Most people treat AI like a glorified vending
machine. You put in a question, you get an answer.
Right. Very transactional. Exactly. But what
happens when you realize you're actually sitting
across from a $500 an hour consultant? Beat.
Welcome to the deep dive. We are really glad
you're here. So glad to be jumping into this.
It's a huge topic. It is. Today, we're mastering
the final highest leverage foundational skill
of the Claude ecosystem. And that is prompt engineering.
Yeah, which is just the ultimate force multiplier.
Once you really get this, your daily workflow
just totally transforms. So here is our roadmap
for you today. First, we are going to unpack
that consultant mindset shift. The foundational
piece. Right. Then we will break down six specific
power user prompting techniques. And these are
like actual practical tools you can use immediately.
Absolutely. And finally, we'll show you how to
build a plug -and -play personal pumped library.
So you essentially never start from scratch again.
Which saves, you know, just an unbelievable amount
of time. It really does. So let's start with
that first mindset shift. The core idea from
our sources is moving away from vague commands.
You have to provide rich context. You really
need to treat Claude like a brilliant consultant
meeting you for the first time. That's the perfect
way to look at it. Because, you know, they have
all this world -class knowledge, but zero context
about your actual life. Exactly. You wouldn't
walk into a high -level strategy meeting and
just demand a marketing plan. No, of course not.
You'd be laughed out of the room. Right. You'd
give them background. You'd tell them who you
what the challenge is and why you're doing it.
The who, the what and the why. That's the holy
trinity here. It is, but I have to make a vulnerable
admission right here. I still wrestle with treating
it like a search engine, myself. My hands just
instinctively want to type three keywords and
hit enter. Oh, completely. It's so natural. I
mean, we've had, what, 20 years of Google training
us to do exactly that? We type keywords and expect
magic. But an advanced AI really needs that deeper
framing to shine. So let's break down those three
elements. The who is establishing your role.
It's your experience level, your constraints.
Yeah, it grounds the AI in a specific perspective.
Then the what? That outlines the exact project
or deliverable. The tangible thing you need right
now. And the why is your underlying goal. What
does success actually look like? Right. Like
the old way of prompting is just saying, help
me write a blog post about prompt engineering.
Which is Terribly vague. So vague. Yeah. It assumes
the AI magically knows your audience and your
tone. The output is always going to be kind of
robotic and generic. Because it's guessing. Exactly.
But the new way, you say, I am a freelance content
creator building a premium course. That's your
who. You instantly narrow the possibility space.
Right. And then you say, I need an engaging blog
post to attract students. That's the what? Giving
it a measurable business objective. And finally,
the why. You say, I want readers to feel excited
and capable, so make it deeply practical. And
you end with, let's think about this together.
Yes. That collaborative invitation is huge. Level
2 prompting isn't about just typing a longer
command. It's about co -creating the solution
with the AI. I find the mechanics of that really
fascinating. Let me ask you this, though. Does
giving all this upfront context actually change
the AI's internal reasoning process or just the
formatting of the output? Oh, it literally changes
the probabilistic weights guiding the token generation.
Wow. It activates entirely different neural pathways
inside the model. You steer it away from average
internet text toward highly -specualized knowledge.
It literally thinks differently about the problem.
Context literally rewires how the AI solves the
problem for you. Yeah. Beat. Okay, so we have
the mindset. We understand the who, what, and
why. How do we actually steer this consultant?
Our sources highlight six power user techniques.
Let's walk through them. Let's do it. So technique
one is role plus full context. Right. Assigning
an expert persona. Exactly. You say act as a
world -class conversion copywriter. That anchors
the vocabulary the AI pulls from. It sets a much
higher baseline for intelligence right off the
bat. Technique two is chain of thought. Yeah,
this one is massive for complex problems. Which
means making the AI explain its logic step by
step before answering. Why is that intermediate
step so crucial? Because LLMs just calculate
probabilities for the next word. When you force
step by step thinking, it generates intermediate
tokens. And those tokens actually help ground
its final conclusion. It drastically reduces
hallucinations. So you just tell it, think step
by step. Literally just type that. Think step
by step before giving your final answer. It works
wonders. Technique 3 is few -shot prompting,
meaning providing a few examples to show exactly
what you want. Right. You give it a clear pattern,
like paste in two of your past emails, then ask
it to match that exact tone for a new one. It's
perfect for brain consistency. Oh, absolutely
perfect. Then we have technique four, surfacing
hidden needs. This is all about finding your
blind spots. You explicitly ask, what might I
be overlooking? You ask it to find flaws in your
logic. Exactly. It turns the AI into a strict
senior partner. It reliably finds risks you totally
missed. Technique 5 is collaborative dialogue.
You make it a back -and -forth conversation.
