Happy Thursday! Welcome back to HOW TO // AI.
You don't need to study prompt engineering to get more out of AI. You need a few small moves that turn a chatbot from a novelty into something you reach for every day.
Today: four tricks you can try on your phone in the next five minutes, the one setting that saves you from typing the same instructions over and over, and the follow-up question worth asking after everything. All of it works on the free versions of ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini (usage limits apply).
📱 4 tricks to try on your phone today
1. Snap a photo instead of typing it out. A menu in another language, a confusing form, a receipt, an error message on your screen. Take a picture and ask about it. ChatGPT's and Gemini's free plans both let you add images to a chat. Try: "Here's a photo of a restaurant menu. I'm vegetarian and don't like spicy food. Which 3 dishes should I look at, and what should I ask the server?" Cover account numbers or ID numbers before you upload.
2. Walk and talk. Start voice mode, put your phone in your pocket and think out loud on a walk. ChatGPT Voice, Claude's voice mode and Gemini Live are all on the free plans, with limits. Ask it to ask you one question at a time, then say "wrap it up" for a short summary of where you landed.
3. Say "explain it like I'm new to this." AI will happily answer at an expert level unless you set the level yourself. Ask for plain English with one everyday analogy, then 3 quick questions to check that it stuck.
4. Ask for a table. Comparing phone plans, apartments or packing lists? Ask for a table with the columns you care about. It forces the AI to be specific, and you can paste the result straight into Google Sheets or Excel.
⚙️ Set your preferences once
If you keep typing "keep it short" or "I'm in the US," put it in your personalization settings instead. The AI then applies it to every chat.
ChatGPT: Settings, then Personalization, then Custom Instructions (Settings, then Customize ChatGPT on mobile). Free and Go users get up to 1,500 characters.
Claude: Settings, then Instructions for Claude.
Gemini: Settings & help, then Personal Intelligence, then Instructions for Gemini. You need to be signed in with a personal Google Account.
Not sure what to write? Here’s what I use-
Always check facts and numbers. Use simple english. Be succinct. End a response with a yes or no question about the next steps. Act as my expert advisor who tries to keep me focused on the most important task at hand.
One catch: these apply to every chat, so an old "always be brief" can quietly shorten answers you wanted long. Review them now and then.
🎯 Try this: the most useful follow-up there is
After any plan, email, budget or decision, ask this before you act:
"What am I missing? List the 3 biggest gaps or risks in this, most important first, and suggest a fix for each."
Variations: "What would a skeptical boss ask?" or "What's most likely to go wrong first?"
🚀 The AI Trainer Playbook
AI companies pay people to help train their models: rating answers, writing prompts, checking facts. Outlier, DataAnnotation, Mercor and others hire for this work, and each one screens applicants with its own tests.
My guide, The AI Trainer Playbook, shows how 13 platforms screen applicants, with 31 practice tasks and model answers, 10 templates, and an online practice lab that gives you AI feedback on your answers.
Launch price: $19 through November 23, then $29. 14-day refund, no questions asked.
🎁 Share HOW TO // AI, get free rewards
Forward this to the friend who still types everything out by hand. 1 referral gets you the Complete Kit Vault, and 10 get you my book, Amplified, free.
📬 In case you missed it
AI does THAT? 5 unexpected uses for work
Voice, vision and more: the features most people never open.
The AI fact-check workflow: verify any answer in 3 minutes
What to do before you trust that neat table.
🤔 Got questions?
Which of these tricks will you try first? Hit reply and tell me, and you might see your answer in an upcoming issue!
Stay curious, stick with it, and watch your skills grow week by week!
Until next time :)
-David
P.S. If your day job is enterprise IT (VMware, cloud, storage, infrastructure), I write a second newsletter that decodes that world in ten minutes a week: Subscribe to Enterprise Techie →
P.P.S. Some links in this newsletter may be affiliate links. If you sign up or purchase through them, we may earn a small commission, at no extra cost to you. It helps keep this newsletter free and we only ever recommend tools we'd genuinely tell a friend about. Thank you for your support!