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Wise Minds, New Tools
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Stop 11 of 13

Give it a job with three parts

You will be able to hand over a whole task instead of a single question, and you will know to check that all of it got done.

You can ask for more than one thing at a time. Check each part though, because it will occasionally skip one and never mention it.

Do this

  1. Find something real with more than one part to it. A request you want to decline. An invitation that needs a reply and a date checked.
  2. Ask for all of it in one message, numbered. 1. Read this email. 2. Tell me in one sentence what it is asking for. 3. Draft a polite reply saying no, without giving a reason.
  3. Read the answer against your own list. One, two, three. Did it actually do all of them?
  4. If it skipped one, say so: you did not do number 3.

Watch it done first, if you would rather

Let my human assistant John show you what that looks like. He does the same thing you are about to do, at the same speed, with nothing edited out.

Filming This one is not recorded yet. Everything you need is written out above, and the video will appear here when it is ready.

What just happened

Numbering the parts is doing real work. It gives the request a shape, and it gives you something to check the answer against, which is the part that matters.

It will sometimes drop a part, usually the last one, and it will never tell you it has. It is not being careless in any way it could notice. It produced something that looked like a good answer, and a good answer that covers two of your three points still looks like a good answer.

Which is the same lesson as stop 8 in a different coat. The tool cannot audit itself. You are the one holding the list.

Three or four parts is comfortable. Beyond that, split it into two messages. Not because it cannot cope, but because you will find it harder to check.

If something did not go as expected

It answered the first part and ignored the rest.
Say now do 2 and 3. Nothing is lost and you do not need to start again.
It ran the three parts together into one paragraph.
Ask for it back with headings, or numbered the same way you asked.
Can I give it something to do later?
No. It has no way to act on its own or come back to you. Anything that happens, happens while you are there.

The view from here: How much you can ask for at once