How to think with AI — AI Family Cheat Sheet

1. Give it the role and the context

Don't ask "write me an email." Tell it who you are, who you're writing to, and what outcome you want. The same request becomes 10× better.

Try this prompt

The Role + Context + Goal pattern

Use when: any time you'd otherwise type a one-liner

You are helping me write [WHAT].

About me: [your role, what you do, what you care about].
About the audience: [who reads this, what they care about, their relationship to you].
The situation: [what happened, what's at stake, what's already been tried].
The goal: [what success looks like — a reply? a decision? an apology?].

Draft three versions: short, warm, and direct. Then ask me what to tweak.

2. Ask, then verify

Treat every AI answer as a starting draft, not a final answer. The bigger the stakes, the more you verify. For low-stakes stuff (a packing list), you barely check. For high-stakes stuff (medication, legal, financial), you check everything and consult a human pro.

Try this prompt

Force AI to flag uncertainty

Use when: when you're using AI for facts

Answer my question below. After your answer, add a section called "Confidence" where you rate each claim:

- HIGH = widely known, very likely true
- MEDIUM = generally accepted but check before acting
- LOW = could be outdated or wrong — verify

My question: [your question]

3. Iterate. Don't restart.

The biggest mistake is treating each AI reply as final. The second draft is almost always 5× better than the first — if you give feedback instead of starting over.

4. Use it for the boring 80%, save your brain for the interesting 20%

The point isn't to replace your thinking. It's to free up your thinking. Let AI do the drafting, the formatting, the bullet-pointing, the "I don't know how to phrase this" wrestling — so you can spend your brain on the parts that need your judgment, taste, or relationship.

Try this prompt

Take the boring work off your plate

Use when: any tedious recurring task

Here is [the boring thing I keep doing manually]:

[paste example]

I do this about [N times per week]. Help me speed it up. Suggest:
1. A template I can reuse
2. A prompt I can save and reuse
3. Any step I might be able to skip entirely

Bonus habit: name the thing you don't know how to ask

Sometimes the hardest part is even starting. When you don't know the right question, ask AI to help you find it.

Try this prompt

When you don't know what to ask

I'm trying to figure out [your fuzzy goal]. I don't really know what questions I should be asking.

Ask me 5 questions that would help you give me genuinely useful advice. Make them specific, not generic. Then wait for my answers.

Next stop

Ready for recipes? The prompting cheat sheet → has ready-to-paste patterns for the most common situations.