How to phrase a task
The working formula: what to take → what to do → in what form to deliver.
A short request looks faster but usually costs more, because clarifications follow. A detailed one closes in one or two turns.
Before and after
| Instead of | Write |
|---|---|
| Analyse sales | Calculate revenue and margin per product for June, compare with May and show the 10 biggest drops. Deliver as a spreadsheet, one row per product |
| Evaluate the manager | Evaluate the manager's calls from last week against five criteria, each scored 1–10, with examples of good and weak calls. Deliver as a document |
| Make a deck | Make 6 slides: one problem per slide, photo, cause and next step. No statistics, no intermediate files |
| Check the mailbox | Collect emails from the last 3 days that nobody answered and tell me who needs a reply today |
What is almost always worth adding
- Period — "for June", "from the 1st to the 14th", "last week".
- Breakdown — per product, per deal, per employee, per warehouse.
- Output format — spreadsheet, document, deck, short message, text ready to paste into a messenger.
- What not to include — "no intermediate files", "no general recommendations", "numbers only".
An example that needed no clarification
Build a report from @mango_office for 1–14 June for the "Support" group: total inbound, answered and missed calls; separately — called back, was called back, unreachable, spam; plus the average call-back time per day.
The service, period, group and fields are all named, so the report arrives on the first try.
Corrections: pointed, not "redo it"
When you get a draft, do not restate the task. Say what exactly to change:
- "Keep only the overdue deliveries."
- "Different signature format — like in the previous letter."
- "Add a cost column and recalculate the margin."
The agent remembers what it has already assembled and redoes only that part. "Start over" is the slowest route: it pulls all the data again.
If the answer went completely off
Starting a new chat with a sharper brief is faster than arguing in the old one, where the accumulated context keeps pulling the agent back to its earlier reading of the task.
Effort
Next to the input box there is an Effort switch:
- Normal — quick answers, reformatting text, writing a letter.
- Medium — most working tasks.
- High — analytics, legal reviews, complex calculations. Slower, but digs deeper.
For a long brief, voice input helps: dictating the details is faster than typing them.