Designer, using the term “robot holding up hands to show five fingers on each hand”.

Disclaimer: The views represented herein are exclusively the views of the authors and speakers themselves, and do not necessarily represent the views held by my employer, my partners or my clients. eDiscovery Today is made available solely for educational purposes to provide general information about general eDiscovery principles and not to provide specific legal advice applicable to any particular circumstance. eDiscovery Today should not be used as a substitute for competent legal advice from a lawyer you have retained and who has agreed to represent you.