Speaker 1: If you're sick of repeating yourself every time you open
Speaker 1: a new chat with Jenai. You know, Here's who I am,
Speaker 1: here's my tone, Here's what I do, then this episode
Speaker 1: is for you. Neo Applan, Inventium's Jenai Guru is back
Speaker 1: to walk us through one of his favorite tricks for
Speaker 1: getting consistently great results from Jenai, and it's all about
Speaker 1: having a briefing document. Welcome to How I Work, a
Speaker 1: show about habits, rituals, and strategies for optimizing your date.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, doctor Amantha Imber. Two years ago, I
Speaker 1: completely overhauled how I work with Jenai and I'm now
Speaker 1: saving over forty hours every single week. That is no exaggeration,
Speaker 1: and that's exactly why my company, Inventium created the Jenai
Speaker 1: Productivity Upgrade. It's a twelve whe course designed to move
Speaker 1: you from AI doubler to productivity machine. No fluff, just
Speaker 1: practical strategies that will pay off from week one, saving
Speaker 1: you at least ten hours every single week. You'll learn
Speaker 1: how to make AI sound exactly like you, use AI
Speaker 1: as your second brain to excel at your job, and
Speaker 1: so much more. Whether you're a complete beginner or already dabbling.
Speaker 1: We've got you covered, starting with prompting fundamentals and going
Speaker 1: all the way through to advanced automations and agentic AI.
Speaker 1: We kick off on July fourteen, and spots are limited.
Speaker 1: Visit inventium dot com, dot au, forward slash Genai hyphen
Speaker 1: cohort to secure your place now. There's a link to
Speaker 1: that in the show notes, and you've got nothing to
Speaker 1: lose because there's a seven day money back guarantee, So
Speaker 1: head to the link in the show notes and check
Speaker 1: out the program today. So, Neo, what's the actual problem
Speaker 1: that we're trying to solve for When we talk about
Speaker 1: using briefing documents.
Speaker 2: JENAI generally doesn't know everything about you, and so every
Speaker 2: time you open up a new chat thread, you need
Speaker 2: to give it the context about what you're trying to achieve,
Speaker 2: where you're working, potentially, your industry, all those kind of things,
Speaker 2: and so building up that context can take a fair
Speaker 2: bit of time. We've talked in previous episodes about getting
Speaker 2: it to ask you questions and things like that. This
Speaker 2: is all about building context so it understands a lot
Speaker 2: more about you and it can give you a personalized
Speaker 2: result because knowing more about you and what you're trying
Speaker 2: to achieve. Turns it from being a pretty good result
Speaker 2: engine into giving you an engine which produces an excellent result.
Speaker 2: And so if you're going to give this context all
Speaker 2: the time, it can be a little bit painful every
Speaker 2: time you've got a new chat thread. So briefing documents
Speaker 2: are a cheat fast way to get that context into
Speaker 2: the GENAI to get a better result.
Speaker 1: Okay, so what exactly does a briefing document look like?
Speaker 2: Like?
Speaker 1: What should go into one?
Speaker 2: Okay, Really it's up to you and may some people
Speaker 2: might have many briefing documents, but at its heart it
Speaker 2: would be things like your role, what you do, the
Speaker 2: company you work for, maybe your team structure, maybe your KPIs.
Speaker 2: It might have some things about how you want to
Speaker 2: work with jen AI. It might be your voice and
Speaker 2: style prompts and how you want to have different tones
Speaker 2: in there. So pretty much everything that AI would need
Speaker 2: to know so it can do a great job. So
Speaker 2: you don't have to give that information every single time.
Speaker 2: So to see this as a living, breathing document of
Speaker 2: here's me, here's what I need to do, Here's how
Speaker 2: I need to work with you AI. Here's the briefing
Speaker 2: document for you, and so you'll have this, you just
Speaker 2: upload it to a new chat thread and then it
Speaker 2: has a fair bit of background in what you're trying
Speaker 2: to achieve.
