{"id":893,"date":"2026-01-21T20:27:48","date_gmt":"2026-01-21T20:27:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/payne.org\/blog\/?p=893"},"modified":"2026-01-21T20:27:48","modified_gmt":"2026-01-21T20:27:48","slug":"the-prompt-turnaround","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/payne.org\/blog\/the-prompt-turnaround\/","title":{"rendered":"The Prompt &#8220;Turnaround&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>If you&#8217;ve ever been in therapy and started complaining about someone else, the therapist often &#8220;turns it around&#8221; and asks about <strong>you<\/strong>, your role, and your reactions to the matter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This approach can also be a powerful way to get AI to help you.  Instead of belaboring over a huge prompt that &#8220;airs the grievances&#8221; about whatever problem you&#8217;re trying to tackle, simply turn it around and ask the AI:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em><strong>&#8220;Ask me the questions that you need to ask to get the information to best help me [for my problem].&#8221;<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Or, a little more focused:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em><strong>&#8220;Choose 4 to 6 questions that I can answer that will provide you the best context to help me with [my problem].&#8221;<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In other words, make the AI do the work to &#8220;interview&#8221; you, and make it<em> be deliberate<\/em> about what context it needs to be most helpful. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>(I&#8217;ve used variants of this idea before, but credit to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.natebjones.com\/about\">Nate Jones<\/a> for <a href=\"https:\/\/www.tiktok.com\/@nate.b.jones\/video\/7597706416710864159\">sharpening<\/a> up the technique.  As he points out, until recently, models were not sophisticated enough to use this method.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If you&#8217;ve ever been in therapy and started complaining about someone else, the therapist often &#8220;turns it around&#8221; and asks about you, your role, and your reactions to the matter. This approach can also be a powerful way to get &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/payne.org\/blog\/the-prompt-turnaround\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-893","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/payne.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/893","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/payne.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/payne.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/payne.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/payne.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=893"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/payne.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/893\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":894,"href":"https:\/\/payne.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/893\/revisions\/894"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/payne.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=893"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/payne.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=893"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/payne.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=893"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}