Break big tasks into steps
One giant request gets one shallow answer. Learn to ask for a plan first, run one job per prompt, and check each piece before building on it.
THE PROBLEM
One pass, thin everywhere
When you ask for everything at once, three things go wrong. Each part gets a little attention instead of a lot. An early weak choice, like the wrong target customer, carries through everything after it. And you have no chance to steer until the whole thing is already written on top of that choice.
A 10-section plan in one reply gives each section five or six lines. The same model, asked only for the competitor section with your details, can give you a page worth reading.
You don't order a house in one sentence
Nobody tells a builder "build me a house" and comes back in six months. You agree the drawings, then the foundations, then the walls, and you look at each stage before the next one covers it up. Decomposition is the same: a plan, then pieces, with a check between them. Where the analogy breaks: a builder would lose patience with thirty small requests. The model won't. The only cost of extra steps is a little of your time.
Check yourself
Maryam asks: "Write a complete 20-page training manual for new staff at my bakery." The result is generic and repeats itself. What is the best explanation?
- The model doesn't know anything about bakeries
- Too much was asked at once, so every section came out thin
- She should have used a more impressive role
- Twenty pages is simply impossible for an assistant
Show the answer
Too much was asked at once, so every section came out thin
Yes. It isn't a knowledge problem. One pass over a huge task spreads attention thin and locks in early guesses about her bakery before she could correct any of them.
The pattern: plan, then pieces
- Ask for a plan, not the work
"Don't write it yet. First list the steps or sections you'd suggest, one line each."
- Fix the plan
Cut, reorder, add. This is the cheapest moment to change direction: you're editing ten lines, not ten pages.
- Do one piece per prompt
"Now write section 2 only." Give that piece the context it needs.
- Check before you build on it
Read it. Refine it with keep / change / why from lesson 6. Only then move on.
- Assemble and do a final pass
Paste the pieces together and ask for one job: "Find repetition and contradictions between sections."
I have to give a 10-minute talk to parents at my daughter's school about children and screen time. I'm a parent, not an expert. Don't write the talk yet. First give me a plan: the sections, how many minutes each, and the one point each section should make.Plan for a 10-minute talk:
1. Opening story (1 min): one evening at home that every parent will recognise.
2. What actually worries us (2 min): sleep, homework, mood. Name them plainly.
3. What seems to help at home (4 min): three habits, one example each.
4. What doesn't work (2 min): bans without an alternative.
5. Close (1 min): one small thing to try this week.
Want to change anything before I draft section 1?Thirty seconds of reading and you can already see what to fix. Maybe you want 5 minutes on habits and no section 4. That change now costs one sentence.
Check yourself
Match each big task to a sensible first prompt
Show the answer
- A wedding speech → "Ask me 5 questions about the couple, then suggest a structure."
- A 15-page university report → "Suggest an outline with one line per section. Don't write any of it yet."
- Moving to another city → "List everything that has to happen, grouped by month, as a checklist."
- Launching an online shop → "Break this into stages and tell me what must be decided in stage 1."
THE RULE OF THUMB
One job per prompt
"Summarise this article, translate it, criticise the argument and suggest a title" is four jobs. Bundled together, some get done well and some get a token effort, and you can't tell which without checking all four. Done one after another, each job gets full attention and each result can be checked before it feeds the next.
Summarise first. Read the summary. Is it faithful? Only then: "Now criticise the argument in that summary." A criticism built on a wrong summary is worthless, and you'd never know.
One mega-prompt or a short chain
Mega-prompt
"Read these 30 customer reviews, find the main complaints, decide which to fix first, write replies to the angry ones and draft a plan for my team."
You get a bit of each. If the list of complaints is wrong, everything after it is wrong too.
Chain of four
1. "Group these reviews by complaint and count each group." Check it.
2. "Which 2 groups would you fix first, and why?" Decide.
3. "Draft a reply to review 7." Refine.
4. "Turn decisions 1 and 2 into a one-page plan."
Each step stands on something you've seen.
Check yourself
Once you have a good plan, asking for section one alone and checking it before you ask for section two gives a better result than "now write all of it".
Show the answer
True
"Write all of it" turns your careful plan back into one giant request: thin sections and no checkpoints. One piece at a time keeps each section full length, and it lets you catch a wrong assumption before it spreads through everything after it.
Check yourself
Which of these are fine as a single prompt, and which should be broken down?
- A polite reply declining a meeting
- A grant application with budget, timeline and impact sections
- Three title ideas for a blog post
- A 6-week course outline with lesson plans and quizzes
- Explaining what a term in a contract means
- Analysing a year of sales notes and proposing next year's strategy
Show the answer
One prompt is fine: A polite reply declining a meeting, Three title ideas for a blog post, Explaining what a term in a contract means
Break it down: A grant application with budget, timeline and impact sections, A 6-week course outline with lesson plans and quizzes, Analysing a year of sales notes and proposing next year's strategy
Lesson recap
- A huge request gets thin treatment everywhere and locks in early guesses you never saw.
- Ask for a plan first, fix it, then do one piece per prompt.
- One job per prompt: each result gets full attention and can be checked before the next step uses it.
- Finish with a consistency pass, and save this method for tasks that are big, linked or costly to get wrong.