The title is self-explanatory, and if you clicked it, you are clearly here for some tips that will up your ChatGPT game. Let me get right to the point – mastering GPT-5 or ChatGPT in general will take time. It doesn’t matter how proficient you think you are with ChatGPT. After using the AI daily, extensively, for over 2 years straight, I still come across a new feature or a better option – reminding me there is always room to learn. And once you go through this list, I promise you this – you will find that one new thing that will change the way you use ChatGPT and its prompts.
This article is supposed to serve as a part of a series of articles meant to help my readers be more proficient in ChatGPT. Throughout the series, you will find my personal, repeatedly tested hacks to get the best out of ChatGPT. In this part, we shall focus on shaping the right prompts for the best output from ChatGPT.
You can read the first part here: My Writing Secret: How I Make ChatGPT Write like a Human [+1 Bonus Hack]
What are Prompts?
For the beginners reading this, a prompt is anything you put into the chat window of an AI chatbot like ChatGPT. It can be a mathematical question, a task to perform, or simply a “hello” to greet the chatbot during your daily correspondence.
You see, the word “prompt” perfectly fits the purpose here. Why? Within the English language, it has two meanings. One – it “causes” an eventual action or output. Sort of a trigger point. Second – it is used to encourage someone to speak, especially when the speaker is hesitant.
In our use of AI, a prompt performs both these functions seamlessly. It triggers the AI for a response, as if encouraging it to speak. And hence, all the collective use of AI today begins with a single prompt.
Importance of a Great Prompt
As I mentioned, a prompt is where it all starts. The most basic use of AI is to ask your query (basically, put in a prompt) and get the answer from it. How good an answer you get largely depends on the quality of the prompt you have put in. Master the prompts, and I can guarantee that your whole outlook towards AI chatbots like ChatGPT will take a turn for the better.
In fact, there is nothing better than OpenAI’s latest AI model to highlight the importance of the right prompt. If you recall, the internet had a hard time digesting the latest ChatGPT model – GPT-5, partly due to its highly mixed (and hence confusing) nature. My teammate Nitika recently tested it out across use-cases, and even she found it to be underwhelming at best. You can check out her tests and findings here.
Basically, OpenAI had this oh-so-brilliant idea of compiling all its thinking capabilities into one single model. What it didn’t realise is that the majority of its user base didn’t even need the more extensive, thinking part of its AI. As most people often do, they just wanted quick answers to straightforward queries.
All said and done, the new GPT-5 is built to fetch you both a short one-line answer or an extensive research-based report, all on the same prompt. Which begs the question – what do YOU want out of it?
And the very answer to this question has added a little “unsaid” step to every prompt that goes into GPT-5 now. This one new, hidden step that people don’t know of, is the root of all the backlash that GPT-5 is facing right now. So much so that OpenAI had to come up with a “prompt optimizer tool” to help users frame the right prompt for GPT-5.
We shall come to that later. For now, let’s focus on getting the basics right. Here we go.
Master ChatGPT Prompts: Tips & Tricks
With all my experience with ChatGPT over the years, here are the best hacks I swear by, and can promise you way better results than what you see now. Dive in:
1. Generate a Master Prompt
Your ChatGPT use is likely inclined towards a particular requirement. You may be a writer seeking content, a data scientist seeking formulae, or a coder seeking complex code structures. In each case, it helps if ChatGPT acts a particular way most of the time.
Enter Master Prompt – one strong meta-prompt to guide all interactions! This is basically a set of instructions that you give to ChatGPT before asking any other query. These instructions guide ChatGPT to act a particular way – like an ad writer, an experienced coder, or a 10th-class Maths tutor. A master prompt helps shape the entire narrative for all your future conversations within a chat window.
Master prompt makes ChatGPT more consistent than ever before. Once set, your ChatGPT will never deviate from it and provide you with consistent, quality results every time.
