Giving it a job, and breaking big jobs down

Two habits in one lesson, because they solve the same problem from different angles: getting AI to produce something with real judgement behind it, rather than a plausible-sounding first pass.

Tell it who to be

One sentence at the start of your prompt, naming the expertise or job title you want it to adopt, changes the whole answer. “You are an experienced electrician talking to a nervous first-time customer about a full rewire” produces something calmer and more reassuring than the same question with no role attached. “You are a hard-nosed accounts manager chasing a six-week-late invoice” produces something with rather more spine.

This works because a role carries a huge amount of implied judgement that would otherwise take a paragraph to spell out. A roofer asking for help pricing an unusual job could simply add “you’re a roofer with fifteen years of experience quoting slate re-roofs” before the actual question, and stop the answer sounding like a call centre script.

Why one giant request goes shallow

Ask for an entire marketing plan, or a full tender response, in one go, and you’ll usually get something that reads well and says very little. Not because the AI can’t do better, but because a single enormous request forces it to guess at everything at once, your audience, your goals, your budget, your timeline, all in one pass, with no chance for you to correct course halfway through.

The fix is the same one you’d use with a person: break the big job into stages, and check each one before moving to the next.

A worked example: a marketing plan

Instead of “write me a marketing plan”, try this in stages:

1. Stage one. “I’m a landscaper in Cheshire, mostly patios and driveways, £40,000 turnover last year, want to grow it to £60,000. Before writing anything, ask me the five most important questions you’d need answered to plan this properly.” Answer its questions honestly. This alone usually surfaces gaps in your own thinking.
2. Stage two. “Based on what I’ve told you, suggest three realistic ways to get from £40,000 to £60,000 this year, with a rough cost and time estimate for each.” Read them, push back on anything that doesn’t fit your business, ask it to drop what doesn’t work.
3. Stage three. “Take the option we agreed on and turn it into a month-by-month plan I can actually follow.” Now you’ve got something built on your actual answers, not a guess.

The same pattern for a tender response

A joiner responding to a small commercial tender can work the same way: stage one, ask what the panel is likely scoring on; stage two, draft the technical section alone and check it; stage three, draft the pricing and delivery section separately, using the technical section as the reference. Three checked drafts beat one long guess, every time.

Next, we look at what to do with any of these drafts once you’ve got them: how to push back and refine, instead of accepting the first answer or starting again from scratch.