You typed something into ChatGPT. It came back with nonsense. You tried again. More nonsense. The problem isn’t the AI—it’s what you fed it.
The Real Problem Isn’t AI, It’s Your Input
AI models don’t read minds. They process what you give them. When your thinking is vague, your output will be vague. When your input is scattered, your output will be scattered.
Here’s a messy idea: “Write something about marketing for my business.”
Here’s a clear prompt: “Write three email subject lines for a product launch aimed at freelance designers, emphasising simplicity and time-saving, each under 50 characters.”
The difference isn’t length. It’s clarity.
The Three Causes of Messy Thinking
Most messy prompts share three problems:
No goal. You haven’t decided what success looks like. “Help me with marketing” could mean anything from a social media caption to a six-month strategy. The model has to guess.
No audience. Who is this for? Your boss? Your customers? Yourself? The answer changes everything about tone, depth, and structure.
No constraint. Without boundaries—length, format, style—the model produces generic waffle because it has no idea what “done” looks like.
The PreStep Method (Mini-Version)
Before you type anything into an AI, answer three questions:
Step 1: Name the goal. What are you actually trying to achieve? Be specific. “Draft an email” is not a goal. “Draft a 150-word email declining a meeting request without causing offence” is.
Step 2: Describe the situation. What’s the context? Who’s involved? What constraints exist? The more the model knows about your situation, the less it has to invent.
Step 3: State the constraints. Length, tone, format, style. If you don’t set boundaries, the model will default to its training data—which is mostly corporate nonsense and American self-help language.
Real Before/After Examples
Simple task
Before: “Help me write a meeting agenda.”
After: “Create a 30-minute meeting agenda for a project kickoff with five team members, covering roles, timeline, and first deliverables. Use bullet points.”
Creative task
Before: “Write a story about a dog.”
After: “Write a 500-word story about a rescue dog adjusting to life in a new home, told from the dog’s perspective, aimed at 8–10-year-olds.”
Business task
Before: “Draft a proposal.”
After: “Draft a 300-word proposal for a client asking for three months of content strategy work, emphasising ROI and previous results, using a professional but conversational tone.”
Template You Can Copy
Use this structure every time:
Goal: [What I want to achieve]
Audience: [Who this is for]
Context: [Relevant background]
Constraints: [Length, format, tone]
Output: [What success looks like]
Fill in the blanks. Feed it to the model. Watch your results improve.
Use PreStep to Turn Chaos Into Clarity Automatically
PreStep walks you through this process every time, so you don’t have to remember it. Answer a few questions, get a clear brief, feed it to any AI. No more guessing. No more garbage output.