Example of a master prompt-
“You are my expert blog-writing assistant. Always write in a bold, conversational style with chunky paragraphs (120–150 words each). Use active voice, include at least one real-world example per section, and end with a takeaway. For tables, use Analytics Vidhya’s HTML format. Never exceed 15 words per sentence.”
2. Assign it a Role
A subset of the tip above, you can assign a role to ChatGPT for each of your prompts to act a particular way. While a master prompt sets the scenario for all future chats, this one caters to an individual or a set of queries.
For instance, you can ask ChatGPT to “act as an interviewer” in your prompt while using it to prepare for a job interview. All Q&A that follows will be like you appearing for an interview, and ChatGPT acting as an interviewer.
3. Use natural language
Make sure you are as natural in your asks as possible. The whole purpose of AI chatbots like ChatGPT was to facilitate AI capabilities to everyday users through natural language. So avoid robotic phrasing and write as you normally speak.
How to write: “Write a 200-word email to my manager asking for a well-deserved promotion after 2 years of consistent output by me in the IT department of ABC company.”
How not to write: “Email boss. Ask for promotion. IT Department – ABC company”
4. Be descriptive/ Provide context
Once you’ve nailed the natural flow of a prompt, the next upgrade is simple: add context, lots of it. ChatGPT is like a detective – the more clues you give, the sharper the case it builds. If you throw in a vague one-liner, it will make assumptions (often wrong). But if you describe the background, the intent, and even the “why” behind your ask, the response improves tenfold.
Think of it this way – if you ask “Write me a blog,” you’ll get something generic, bland, and likely useless. But if you say: “Write me a 600-word blog in a friendly but expert tone, aimed at data science beginners, explaining why TinyML is trending right now. Include 2 examples from real-world devices and end with a call-to-action for readers to subscribe,” you’ve just handed ChatGPT a blueprint.
Context turns ChatGPT from a guesser into a collaborator, and you should definitely use it if you are to master ChatGPT and its prompts.
5. Break down prompts
Being descriptive in your asks can come at a cost. As soon as you start describing your query more elaborately, you will find that parts of your query may start to seem too vague. That is where breaking down the prompt into parts will help you a lot.
The idea is to split big, vague prompts into smaller, manageable parts. For instance, while asking ChatGPT to generate a Bollywood-movie-like scene, you can break the prompt into “Characters,” “Setting,” “Plot,” “Shoot Style,” etc.
It is much like having sub-sections within an article (just as this one). Each subsection helps provide a specific set of instructions for one particular aspect of the overall output.
6. Include examples
One of the easiest and best prompt hacks for ChatGPT – share an example of the kind of result you want from ChatGPT to guide it in the ideal direction. Simply include an example of the output that you wish for, and ChatGPT will do its best to adhere to it.
On the flip side, in case you are unclear of what an ideal answer will look like, you can give it an example of a bad output and specifically instruct it to avoid such a result.
For instance, I once noticed ChatGPT included too many “if” and “but” statements in its responses. Case in point – “The question is no longer if people will try it — but what they’ll create once they do.” I simply cited this statement as an example and instructed it to avoid such statements in its future outputs. That was the end of such statements for my ChatGPT’s outputs.
7. Step-by-step instructions
There are times when no matter what you do, ChatGPT simply won’t follow your instructions properly. This is especially true for instances when your ask is way too elaborate or extensive. AI models tend to lose their train of thought while tackling such requests – context length.
In such cases, provide step-by-step instructions to ChatGPT to tackle the problem one step at a time. Reason or explain it the problem chronologically, and it will eventually end up with the result you desired in the first place. You may want to use such a prompting method while coding extensive programs.
8. Tell ChatGPT the output format
One simple and brilliant hack that I have seen shockingly few people use. Among my peers, I have found people asking ChatGPT for “an image,” yet almost no one I have come across has ever asked it for “a PNG image” instead.
The idea is to specify the exact output format to ChatGPT that you require. ChatGPT works wonders when it knows the environment it is working in. So ask it for Excel tables, HTML-coded articles, or whatnot. Once it knows, it will do it. This is one of the simplest practices to follow if one wants to master ChatGPT prompts.
