Lesson 227 · 2 min
Writing clear instructions for others
Writing a good prompt and writing good instructions for a person are the same skill: goal, context, steps and what done looks like.
When people learn to prompt AI, they often notice their instructions to colleagues were vague too. "Can you look at this?" leaves the other person guessing.
Clear instructions answer four questions: what is the goal, what does the person need to know, what exactly should they do, and how will they know they are finished? Add the deadline and who to ask if stuck.
AI can help you check. Paste your instructions and ask what a new person would misunderstand or what questions they would have. Fix those before you send.
Keep it short where you can. One extra sentence of context can save an hour of rework.
Do it now
Test your instructions
- 1. Take a task you plan to hand to someone this week.
- 2. Write the instructions as you normally would.
- 3. Run the prompt below and fix the gaps it finds.
Here are instructions I am giving a colleague: [PASTE]. Read them as a capable person who knows nothing about this project. List: what is unclear, what questions you would ask, and what you might do wrong. Then suggest a clearer version under 150 words with goal, context, steps, deadline and what done looks like.
Quick check
Keep going
Next →Preparing for a hard conversationWords from this lesson
- Prompt
- The instruction or question you give an AI. Clearer prompts with context usually get much better answers.
- Prompt engineering
- The practice of wording, structuring and testing prompts to get reliable, useful results from AI.
- Context engineering
- Choosing which documents, instructions and history to give an AI so it has exactly what it needs for a task.