To my experience of prompting, If I were to be honest I was kinda confused with some of the concept of this experiment. However one thing that caught my attention was personal prompt since I’m so used to asking questions in regards to what I can do to improve myself. For the personal experiment, I asked, “help me be more productive.” I used google gemini and what It did is constrained by making a list of production by advising to master my to-do list, protect my focus, manage my energy, not just time; and optimize my enviorment. When I added persona + goal, it mentions about S.M.A.R.T. Goals. That was the only thing that improved, however it may seem like it got confused.

The LLM I used for Tuesday’s lab was Microsoft Copilot. The prompt that was most intriguing was the second phase of the simple “make a workout plan for me” prompt, which was: Make a workout plan for me. I’m available for 2 hours starting at 4 pm and would like a 5-day plan. Please act as a strength coach. Regarding my own experience with this and what we’ve discussed in class, updating the original, basic prompt with prompt patterns (persona, audience, format, constraints, flipped interaction, and iteration), the output became increasingly tailored to the specifics of the prompt. In this prompt, I added persona in requesting Copilot to act as a strength coach, as well as format, identifying I want a 5-day plan, as well as iteration, which revised the first prompt and tightened the plan. This prompt is particularly useful for people who have a gap in their schedule to engage in working out and being pushed the way a strength coach will push you to reach the results you want, especially with a 5-day plan for two hours a day. An additional alteration to this particular prompt would be describing your age range and athletic abilities to further tailor the workout regimen.

Again, I used Microsoft Copilot for this prompt:

Here’s a clean, structured 5‑day workout plan built around your availability: 2 hours starting at 4 pm, with a smart mix of strength, conditioning, and mobility so you’re not burning out but still progressing fast.

Day 1 — Upper Body Strength (Push Focus)

Warm‑Up (10 min)

• Light band work
• Shoulder mobility
• Push‑ups (2×10)

Main Lifts (60 min)

• Bench Press — 5×5
• Overhead Press — 4×6
• Incline Dumbbell Press — 4×8
• Dips — 3×10–12

Accessories (30 min)

• Triceps rope pushdowns — 4×12–15
• Lateral raises — 4×15
• Core: Planks 3×1 min

Cool‑Down (10 min)

Chest/shoulder stretching

📅 Day 2 — Lower Body Strength (Squat Focus)

Warm‑Up (10 min)

• Hip mobility
• Light goblet squats

Main Lifts (60 min)

• Back Squat — 5×5
• Romanian Deadlift — 4×8
• Leg Press — 4×10
• Walking Lunges — 3×20 steps

Accessories (30 min)

• Hamstring curls — 4×12
• Calf raises — 4×15–20
• Core: Hanging leg raises — 3×10

Cool‑Down (10 min)

Lower‑body stretching

📅 Day 3 — Conditioning + Core

Warm‑Up (10 min)

Light cardio + dynamic stretching

Conditioning Block (60 min)

Choose one:

• Rowing intervals (10×2 min on / 1 min off)
• Treadmill incline intervals
• Circuit training (kettlebells, sled pushes, battle ropes)

Core Block (30 min)

• Cable woodchoppers — 3×12 each side
• Ab‑wheel rollout — 3×10
• Russian twists — 3×20
• Back extensions — 3×12

Cool‑Down (10 min)

Breathing + mobility

📅 Day 4 — Upper Body Strength (Pull Focus)

Warm‑Up (10 min)

Band pull‑aparts, light rows

Main Lifts (60 min)

• Deadlift — 5×3 (heavy but clean)
• Pull‑ups — 4×8
• Barbell rows — 4×6–8
• Lat pulldowns — 3×10

Accessories (30 min)

• Biceps curls — 4×12
• Face pulls — 4×15
• Rear‑delt flyes — 3×15

Cool‑Down (10 min)

Back/lat stretching

📅 Day 5 — Full Body + Mobility

Warm‑Up (10 min)

Dynamic full‑body warm‑up

Full‑Body Strength Circuit (60 min)

Repeat 4 rounds:

• Goblet squat — 12
• Push‑ups — 15
• Kettlebell swings — 20
• Dumbbell rows — 12 each side
• Step‑ups — 12 each leg
• Rest 2–3 min between rounds

Mobility + Stability (40 min)

• Deep hip mobility
• Thoracic spine work
• Shoulder stability
• Light yoga flow

Cool‑Down (10 min)

Slow breathing + stretching

⭐ Want me to tailor this further?