Speaker 1: So do you recommend having the one mega briefing document
Speaker 1: with basically a full history of your life and everything
Speaker 1: about it, or like, in all seriousness, I should we
Speaker 1: be splitting them out and having different categories of briefing documents.
Speaker 2: I do recommend that, Yes, for most people, you might
Speaker 2: find that one briefing document is fine and enough. But
Speaker 2: you might find that you might have maybe there's a
Speaker 2: project at work and you need to have a lot
Speaker 2: of background for this particular project. The people as different stakeholders,
Speaker 2: different needs, different goals, different communications you need to build
Speaker 2: for it. In that case, I would have a separate
Speaker 2: briefing document to say me my normal job and certainly
Speaker 2: one from my own personal life. So I would recommend
Speaker 2: most people would have two to three briefing documents, one
Speaker 2: for each kind of facet on why you would want
Speaker 2: to use GENAI. The fewer the briefing documents is better
Speaker 2: because you're not going to confuse the AI. It's going
Speaker 2: to know if you're talking about project day with a
Speaker 2: project day briefing document that it's only going to have
Speaker 2: all information for that and it doesn't need to know
Speaker 2: anything else, so it won't get confused as much. So
Speaker 2: the other thing about that is it's a smaller document,
Speaker 2: which means it won't fill up the context window, which
Speaker 2: is its short term memory. Gives it a little bit
Speaker 2: more memory there for it as well.
Speaker 1: Okay, so when you say shorter document, I mean how
Speaker 1: many pages in a word document should it ideally be
Speaker 1: kept under.
Speaker 2: I'd say under ten pages for sure. I'd say five
Speaker 2: pages is probably a good number for a briefing document.
Speaker 2: So if you're going to blow over five pages, I'd
Speaker 2: say look at maybe splitting it up into two or
Speaker 2: maybe three briefing documents.
Speaker 1: Okay, so let's imagine that I've created a briefing document.
Speaker 1: How does that actually change how I'm prompting the AI
Speaker 1: to do the task that I want it to do.
Speaker 2: All you need to do is, in each new thread,
Speaker 2: you upload the briefing document and then you ask your question,
Speaker 2: but also get it to refer to the briefing document.
Speaker 2: So you might upload the document say I need you
Speaker 2: to do this task, refer to the briefing document for
Speaker 2: the tone, or for the background, or for the context
Speaker 2: and things like that, and then Jenna I will get
Speaker 2: all the information from the briefing document and put it
Speaker 2: in the outcome. So here's an example. You might say,
Speaker 2: I need to write an email to a stakeholder on
Speaker 2: a project. Here's the project briefing document. It will then
Speaker 2: know your name, it'll know what you're trying to achieve,
Speaker 2: it'll know who that stakeholder is, and will then be
Speaker 2: able to craft the email in a right way for
Speaker 2: that project, for you and for that stakeholder. So the
Speaker 2: first draft is a lot closer to what you need
Speaker 2: rather than just a generic first draft of an email
Speaker 2: to any kind of person. This one will sound like you.
Speaker 2: It'll fit with your needs and your context and what
Speaker 2: you're trying to achieve a lot faster, so it's less
Speaker 2: tweaking for you to have to do later on.
Speaker 1: Okay, so let's imagine I'm in a thread. I've prompted
Speaker 1: the AI to do the task with the briefing document
Speaker 1: within that thread, do I need to keep reminding the
Speaker 1: AI to refer to the briefing document or once I've
Speaker 1: uploaded it, does it just remember and it knows always
Speaker 1: refer to this briefing document for this thread.
