Easiest Way To Learn Prompt Engineering

Hello, welcome to another edition of AI Growth Insights.

In today's newsletter, I want to share with you the easiest way I know of to learn prompt engineering.

I noticed many people still struggle to master this crucial skill, despite having access to countless tutorials and dozens of guides saved in their bookmark folders.

Contrary to popular belief, diving into research papers is not the most effective way to learn prompt engineering, especially for beginners.

While it has its merits, it won't get you very far if you're not already skilled at crafting prompts.

So, let me walk you through the process... It's exactly how I learned it, and also how I instruct the people I work with to learn it as well.

And so far, this method has been effective and reliable, no matter your current skill level.

1. Visit GitHub.

GitHub is a place where programmers and app builders actively share their codes, collaborate, and share their work with the larger coding community.

And now, with the rise of AI, it's become a valuable resource for prompt engineering as well.

You see, whenever people in the open-source community create AI products, they often share their complete code and prompts on GitHub.

Which makes it the perfect place for us to search world-class prompts to study and reverse engineer.

If you don't know how to code, don't worry. For what we're about to do, you won't need to write even a single line of code.

2. Search for AI prompts.

So, for the second step, go to the search bar and type in 'AI prompts.'

There, you'll discover many AI apps that have shared their prompts with everyone. If you want to narrow down your search, you can also look for specific AI prompts on particular topics.

3. Look through the folders

If the prompt is available, you'll often find it in one of the folders.

Usually, people name the folder where they store the prompts with something very straightforward... Like 'prompt', 'prompts' or 'GPT prompts'.

But sometimes it's not so clear, so you might need to do a bit of digging.

And once you find them, move on to the next step.

4. Reverse Engineer The Prompt.

After locating the prompts in the prompts folder, copy them and paste them into a place where you can take notes.

I personally use Miro.

Then start dissecting the prompt.

By dissecting, I mean this: At each sentence, ask yourself, what is this prompt trying to do?

Each line of the prompt serves a purpose and influences AI's behavior in some way.

• Is it setting a rule?

• Providing context?

• Imposing a constraint?

And, as you read each sentence, consider how it changes the model's behavior and take some notes.

After analyzing two or three prompts, you'll begin to understand prompt engineering well.

5. Craft Your Own Prompts.

Once you've analyzed a few prompts and get a feel for how real app builders are writing their prompts, it's time to start crafting your own.

So pick one of your most time consuming tasks that could use some automation and start creating prompts for it.

As you do this, your mind will recall the collection of prompt techniques you've uncovered before.

And with this knowledge, you'll be better equipped to guide the model to perform your desired task.

At this stage, it's all about testing, tweaking, and refining your prompts.

This is the only way you will find out which techniques work, which do not work and when to use each one of them.

As with any skill, the only way to truly learn is by practicing it.

So go ahead and start experimenting on your own.

PS: Need help implementing AI in your business?

Let's talk about how you can leverage AI.

• AI Automation;

• Prompt Engineering;

• AI for Content Creation & Social Media Growth;

• And much more.