LESSON 3 OF 6
Stop repeating yourself
BY THE END OF THIS LESSON
Set up context once so every future chat already knows who you are.
The hidden tax
If every conversation starts with you explaining your business, your role and your preferences, you are paying a tax on every single task. Worse, you will start skipping it when you are busy — and that is exactly when the output gets generic.
Where to put it
Every major tool has a place for standing context. ChatGPT calls it custom instructions, Claude has styles and project-level instructions, Gemini has saved info.
Whatever it is called, the idea is the same: things that are true in every conversation go there, not in the chat.
What belongs in it
Good standing context: what you do, who you serve, your writing preferences, things to never do, units and spelling conventions, your level of expertise.
Bad standing context: anything specific to one task. That belongs in the prompt. If you put a single project in your global instructions, it will bleed into unrelated work.
WORKED EXAMPLE
VAGUE SETUP
I work in marketing. Be helpful and professional.
USEFUL SETUP
I run marketing for a 12-person B2B SaaS selling warehouse scheduling software. Buyers are operations managers, not technical. Writing: British English, plain language, short sentences. Never use "leverage", "seamless", "game-changing" or "in today's fast-paced world". Assume I understand marketing fundamentals — skip the 101 explanations. When I ask for copy, give me one strong version rather than three mediocre options, then ask what to adjust.
"Be helpful and professional" tells the model nothing it was not already doing. The second version changes vocabulary, reading level, output shape and the amount of hand-holding — on every future request, for free.
YOUR TURN
Draft your own standing context by interview.
RUN THIS
I want to write custom instructions that will make every future conversation with you sharper. Interview me. Ask one question at a time — no more than eight in total — covering what I do, who I serve, how I want you to write, what you should never do, and how much explanation I need. After the last answer, give me the finished instructions as a block I can paste into my settings, under 200 words.
What a good result looks like
The interview should feel slightly uncomfortable — good questions expose that you have not decided some of this. Paste the result into your settings before you close the tab.
KNOWLEDGE CHECK
Answer all 2 correctly to complete this lesson.
1. Which of these belongs in your global custom instructions?
2. Why is "be helpful and professional" a weak instruction?
REMEMBER THIS
Anything true in every conversation belongs in settings, not in the chat.