Yeah, instead of demanding an instant answer,
you say, ask me clarifying questions first. It
interrogates your premises. Right. You co -create
the architecture together. It's so useful when
you aren't even sure what you need yet. And the
final technique, number six, structured output
requests. This is just telling Claude exactly
how to format the response. So asking for markdown
or tables or specific bullet points saves you
so much manual editing time later. So you can
essentially stack all these techniques together.
You use the roll, the context, chain of thought,
hidden needs. It is like stacking Lego blocks
of data. I love that analogy. That's exactly
what it feels like. The roll is the green base
plate. The context forms the load bearing walls.
If you don't snap them together right, the structure
just falls apart. Yeah, but when you do snap
them correctly, you get deep reasoning and blind
spot detection all at once. Whoa. Imagine the
scale of insights when you stack step by step
logic with hidden needs. Too sex silence. But
let me ask a probing question here. When stacking
all these techniques, is there a risk of over
constraining the AI so it loses its creativity?
Yes. That is a very real danger. Yeah. If you
give it too many rigid formatting rules, it gets
kind of mechanical. Like a robot filling in blanks.
Exactly. That's why keeping the why completely
open -ended is crucial. Give it guardrails, but
let it choose the creative path. Too many rules
stifle creativity. Keep your core goals open
-ended. Precisely. We will be right back after
this short break. Sounds good. That's the answer.
Today's deep dive is proudly brought to you by
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back moving into our final segment today. Let's
bring it all together. You know the mindset.
You know the six techniques. But you shouldn't
be typing these out from scratch every single
time. No, please don't do that. It's a massive
waste of cognitive energy. We need to build a
reusable library. Right. A plug -and -play, personal
prompts library. Yeah. You do this by saving
your templates as artifacts. And an artifact
is saved, standalone documents, or code snippets
within the AI interface. Exactly. You just pull
them up when you need them. Our sources give
us five battle -tested templates. Template one
is content creation. Right. For blogs, emails,
sales pages, you define the expert role, your
brand tone, your audience. But you also invite
it to brainstorm angles first, right? Yes. Force
it to explore creative directions before drafting
the actual text. Template 2 is problem solving
and strategy. This seems incredibly powerful.
Oh, it's arguably the strongest tool here. You
set the AI up as a seasoned consultant. You outline
your messy situation, but the genius part is
you ask it to ask you probing questions first.
It analyzes your constraints step by step before
recommending a strategy. Exactly. It forces you
to face reality. Then Template 3. A learning
and mastery plan. Perfect for a 30 -day skill
challenge. You tell the AI your proficiency level
and learning style. And it acts as a productivity
coach. It builds a progressive curriculum just
for you. Tailored exactly to your schedule. Template
4 is review and optimization. This is where you
ask, how can I make this 10 times stronger? Yeah,
this one takes some bravery. You paste your work
in and tell the AI to be a notoriously strict
editor. You ask it to ruthlessly hunt for structural
weaknesses. They have to ask for concrete examples,
too. But be repaired, the feedback is going to
be blunt. The fifth template is brainstorming
and ideation. But when you're just totally stuck,
you need divergent ideas. So you ask for eight
to ten unconventional ideas. But not just a list.
You ask for execution challenges and launch plans
for each one. That weeds out the weak ideas quickly.
Right. And then you have it ranked its top three
recommendations. OK. So these templates sound
incredibly efficient. But I have a reservation.
Templates sound incredibly efficient. But don't
they eventually lead to generic cookie cutter
outputs if everyone uses these same five structures?
That is a very valid concern. A lot of people
worry about that. But the magic is in the customization.
The who, what, and why variables your input are
entirely unique to your life. The structural
framework is shared, but the context is deeply
personal. So the AI reacts to your unique data,
not just the scaffolding. Exactly. Plus, the
sources recommend creating a My Profting Style
Guide. What goes into that master document? Your
default professional mindset, your preferred
tone, formatting quirks, and rules you always
follow. How often should you update this personal
style guide as these AI models get smarter? Treat
it as an evolving system. Test and refine those
templates every few weeks based on the outputs
you're getting. Treat your style guide like a
living document, tweaking it monthly. Perfectly
said. It rapidly becomes your greatest digital
asset. Let us step back and look at the big picture
here. Prompt engineering is not a coding language.
It is high -level communication. It really is.
It's shifting from demanding instant answers
to actively co -creating solutions with a brilliant
consultant. That is the ultimate unlock for AI
productivity. It forces you to clarify your goals
before asking for help. It absolutely elevates
your baseline thinking. So we have some homework
for you today. Go find three old, lazy prompts
you used recently. Rewrite them using the complete
who, what, and why framework. Yes, set up your
personal AI mastery project today. Start building
those custom templates into your library. And
I want to leave you with a final thought to mull
over. If you have a brilliant $500 an hour consultant
sitting across from you right now, what is the
million dollar problem you've been too afraid
to ask them to solve out to your music?