My old prompt setup was a mess until a coworker pointed it out

I used to write AI prompts with zero structure, just dumping every detail into one long paragraph. Last Tuesday in Denver, a coworker watched me run the same request 5 times and said 'you know the model reads the middle the worst, right?' I finally started using clear sections and step-by-step instructions, and the outputs went from useless to decent in one afternoon. Anyone else have a basic formatting habit that took way too long to fix?

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matthewsullivan14d ago

Wait, your coworker had to tell you that instead of you learning it after the 10th time the model ignored your main point? I swear, formatting is the difference between a machine that sounds like a robot and one that sounds like it actually read your email. I spent six months writing prompts like a grocery list on meth, just slamming keywords together and hoping the AI sorted it out. Then I started using headers like "CONTEXT" and "STEP 3" and suddenly it felt like cheating, like I'd been doing pushups with my eyes closed. The funny part is, the model doesn't even read the middle, it scans the start and end like a kid flipping through a textbook for pictures. Now I just put the most important thing first and the rest is background noise, but it took a stranger's snark to fix my lazy brain.