I can customize it to your goals—muscle gain, fat loss, strength, athletic performance, or a mix. I can also adjust for equipment, injuries, or preferred training styles.

From the Google Cloud reading, the One -, few – and multi-shot prompts is an example of the prompt used in this example, as the basic original prompt was slightly amended to generate a more accurate response to what is wanted. “This method involves providing the model with one or more examples of the desired input-output pairs before presenting the actual prompt. This can help the model better understand the task and generate more accurate responses” (Google Cloud: Prompt engineering: overview and guide, 2026).

At first, I used the prompt “Help me manage my time”, where Deepseek gave me a super interesting result combining different strategies that I can use:

1. Clarity: Decide What Matters
   Before planning how to spend time, know what you’re optimizing for.

The 80/20 Rule: What 20% of your tasks give you 80% of your results (or fulfillment)? Identify those 1–3 things.

The 3–3–3 Method: Each day, plan:

3 hours on your most important project (deep work).

3 shorter urgent tasks (meetings, emails, admin).

3 maintenance tasks (exercise, chores, learning).

2. Structure: Plan with Intention
   Don’t just react to what’s loudest. Use time blocking.

Time Blocking: Open your calendar. Assign specific blocks of time for deep work, shallow work, and breaks. Treat these blocks as non-negotiable appointments.

Batch Similar Tasks: Do all your calls in one block, all your email in one block. Context switching is a silent time-killer.

The Night Before: Spend 10 minutes each evening planning the next day. It saves hours of morning indecision.

3. Execution: Protect Your Focus
   The best plan fails without execution discipline.

Single-Task: When working, focus on one thing. Close unrelated tabs, put your phone in another room.

Manage Energy, Not Just Time: Are you a morning person? Do your hardest work then. Low-energy after lunch? Schedule admin tasks or a walk.

Use a “Done” List: At the end of the day, list what you did accomplish. This builds momentum and prevents the feeling of “I got nothing done.”

4. Recovery: Avoid Burnout
   Time management isn’t about maximizing every minute. It’s about sustainability.

Schedule Breaks: Use techniques like Pomodoro (25 min work, 5 min break) or simply ensure you take a 5–10 minute break every 90 minutes.

Define Shutdown: Have a clear end to your workday. A ritual (like closing your laptop or changing clothes) signals to your brain that work is done.

These are all useful, however no exact instruction of what “I should really do”, it even told me what matters the most but by not understanding what the most important thing is, because I did not provide other information but jsut to tell me how to manage my time.

Where the other prompt that I used, which is “I am a Junior college student, now I feel like my task is really difficult and I usually sleep around 12. Please help me with my time management when my average out of class time is 4pm.”, worked much better to give actual timetable to follow, tho, still not having other deeper intel because I did not provide any:

Summary of Your New Schedule:
Time Activity
4:00 – 4:15 Transition / Snack / Walk
4:15 – 5:30 HARDEST TASK (Phone away, deep focus)
5:30 – 7:00 Dinner + True Break (No work)
7:00 – 9:00 Easy tasks, review, organization
9:00 – 10:30 Shutdown routine / Wind down
10:30 In bed, lights low, no screens
11:00 Asleep

In this prompt, I used the suggestions from UT Guide:

To get your desired output, it is important to be specific about what that output should look like. When crafting a prompt, remember to try and incorporate these three things:

• Who the author is
• Who the audience is
• What the purpose is
• Example: “please generate a guide written from the perspective of a hiring manager communicating standards of professional attire in a business-casual setting to a group of newly hired student interns”

Which, I did include all these basic components and AI did provide a more specific answer.

