20 ChatGPT Prompts to Try This Week (One Category a Day)

Quick answer

Most “best ChatGPT prompts” lists hand you fifty things to try once. You save the page, and you never open it again. This one is smaller on purpose: five weekdays, four prompts each. Pick one on Monday, actually run it, and see what happens. Do the same each day this week, and by Friday you'll have used four or five of these for real instead of skimming past all twenty.

Monday: writing something you don't want to sound stiff

Most people ask ChatGPT to write something for them and get back a first draft that reads like a corporate memo. These four are built to fix that, not produce it.

1. 1"I need to send [name] a message about [situation] without sounding cold or overly formal. Here's a rough draft: [paste it]. Rewrite it so it sounds like me on a good day, not like a corporate memo."
2. 2"Turn these bullet points into a short email an actual person would want to read: [paste your bullets]."
3. 3"I keep starting messages with 'I hope this email finds you well.' Give me five other openings that don't sound like a template."
4. 4"Here's a message I'm nervous about sending: [paste it]. Tell me honestly if it reads as passive-aggressive, and rewrite it if it does."

Tuesday: the decision you've been putting off

These are for the kind of decision that's been sitting in the back of your head for two weeks.

1. 1"I'm deciding between [option A] and [option B] for [decision]. Ask me the questions you'd need answered before you could actually help, instead of just listing pros and cons."
2. 2"Here's my situation: [describe it]. What am I probably not considering that someone who's dealt with this before would flag?"
3. 3"Turn this into a checklist in the order I should actually do things, not just a list: [paste your messy notes]."
4. 4"I have to cancel or decline [thing] without over-explaining myself. Draft something short."

Wednesday: learning something you've been putting off

None of these are about becoming an expert by Friday. They're about not feeling behind.

1. 1"Explain [topic] to me the way you'd explain it to someone smart with zero background in it. Skip the sports or cooking analogies unless I ask for one."
2. 2"I read this and didn't fully get it: [paste a paragraph]. Break down what it's actually saying in plain terms."
3. 3"Quiz me on [topic]. Make the questions get progressively harder, and tell me exactly what I got wrong and why."
4. 4"I want to learn [skill] well enough to be useful in a week, not become an expert in it. What's the actual minimum I need to know?"

Thursday: the work you're behind on

The ones you'll actually use on a normal Thursday, not a hypothetical productive one.

1. 1"Here are my raw meeting notes: [paste them]. Turn them into a summary with clear action items and who owns each one."
2. 2"Read this and tell me the one thing most likely to get pushback in a meeting: [paste your proposal]."
3. 3"I need to prep for a conversation with [person or role] about [topic]. What are the three hardest questions they might ask me?"
4. 4"Summarize this into exactly three sentences a busy person would actually read: [paste the long document]."

Friday: something with no point except that it's fun

No output required, and nobody's grading this one.

1. 1"Give me a genuinely weird hypothetical to think about, the kind of thing you'd argue about with friends, not a trivia fact."
2. 2"I have ten minutes and want to try something creative. Give me a tiny writing prompt with a twist I wouldn't think of myself."
3. 3"Roast my [taste in something, like a playlist or a to-do list] gently, the way a friend would, based on this: [paste it]."
4. 4"Invent a game I can play just by messaging back and forth with you, and explain the rules."

The part most lists like this skip

A good prompt gets you most of the way there. The other half is how the model is set up when it answers, and almost nobody touches it. Ask ChatGPT the same question in “Instant” mode and in “Thinking” mode, and you'll often get two different answers, not just two different speeds. The decision prompt from Tuesday is a good one to test this on: run it once on default settings, then again asking it to actually think the answer through, and compare what comes back.

We wrote up all three settings (model, effort, and web search) and when each one actually matters in How to Tune Your AI's Parameters, if today's prompts leave you wanting more than just better questions.

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