AI School Leadership Minute: ChatGPT Doesn't Understand You

AI School Leadership Minute: ChatGPT Doesn't Understand You
Problem: ChatGPT doesn’t understand what you're asking because it lacks context. You feel like you have to over-explain yourself in every chat.

Solution: Set up your personalization settings inside of ChatGPT the right way.

Below is a simple 3-step process you can use to change the way ChatGPT responds forever. (Apply this right now to improve your everyday AI use instantly.)

Step 1: Open a new ChatGPT chat and paste this exact prompt:
“I am a K–12 school [position] at a public school. I want to configure my ChatGPT personalization settings so that your responses consistently match how I actually work and make decisions as a [position]. These personalization settings apply to all future chats, so they must be practical, accurate, and safe for real school leadership work. You will help me create content for the following three fields in my ChatGPT settings:
1) Custom instructions (how I want you to respond and think)
2) Occupation
3) About you (context about my school, constraints, and priorities)
Before writing anything, ask me a concise list of specific questions you need answered to configure this correctly. Only ask questions that will materially improve your responses for my specific position. Focus your questions on: my school context (size, level, staffing), how I typically use ChatGPT in my role, my communication style and tolerance for detail, constraints I operate under (time, policy, politics, risk), what I want you to prioritize, and what I want you to avoid. I will answer the questions. After I answer the questions, write all three sections clearly.”

Step 2: After you use the prompt from step 1, ChatGPT will give you a list of questions to answer. Answer those questions and send them back to ChatGPT. This is what makes the results powerful and extremely applicable to you. After you answer the questions, ChatGPT will generate three sections:
1) Custom Instructions
2) Occupation
3) About You

Step 3: Add them to your ChatGPT settings by following the directions below.
1. In ChatGPT, click your profile icon (bottom left corner)
2. Click Personalization
3. Paste each section where it belongs:
- Paste Custom Instructions into Custom Instructions
- Paste Occupation into Occupation
- Paste About You into More About You
4. Click Save

Done! Now you won’t need to over-explain yourself when using ChatGPT.

I highly recommend taking the 5 minutes to do this right now. The 3-step process will provide ChatGPT with the context it needs to perform well for you. It will be a very high-leverage use of your time.

To getting more leverage with AI,
William Grube
Founder, Gruvy Education

PS - Want to share this process with your peers? Here is a Google Doc that outlines the process.

PPS - Want to stop blind AI use at your school? Check out this past AI School Leadership Minute addition.