Getting Started March 29, 2026

I Tried ChatGPT Once and Closed the Tab. Here's What I Wish Someone Had Told Me.

Last October I sat down at my laptop, typed chatgpt.com into the browser, created an account, and stared at a blinking cursor for about forty-five seconds.

Then I closed the tab.

Not because I was scared of it. Not because I thought robots were coming for my job. I closed it because I had no idea what to type. The screen was blank. The cursor was blinking. And my brain went completely, uselessly empty. Like walking into a room and forgetting why you're there, except the room was the entire internet and everyone else seemed to know what they were doing in it.

I went back to editing photos and didn't open it again for three weeks.

If that's you right now, sitting on the other side of this screen thinking yeah, that was me last Tuesday, I want to tell you something that would have saved me a lot of time and a lot of feeling dumb.

You're not doing it wrong. There is no wrong.

The Blank Page Problem Is Real

Here's what nobody tells you when they say "try ChatGPT." They don't tell you what to actually type. They say things like "you can ask it anything" which is technically true and also completely unhelpful. That's like handing someone a piano and saying "you can play anything." Cool. I don't know how to play piano.

The blinking cursor problem is not a you problem. It's a design problem. Every single person I've taught (and I've taught a lot of them at this point) has the same moment. You open it, you stare at it, you feel like you should already know what you're doing, and you quietly close the tab and go back to your life.

But here's the thing that changed everything for me: AI is not a search engine. You're not supposed to type the perfect question. You're supposed to have a conversation.

Three Things I Wish Someone Had Said Out Loud

1. You are not supposed to know what to type. Nobody does the first time. The people posting screenshots of their wild AI outputs on social media did not start there. They started exactly where you are. Blank screen. Blank brain. Mild panic.

2. It's a conversation, not a command. You don't have to get it right on the first try. You can say "that's not what I meant" or "make it shorter" or "actually, forget all that and start over." It doesn't get annoyed. It doesn't charge you extra. You can go back and forth as many times as you want. Think of it less like Google and more like texting a very patient, very well-read friend who never gets tired of your questions.

3. You literally cannot break it. I need you to hear this one. You cannot break it. You can't type the wrong thing and crash the internet. You can't accidentally delete anything important. You can't mess up someone else's account. The worst thing that happens if you type something weird is you get a weird answer back, and then you close the window and nobody ever knows. There are no consequences. There is no permanent record. It's the lowest-stakes thing you'll do all day.

Five Prompts to Get You Unstuck (Copy, Paste, Done)

When I finally went back to ChatGPT three weeks later, I didn't stare at the cursor again. I went in with something specific. Something small. And that made all the difference.

Here are five prompts you can copy and paste right now. Today. You don't need to modify them. You don't need to understand how AI works. You need to type words into a box and see what comes back. That's it.

1. The "What Do I Even Make for Dinner" Prompt

Copy this prompt: I have chicken, rice, and whatever vegetables are probably in my fridge. I'm tired and I don't want to go to the store. Give me one easy dinner idea with simple instructions. Talk to me like a friend, not a cookbook.

See how that works? You told it your situation. You told it what you wanted. You told it how to talk to you. That last part matters more than people think. When you tell AI the tone you want, it actually listens. (This is something we call giving it an Example of the tone you want in the S.O.F.T.E. method, and it works ridiculously well.)

2. The "Help Me Say This" Prompt

Copy this prompt: I need to write a short thank-you text to a friend who dropped off food when I was sick last week. I want it to sound warm and genuine, not like a greeting card. Three to four sentences max.

You know what you want to say. You always know what you want to say. Getting it from your brain onto the screen in a way that doesn't make you cringe is the hard part. Let AI write the first draft. Then change whatever doesn't sound like you. The whole thing takes two minutes.

3. The "Explain This Like I'm Not Pretending to Understand" Prompt

Copy this prompt: Explain what a Roth IRA is in plain language. No financial jargon. Pretend I'm smart but have never thought about this before. Keep it under 200 words.

Swap "Roth IRA" for whatever thing you've been nodding along to in conversations while secretly having no idea what people are talking about. We all have those things. AI doesn't judge you for asking. That's the whole point. You're being Specific about what you need and setting the Output you want (plain language, under 200 words). The more specific you are with what you want back, the better the answer.

4. The "I Have a Decision to Make" Prompt

Copy this prompt: I'm trying to decide between two things and I keep going back and forth. Option A is [describe it]. Option B is [describe it]. The things that matter most to me are [list them]. Help me think through this. Don't decide for me, but help me see it more clearly.

Fill in the brackets with your actual situation. Could be a vacation destination. Could be whether to take a freelance project. Could be which couch to buy (I used this one for the couch, and I'm not even a little embarrassed about it). The Framework here is that you're giving it the full picture of your situation. The more context you share, the more useful the answer. Think of it like talking to a friend who actually needs to understand your life before they can give good advice.

5. The "Make This Less Overwhelming" Prompt

Copy this prompt: I need to [big task that feels overwhelming]. Break this down into small steps I can do one at a time. Make each step something I could finish in under 15 minutes. Start with the easiest one.

This one is my personal favorite. I use some version of it almost every week. Organizing the garage. Planning a birthday party. Figuring out how to switch dentists (why is that so complicated?). The Tone and format you're asking for here, small steps under 15 minutes, is what keeps the answer from being another overwhelming list. You're telling it exactly how to structure its response so it actually helps instead of adding to the pile.

The Part Where I Tell You It Gets Fun

The first time I got a response back that actually helped me, something clicked. Not in a dramatic way. More like, oh, wait. That's it? That's all I had to do?

Because that's the secret nobody's saying out loud. Using AI is not a skill you need to learn. It's a conversation you need to start. And conversations don't have to be perfect. They have to be started.

You don't need to take a course first. You don't need to watch a YouTube tutorial. You don't need to understand what a language model is or how tokens work or any of that. You need to open the tab, type something real, and see what comes back.

If you want a head start, the AI Starter Kit has 25 prompts you can copy and paste without changing a word. It's free, it takes two seconds to grab, and it means you never have to stare at that blinking cursor again.

Open the tab. Type something. See what happens.

Written by Jennie Slade, founder of Soft Tech

← Back to all posts