Local IT guy showed me a prompt trick that saved me 5 hours on data cleanup

I was complaining at the coffee shop about reformatting spreadsheets from our CRM and a guy named Dave said I should just tell the AI "do this first, then that, with exceptions" as one sentence instead of separate steps. Has anyone else found that breaking down instructions into a single chain works way better for getting clean outputs?

3 comments

3 Comments

jana_hart1825d ago

Dave's method really clicked for me once I tried it with our messy client list. I used to give separate instructions like "remove duplicates" then "fix the date column" and the AI would mess up the order every time. Now I tell it "go through row by row, delete any blank cells, fix the date format to mm/dd/yyyy, and flag anything with a missing email" all in one sentence. It catches the exceptions better because it knows the whole workflow upfront. Cut my cleanup from two hours down to about twenty minutes flat. That single chain trick is the best shortcut I've picked up this year.

olivia39825d ago

The first time I tried chaining instructions like that, I actually watched the AI pause for a second and then nail five things in one go. It was like seeing someone finally get how to juggle instead of dropping balls one at a time. The key for me was keeping the order logical in my head, like "clean, then sort, then flag" so the chain flows natural. I've started writing my whole prompt out in a text file first to check the order, saves me from rewriting the whole thing mid-sentence.

taylorellis21d ago

Twenty minutes from two hours? That's insane. I'm still trying to wrap my head around it, @jana_hart18. Sounds like Dave's method is more of a cheat code than a trick.