The Power of Custom Instructions in ChatGPT
Significantly improve your experience with ChatGPT
The Power of Custom Instructions in ChatGPT
It has been a while since my last post, months in regular time, which feels like ages in AI-time. The barrage of news continues, and personally, I am still trying to stay on track. Instead of listing recent developments, I want to focus on changes that have had a significant impact on my experience with ChatGPT. One of those changes is custom instructions. To be honest, it took me a little while to give it a try, but now that I have experienced it, there is no going back.
Context is king
There are a few reasons why this is a great addition, one of the most important reasons is that context is king when working with Large Language models. The smartest model can only infer so much. If I ask the best language model available for gift ideas without providing any context, the suggestion will be generic and disappointing. Add context about who it is for, the budget, the occasion, the person's passions and interests, and the language model comes with significantly better results. The same goes for a lot of other tasks, and adding a bit of who you are and what you do has broad implications for your experience with ChatGPT.
So let’s have a chat about custom instructions. What are they, and what do they do?
The idea is fairly straightforward. There are two parts, the first is: What would you like ChatGPT to know about you?
Here, you can share who you are, and what you do along with the topics you're interested in or knowledgeable about. Next to that, you can provide insight into your goals, your preferences, what you're currently working on, or if there’s anything you'd like to improve upon.
The second part is: How would you like ChatGPT to respond?
This is where instructions go on how you’d like ChatGPT to write. You can instruct it to frequently ask for clarification or just try things out. You can tell it to be more or less verbose, to ask more or less questions, to talk a certain way, or to avoid saying certain things.
At the end of the article, I’ve added a neat little trick inspired by Professor Synapse.
Personalize your experience
With these instructions, you can tailor the way the LLM responds to your wants and desires. In other words, you can personalize your experience with the large language model. Instead of giving specific instructions with each and every prompt (that ChatGPT might forget once the conversation gets too long), you can instruct the model to respond just the way you like it. Are you a fan of metaphors when learning new things? Add it as an instruction! Are you tired of hearing about the 2021 knowledge date cut-off? Instruct ChatGPT to no longer mention it!
Break out of the standard way that OpenAI programmed the user with, just like Sam Altman did:
The great thing about this field is that you can target very specific behavior of ChatGPT and adjust it to your needs. You can instruct it to “don’t ask, just do” to omit some fluff. You can instruct ChatGPT to always use a particular writing style. You can even instruct ChatGPT to no longer remind you that it’s an AI language model, and voila, it’s gone!
While the above examples are heavily targeted at the general behavior of the language models, you can also focus on examples that fit your own wants and needs better. More on that in a bit.
Writing your own custom instructions
So how do you write custom instructions that best suit you?
Let’s start with the first part: Context
ChatGPT will give you more tailored answers that will more likely suit your needs once it has some context. So let’s give it some.
Start with a little bit of context about yourself. This can be your name, age, occupation, and things you are passionate about. This provides a simple but good starting point. If you prefer not to share personal details, feel free to omit them. Only include what is necessary and what you are comfortable sharing.
Once you’ve got something simple and basic about yourself, I’d suggest diving deeper into your passions, and things you enjoy. Any movies you like, books, or authors you like to read. Music you’re into, podcasts, hobbies, sports, anything. This can come up in really cool and unexpected ways when ChatGPT relates something you like to something seemingly unrelated.
Next, I suggest focusing on personal projects and goals. Let ChatGPT know if you have any bad habits you want to work on or specific goals you're striving for. For example, I'm currently working on expanding my freelance work, which I've mentioned in my custom instructions along with additional information about what I do. When it comes to bad habits, I have a habit of procrastinating and working on tasks that excite me without completing them, which is why I currently have 12 nearly finished drafts for this newsletter. That one definitely needs some work.
And now that you’ve done all of this, you’re ready with the first part! Now ChatGPT will use this context to give better responses.
Personalized instructions
Next is how to write personalized instructions. Let me start off by mentioning a few general points that serve as a nice starting point for just about anyone:
Never mention that you’re an AI.
Avoid language that implies remorse or apology.
Respond with "I don't know" for information beyond September 2021.
Skip disclaimers about not being a professional.
Keep responses unique and avoid repetition.
Don't suggest seeking information elsewhere.
These instructions alone can greatly reduce some of the annoyances when dealing with ChatGPT. We can go much further with more personal suggestions:
You can start off by taking a look at your chat history and see what you use the model for the most. Recognize any pain points. There are a few pain points that I had when programming with ChatGPT. I don’t know the right way to do things, so when I ask for something silly, ChatGPT will always try to help. I’ve reduced this problem with the following instructions:
I'm looking to improve my coding skills. Please guide me towards best practices and discourage shortcuts or lazy approaches. If I'm considering a tool or method that's not ideal for the task at hand, please advise me against it.
This works the other way around too! When you want ChatGPT to quickly do work for you, instruct it to ditch the explanation (for more complex prompts this might hurt the quality of the output) and dive straight into the results.
Things you frequently prompt for can now be added.
Give short and concise answers
End every message with a question
If something seems unclear, ask for clarification before proceeding
It’s important here that you don’t just copy and paste but think about your own experience with ChatGPT. It’ll be unlikely you will be using it for the exact things
Commands
Then there’s a neat little trick. Since this is always in the chat’s memory, we can also add “commands”. Prompts we frequently use can be made accessible with ease. This is taking some inspiration from the great Professor Synapse prompt: Professor Synapse
.
For example:
Commands: Follow the instructions if I use one of the following commands:
/Table - present the information in a table
/Save - Summarize the conversation up until this point and recommend a next step
/Discuss - Introduce two Experts, Expert 1 and Expert 2 who will engage in a discussion on the subject matter to come to a conclusion.
/Format - Use h1 and h2, add bullet points, and put important word groups in bold for emphasis
The /Discuss command is an easy way to embed a proven prompting technique in there that’s very easy to use. You can use Chain of Thought in there as well for a similar effect.
/Save helps with dealing with the memory - it's a simple technique to “extend” the memory of your conversation with ChatGPT.
Simply put, take a frequently used prompt and put it in there as a command. Now you can use it again and again!
Want to make this even easier? Copy and paste the last section into ChatGPT and tell it to help you write your own custom instructions according to the instructions. Here we go!
Let me know if you’ve got any custom instructions you’d like to share! I’d love to hear what everyone comes up with.