From an earlier video
This is material from an earlier video — the interfaces and features of AI services may have changed since. The idea and the approach still hold.
Custom instructions:
What almost everyone does:
Most users open a chat and type: "Write me a YouTube script."
And then close the tab in disappointment.
Yet ChatGPT has a hidden feature — Custom Instructions. These are direct settings where you tell it about yourself, and the model starts adapting to your style, tasks and goals.
💻 Where to find it:
Screenshot:
- Click your avatar in the bottom left → “Customize ChatGPT”
- Four fields will open:
- What should we call you?
- What do you do?
- How should ChatGPT respond?
- What’s important to know about you?
Fill them in as if you’re preparing an assistant for yourself. Don’t write a résumé, write the key things:
- who you are professionally
- what you’re interested in
- how you work
- what you expect from AI
🤔 How I filled in these fields:
"What traits should ChatGPT have" — how you want it to respond to you
-
Figure out what content you most often read or watch:
- YouTube
- Articles
- News
- Talks
-
Pick two pieces of content you really liked
- By style
- By tone
- By meaning
-
Copy it
- If the article turned out too long → save it as a Word or PDF file.
-
Open a new chat with ChatGPT and write
How it turned out for me:
💬 ChatGPT analyses the text and gives a general set of instructions for writing or speaking the same way
- We pick the best, most fitting options and paste them into the “What traits should ChatGPT have?” field
How it turned out for me:
🙋♂️ But that’s not all!
You can also add phrases like:
- Ask clarifying questions
- Use examples and lists
- Don’t be generic
It’s better to write a few points:
- Who are you professionally? → For example: “I’m a content creator in an Obsidian community, I make videos for YouTube, Telegram and TikTok”
And when answering each of my questions, ChatGPT will look for a connection to my work
and think about how to use new information to improve it.
- What else do you do outside work? → “I write a blog about productivity and I’m into no-code automation. I keep my notes in Obsidian.”
In this case ChatGPT will give you ideas about
how to automate a new idea right away or turn it into a note in Obsidian. Sometimes this fits my fleeting notes nicely.
-
What’s your personality and interests? → “I love minimalism in design, I value simplicity, systems and automation.”
-
Goals, preferences and education: → “My goal is to help people around me build a system where knowledge, ideas and actions come together as one — and the routine gets automated. I’m at university, I prefer to use Obsidian, Google Drive, Google Calendar.”
🧩 This is enough for GPT to understand your way of thinking and phrase answers not as “universal advice”, but adapted to your reality.
And once you set it up — GPT becomes:
- your copywriter
- your coach,
- your scriptwriter,
- your personal assistant.
📌 And the main thing: you don't have to "explain from scratch" in every request who you are and what you want. It already "knows".
📚 Bonus:
Keep going?