Day 5 – Let's Try Something Different
Why I'm spending the next week teaching you to stop copying prompts and start crafting them
Hey Alchemists,
We're five days into this 30-day writing sprint.
I committed to publishing daily, and so far we've covered comfort zones, study sinkholes, and why people get stuck consuming instead of creating. But I want to try something different for the next week.
Instead of jumping between topics, I'm going to focus on one thing that's been on my mind: how to actually get good at prompting.
Not collecting prompts. Not Prompting Engineering but Crafting good prompts.
Yesterday I told you about my 200 saved prompts that I'd never actually used. About organizing prompt folders instead of writing original ones. About learning everything and doing nothing.
Here's what we're doing for the next seven days
I'm walking through my approach to prompting. Not templates you can copy. Not guru frameworks. The actual process of thinking through what you want and how to get it.
Day 6: Stop trying to be clever with your prompts Why clarity beats creativity when AI lacks context. How to be precise without being boring.
Day 7: Structure makes you dangerous
How to control output by giving AI a framework to work within. Goal, audience, format, tone.Day 8: Context isn't optional Why AI breaks when it lacks stakes. How to add tension, constraints, and consequences.
Day 9: Guide thinking, not just asking Chain of thought prompting. Getting AI to work through problems step by step.
Day 10: Can you transfer what you've learned? The remix test. Taking principles and applying them to completely new situations.
Day 11: Teaching others is how you know you've got it The final test. Explaining prompting concepts in your own words.
The headlines and titles might change as I write them.
But what you'll learn in each section won't. Each day builds on the last. By Day 11, you won't need anyone else's prompt templates.
You'll know how to craft your own.
For your problems. In your voice. For your specific situation.
Starting tomorrow, we dive in.
If you've been copying prompts and wondering why they don't work as well as you like, this week is for you.
If you've been collecting templates but never getting the results you want, this week is for you.
If you been trying to understand prompt engineering but it just seem like something techies do this week is for you .
If you want to stop depending on other people's thinking and start directing AI yourself, this week is for you.
Let's stop copying and start crafting.