9. Best Learning Tip: The “explain it to a 10-year-old” trick
This a combination of the roleplay and specific instructions within your ChatGPT prompt to make you learn any topic as quickly as possible. The basic prompt goes something like this –
“Explain [the topic] as if explaining to a 10-year-old kid”
This basically instructs ChatGPT to go step-by-step in exploring any particular topic, providing base-level explanations and reasoning alongside for every step it carries out.
10. Master Tip – Ask ChatGPT for the right prompt
Well, you are on ChatGPT to get your work done in the perfect manner. Might as well ask the AI bot itself to guide you in the right direction. Just as it can produce the right content for other purposes, it can come up with the perfect prompt to get your work done in the best way possible.
Bonus – store all your best prompts separately for future reference, and you can simply copy/ paste them for a similar task later.
GPT 5 Specific Prompt Hacks
Remember, we discussed how prompting mechanics have changed for GPT-5. If you are to master those, here are some tips you need to keep in mind while working with the latest ChatGPT model and its prompts.
11. Define Verbosity
The literal meaning of “Verbosity” is “wordiness.” The more verbose of an output you seek from GPT-5, the more lengthy and in-depth the AI will go in the results.
I first noticed this in my initial experiences with ChatGPT, and then some experts on the internet, as well as GPT-5 itself confirmed it. When GPT-5 generates answers, there’s an internal “verbosity dial” of sorts. It is not labeled low/ medium/ high, but its outputs naturally vary along a spectrum depending on three main factors. These are your prompt, context & prior style, and clarity vs depth balance.
So next time you prompt GPT-5 for an output, make sure to define the verbosity for that perfect answer. The natural way you can do this is to ask for “bulleted points,” “balanced explanations,” or “deep context,” etc. In case you are unsure, just casually mention low, medium, or high verbosity, and GPT-5 will figure out the rest.
12. Define Think Time
Fast isn’t always smart. GPT-5 gives better answers when you time-box its thinking. Tell it to pause, plan, and then respond. That short “mental budget” cuts knee-jerk replies and reduces drift. You get tighter logic, cleaner structure, and far fewer “confidently wrong” moments.
To use it, simply ask GPT-5 to reason silently for N seconds or N steps, then share only the final output and a brief rationale.
Pair it with a fail-safe: “If missing key info, ask one clarifying question first.” This keeps depth without dumping raw chain-of-thought, and it respects your time. Use it for multi-step work like analysis, code design, data cleaning, etc. Basically, tasks where structure matters more than speed.
Here is an example of a bad and a good prompt in this regard.
Bad prompt
“Write a market analysis of TinyML.”
Better prompt with think time
“Before answering, think for 8–12 seconds and outline the approach internally. If a key input is missing, ask one clarifying question. Then produce a 700-word market analysis of TinyML for product managers in India, AV tone, with three sections: demand drivers, constraints, roadmap. Finish with three actionable next steps. Share only the final answer plus a 3-bullet rationale.”
Pro Tip: Keep think-time short for trivial tasks, longer for hard ones. When you need extra rigor, add “validate assumptions” or “list uncertainties” at the end. When speed matters, drop think time and ask for a first pass, then iterate.
Conclusion
With that, you now know the best prompt techniques that will bring you the A-game out of ChatGPT. Test these out, and I am sure you will get way better results than ever before. Among the lot, you can eventually select the ones that work best for you and incorporate them into your AI habit. Use those daily, and I promise your AI use will be more beneficial than you ever thought possible.
If these tips and tricks helped you, make sure to check out the next part of this article, which will focus on the ideal organisation and customisation of your ChatGPT, as well as unlocking its advanced capabilities. In case there is anything specific you would like to explore in depth here, make sure to write it in the comments section below, and I will try my best to cover it. Until then, keep practicing and be a master of ChatGPT prompts!
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