The prompt I put in what “Make me a schedule for my day to help me prepare for finals”. The people this prompt and answer I hot would be people who are looking for a good and easy study schedule to follow. The platform I used to get my answer was Claude. Here after plugging in my prompt, it gave me a step by step, hour to hour way to help me study for my exams that I may have. A connection I can make from readings or in class discussions is https://platform.claude.com/docs/en/build-with-claude/prompt-engineering/claude-prompting-best-practices. This is from checklist March 31st talking about how to use and maintain a good prompt to make it realistic and best as possible. A quote I got from this reading says” Claude responds well to clear, explicit instructions. Being specific about your desired output can help enhance results. If you want “above and beyond” behavior, explicitly request it rather than relying on the model to infer this from vague prompts.” Here it is just explaining to be clear and specific as possible to get the best outcome.

When I asked my prompt this is the answer I received from Claude.

Finals Prep Schedule (Afternoon + Evening)

🕒 3:15–3:30 PM — Quick Reset

📚 3:30–4:30 PM — Study Block #1 (Hardest Subject)

• ☕ 4:30–4:45 PM — Break
• 📘 4:45–5:45 PM — Study Block #2 (Second Hardest Subject)
• 🍽️ 5:45–6:30 PM — Dinner + Mental Reset
• ✏️ 6:30–7:30 PM — Study Block #3 (Easier Subject or Review)
• 🚶 7:30–7:45 PM — Break
• 📑 7:45–8:45 PM — Practice Session
• 🧹 8:45–9:00 PM — Organize for Tomorrow
• 🌙 9:00–10:00 PM — Light Review + Wind Down
• 😴 10:00 PM — Sleep

At the beginning, my starter prompt felt like it could work, but I had a feeling the response would be too broad. I typed in “tell me about World War 1” and the response was a general overview that covered everything at a surface level without really getting into any real meaning or depth. It hit the basics like dates and major battles, but it wasn’t the kind of response that would actually help someone understand the war.

The prompt that really helped was the one where I asked it to be a historian and to focus on the key causes and events of the war. This really changed the answer. The answer was more in depth and really went into the causes of the war. The main causes were militarism, alliances, imperialism, and nationalism. The answer really went into the reasons why these were the causes of the war.

Overall, I learned that AI is good at giving detailed, useful information, but only when you tell it exactly what you want. The first prompt gave me something generic because I gave it nothing to work with. Once I added structure and explicit directions, the quality jumped significantly. As the OpenAI Academy reading states, “prompt engineering is the process of designing and refining your input in a way that helps ChatGPT give the best possible answer” (OpenAI Academy, 2025). In order to get good results, the user has to be intentional with how they frame their prompts, and the more specific the instructions, the better and more focused the output will be.

OpenAI Academy. (2025). Prompting. https://academy.openai.com/public/clubs/work-users-ynjqu/resources/prompting

The LLM prompt I used: Explain how gravity works

The most helpful prompting strategy I’ve learned is using a persona prompt. In class, we have talked about how the way you ask a question changes the model’s answer, and I saw that myself when I asked Copilot to explain gravity. My first prompt just said, “Explain how gravity works,” and the answer was broad. It mentioned Newton and Einstein but did not go into much detail. When I used a persona prompt and asked Copilot to explain it as an astrophysicist, the response became much clearer and more detailed, including examples and explanations that actually made sense. This prompt is helpful for students, writers, or anyone who needs a clear, in depth explanation. By contrast, when I tried an audience prompt explaining gravity in football terms, the answer was less helpful because it simplified things too much.

Using a persona prompt with Copilot showed me how important prompt literacy is, which connects to what I learned from the UT Aspire article. The article talks about how asking clear, thoughtful questions helps students think more deeply and get better answers. I saw this in action when I asked Copilot to explain gravity as an astrophysicist—the answer was detailed and easy to understand. But a broad prompt or one focused on an audience gave weaker results. This shows that knowing how to ask questions carefully can guide thinking and produce the best results, just like UT Aspire explains.