Speaker 2: There are a couple of reasons why you would need
Speaker 2: to remind it to look at the briefing document. One
Speaker 2: of them is some of the genais they want to
Speaker 2: draw information from their own memory rather than from documents
Speaker 2: who have uploaded, and so sometimes they forget that they
Speaker 2: need to refer to this briefing document. They call it
Speaker 2: prompt adherents. So all you need to do is, if
Speaker 2: it's not referring to it, all you need to do
Speaker 2: is write the words, make sure you refer to the
Speaker 2: briefing document, and then it all redo its last response
Speaker 2: and give you a much better response from there. Other
Speaker 2: things you need to have to use with the briefing
Speaker 2: document is if you're having a really long conversation with
Speaker 2: the genai, it might run out of its short term
Speaker 2: memory that context window, so you may need to re
Speaker 2: upload it and re remind it if you need to.
Speaker 2: But most of the time they're pretty good in being
Speaker 2: able to recognize that you have this briefing document and
Speaker 2: you continually refer to it, and so therefore it needs
Speaker 2: to continually refer to it as well.
Speaker 1: Okay, are there any simple tests that you have built
Speaker 1: in to just check, oh it is the GENAI. Still
Speaker 1: referring to the brief email documents.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you will know that. Most of the time, I've
Speaker 2: got a little cheat's way, which is, whenever it writes emails,
Speaker 2: I hate that GENAI loves to write, I hope this
Speaker 2: email finds you well. I'm sure people have seen that.
Speaker 2: It's a common sign for this is written by AI.
Speaker 2: It's the same thing as the m dash being in there.
Speaker 2: So I've got a line at the bottom of my
Speaker 2: briefing document. So for any email, never write I hope
Speaker 2: this email finds you well. And if I find that indeed,
Speaker 2: I'm getting it to write me an email and it
Speaker 2: does say hype funds you well, then clearly it's not
Speaker 2: reading everything in the briefing document or it's not taking
Speaker 2: that into account with its output. And so that's a
Speaker 2: great tell for me to see that it isn't reading
Speaker 2: the briefing document. Same thing you might want to use
Speaker 2: is Australian English right in there. Use Australian English spelling,
Speaker 2: but not aussieisms, otherwise it'll go guy mate. And if
Speaker 2: it starts talking in America, and then you'll know that
Speaker 2: it hasn't actually read everything in the briefing document, so
Speaker 2: you might need to re upload it or re reminded
Speaker 2: of the briefing document. So there's two great techniques there.
Speaker 1: Okay, So one final question, I mean, is this the
Speaker 1: same as building a custom GPT in chat GPT or
Speaker 1: a gem in Gemini? Like, are we talking about the
Speaker 1: same thing here?
Speaker 2: Your kind of It's the document itself can be used
Speaker 2: in so many different ways. So the first one is
Speaker 2: some people like to use more than one Genai, so
Speaker 2: they can say, oh, I got one output from a Jenai,
Speaker 2: I don't want a second opinion from another Jenai. In
Speaker 2: this case, I can upload my briefing document to both
Speaker 2: of them and then I can get different responses. So
Speaker 2: that's one of the great ways. The other is some
Speaker 2: people don't have the paid plans, and so if you
Speaker 2: don't have the paid plan, you cannot build your own
Speaker 2: custom GPT, so therefore there's not available for you. There's
Speaker 2: also another one which is in the Microsoft ecosystem. Their
Speaker 2: agents are slightly different to the GPTs, and I've found
Speaker 2: they sometimes work differently with briefing documents. So it's great
Speaker 2: to have these documents as a core tool. But yes,
Speaker 2: if you do upload them into a GPT or a
Speaker 2: projecting Claude or a gem in Gemini, then these are
Speaker 2: the core source knowledge for each of these. So whether
Speaker 2: you're using these great tools, GPTs or gems, this briefing
Speaker 2: document is a great tool you'll need anyway.
Speaker 1: Nio, thank you so much. I know that for me
Speaker 1: creating different briefing documents has been such a time saver,
Speaker 1: So for anyone listening, I strongly encourage you to try
Speaker 1: this out today. If you like today's Joe, make sure
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Speaker 1: new episodes drop. How I Work was recorded on the
Speaker 1: traditional land of the Warrangery people, part of the Cool
Speaker 1: And Nation. A big thank you to Martin Immer for
Speaker 1: doing the sound mix.