Using ChatGPT to come up with ideas
Steph Smith explains how she uses ChatGPT for idea generation
It takes about 10 hours to understand how ChatGPT ticks.
Most people who are overwhelmed by this new technology, just haven’t spent enough time playing around with it.
To encourage you to spend more time playing with ChatGPT in new ways I’m sharing a story about how someone used ChatGPT. Then I’ll give you a 20 minute exercise to reproduce the use case for yourself.
If I can find 30 different stories and come up with 30 interesting 20 minute exercises, that’s your 10 hours. Here’s my first attempt.
Steph Smith, a prolific online creator, host of the a16z podcast, and author of "Doing Content Right," wanted to plan a meetup for fellow internet enthusiasts. Steph wanted ideas for fun, internet-related activities that would break the ice and help start conversations among participants.
To help brainstorm ideas, Steph turned to ChatGPT. She crafted a prompt that clearly outlined her goals:
Hi ChatGPT, I'm hosting a meet up for fellow people who love the internet. I like to run a few ice breakers. What are some some good ideas for splitting the group into smaller groups? I like to have it be fun and internet related.
ChatGPT came up with a list of creative, theme-appropriate suggestions, such as "Meme Matchup," "Emoji Charades," "Social Media Speed Dating," "Tech Time Capsule," and "Internet Trivia Challenge."
While she didn't use any of the ideas verbatim, she liked the idea of a "Meme Matchup". She decided to print out popular memes and place them on different tables, allowing attendees to choose their favorite meme when they arrive at the meetup.
ChatGPT was useful here because it saved Steph a bunch of time and mental energy by coming up with lots of decent ideas quickly. Even if the suggestions weren't perfect, they still worked as a great starting point for her own brainstorming process.
Your Turn
To replicate Steph's approach to using ChatGPT for idea generation, begin by identifying the theme or focus of your event, whether it involves a meetup, party, or workshop. If you’re not planning on organizing a meetup any time soon then use this exercise to come up with ideas for what you can do for a close friends next birthday party.
Start by crafting a clear, concise prompt that outlines what you want ChatGPT to do. You can use Steph’s prompt as a starting point or you can start with something as simple as “Brainstorm some ideas for things I could do for friends birthday”. The emphasis here is to start by asking for lots of ideas, not a single idea.
It’s unlikely that you will get great suggestions with such a generic request. The next step is to provide some useful context for ChatGPT to work with. If you are planning an event then explain the purpose of the event, who it’s for and why you are hosting it. Similarly, if you’re thinking of ideas for a friend’s birthday then describe your friend. When I’m providing context like this and I’m not sure where to start I will ask ChatGPT to make up some boilerplate to get me started (“Make up a fairly detailed description of my best friend and the kinds of things they like to do. One paragraph.”) and then I’ll edit the boilerplate with real details. Once you have your description then you can either edit your original prompt by hovering over it and clicking on the edit button or by asking for more ideas in a follow up prompt and including your context with the follow up prompt (“More ideas please. Here is some context about my friend to help you come up with more relevant suggestions: [insert description]”).
Next ask for some more examples but this time add some meaningful constraints to your prompts. Some ideas:
Explain where you live and what time of year it is (as where you are and the season might influence your options).
Include a budget (so that ChatGPT only suggests ideas you can use). Try specifying that it should include both smaller, intimate ideas as well as bigger, more elaborate ones within the budget (so that it doesn’t only propose ideas fixed at a certain price point).
Specify how long you have to prepare. again, ask for a range of immediate and more well-thought out ideas within the timeframe you provide.
The next step is to ask for more ideas but this time you are going to provide examples you like (either meetup activities you have enjoyed in the past or things you’ve done for past birthday that worked well). Aim for 3 examples. Examples are great because it helps ChatGPT narrow in on your taste and preferences. If you want you can also include examples of terrible ideas so that ChatGPT knows what to stay away from.
You final prompt is to pick the top 3 ideas from all the ideas ChatGPT has generated so far and ask for more ideas like those. Additionally, briefly explain why you like these ideas so that ChatGPT understands what aspects of the ideas to focus on.