5 Tips to SuperCharge Your ChatGPT Results

You wouldn't buy a smartphone and only use it to make phone calls. Yet most people treat ChatGPT the same way—asking single questions when it's capable of orchestrating entire workflows.

I've used ChatGPT daily for the past year, and it's become my most essential productivity tool. It’s not because I write better prompts than anyone else, but because I’ve learned how to maximize the capabilities of the tool.

These aren't advanced prompt-engineering tricks. They're built-in capabilities hiding in plain sight—Agent Mode, Custom GPTs, Connectors, and techniques that let ChatGPT learn your style and automate repetitive work.

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Five easy tips to help you maximize the quality and improve your speed to great ChatGPT outputs.

The five strategies below have cut my workflow time in half while improving output quality. Each one is immediately actionable, with real examples from my business.

Ask ChatGPT to iterate on an idea

One of the most effective techniques is the "Iterate 10×" prompt. This approach helps you rapidly generate variations and identify the strongest options.

How it works:

Here’s how to use it:

When you’re close to a tagline, hook, or cold‑email opener, ask for 10 riffs and specify the criteria you’ll use to judge them. Then ask ChatGPT to score and explain top picks. Specify the audience to give the model context and guide it in the right direction.

Here’s an example:

I started with a simple prompt to give me 10 ideas for a tagline for my AIOS for Executives training. I chose one of the ideas and just added “Iterate 10x”. The result was 10 more taglines to help me brainstorm. I picked the one that I thought was most impactful and then tweaked it a tiny bit on my own. It helped spark my creativity and got me to a final answer much more quickly.

Provide Examples (Few‑Shot Prompting)

Here's what used to frustrate me: I'd spend ten minutes describing exactly what I wanted—"professional but casual, concise bullet points, start with a hook"—and ChatGPT would still deliver something that needed heavy editing.

Then I learned few-shot prompting: show, don't tell.

The technique is simple:

Paste 2-3 examples of what you want (your own writing, a competitor's style, anything that matches your target), then tell ChatGPT: "Match this format and tone—not the content."

Why this works 10× better: ChatGPT excels at pattern recognition. It can spot the rhythm, structure, and voice in your examples better than it can interpret abstract instructions like "make it engaging."

My go-to use case:

Every week, I write newsletter summaries. Instead of describing my style, I paste three previous summaries and say: "Match this format and tone for this new topic."

The output matches my voice immediately. No more rounds of "make it punchier" or "that's too formal." ChatGPT learned my style from actual examples.

Time-saver: Keep a doc with your best writing samples. Reference it whenever you need ChatGPT to match your style—works for emails, LinkedIn posts, reports, anything.

Use Agent mode for Complex, Multi‑Step Tasks

Agent mode allows ChatGPT to perform complex, multi-step tasks by operating within a secure, isolated virtual computer environment. It can browse the web, analyze files, run code, and interact with external apps like Gmail or Microsoft 365 through connectors. You initiate a task, and the agent mode will break it down into steps and execute them autonomously, while you can monitor the progress and intervene at any point.

ChatGPT's Agent mode is available on several paid subscription plans, each with different usage limits. The free plan does not include access to agent mode.

Here’s an example of how I generated the press list for our All Things AI conference. I used this prompt and then chose Agent Mode from the options on the ChatGPT toolbar.

Once I finished this exercise and iterated, I copied and pasted it into Manus.im and asked Manus to verify contact information and then sort and insert it into Notion where we keep our project plans. It sorted the list by category and did further research to find the contact person or team.

Turn on Connectors to Bring Your Data to the Chat

Connectors let ChatGPT securely search your docs (Drive, SharePoint, GitHub, GMail, Hubspot, Notion, etc.) and cite sources inline.

You can set this up by entering Settings → Connectors → connect the apps you rely on. Use them in chat or combine them with Deep Research.

Create Custom GPTs for Repetitive Tasks

A Custom GPT bakes in your instructions, examples, and tools, so every run is consistent. Build a Custom GPT with your editorial style guide, image guidelines, and approval checklist. Share it with your workspace; co‑maintain it with shared edit access.

Pro tip: In a single conversation, mention other GPTs (e.g., your “Data Analyst” and “Image Designer”) without losing context.

Here’s an example:

I have an interactive prompt that I use for creating images for this newsletter. Rather than cutting and pasting it every time I have a Custom GPT that has the prompt and examples of images that fit my style.

I give ChatGPT a topic and it walks me through creating images with certain style guidelines that match each of my newsletters. I also uploaded examples of the images that match my style to help guide the Custom GPT.

Start with one technique this week—I recommend "Iterate 10×" if you're new to these approaches. Master it, then add another. Within a month, you'll be getting results that make your colleagues ask, "How did you do that so fast?".

Next week, I'll share five more advanced techniques: Deep Research for cited investigations, Canvas for collaborative editing, vision capabilities for extracting data from images, and two more power-user strategies that will complete your ChatGPT toolkit.

I appreciate your support.