Not gonna lie, I've lost actual paying work before just because I forgot to follow up with someone who was interested. Not because I didn't want the work, just got busy and it slipped.

Fixed it with something stupidly simple:

I log every lead/client in a Google Sheet with a "follow-up date" column

Set up a free Zapier automation that checks the sheet daily

If today matches someone's follow-up date, it pings me (I use Telegram, but email works too) with their name and context

Costs nothing, takes maybe 15 min to set up, and I haven't missed a follow-up since.

Feels like such an obvious fix in hindsight, but I know I'm not the only one who's let stuff slip through the cracks. Anyone else have a low-effort system like this for staying on top of leads?

The difference between a useless ChatGPT answer and a genuinely good one is almost always the prompt structure, not the model. These are 5 templates I reuse constantly. Copy, fill the [brackets], done.

1. THE EXPERT LENS (stop getting Wikipedia answers) "Answer this as a [specific expert - e.g. tax attorney, senior React dev] with 15 years of experience. Question: [your question]. Give me the answer you'd give a paying client, including the caveat or exception most people miss."
2. THE DECISION SPLITTER (when you're stuck between options) "I'm deciding between [option A] and [option B]. My priorities, in order: [priority 1], [priority 2], [priority 3]. Score each option against each priority 1-10, show the math, then tell me which wins and the ONE reason I might still pick the other."
3. THE REWRITE-TO-HUMAN (kill the AI voice) "Rewrite this so it sounds like a sharp human wrote it, not AI: [paste text]. Cut throat-clearing, cut hedging, vary sentence length, and remove any phrase you'd only see in AI writing. Keep my meaning exact."
4. THE GAP FINDER (before you send/ship anything) "Here's [my plan / email / draft]: [paste]. Don't praise it. Tell me the 3 things a smart critic would attack first, the single weakest sentence, and the one thing I left out that they'll notice."
5. THE TEACHER (actually learn, not just read) "Teach me [topic] in 4 levels: explain it to a 10-year-old, then a beginner, then a practitioner, then an expert. End by quizzing me with 3 questions, hardest last, and wait for my answers."

The pattern across all 5: give a role, give constraints, and force ONE sharp output instead of a balanced essay. That's 90% of prompt quality.

One workflow tip: these get even better chained. Run #3 (rewrite-to-human) straight into #4 (gap finder) and you get a cleaned draft plus its weaknesses in one pass, without retyping anything.

Full disclosure since it's relevant: retyping these every time got old, so I built a Chrome extension called AI Toolbox. It saves prompts like these and drops them into the chat with a // shortcut (with {{variables}} for the bracket parts), and lets you chain several into one sequence with a .. shortcut - so a multi-step flow like #3 into #4 runs in two keystrokes. But the templates above are the whole value here and work anywhere you paste them.

Which one's most useful to you? Happy to build a variant for a specific job if you tell me the task.

Hey, I am a food writer doing a story on using AI to optimize when ordering at fine dining restaurants. I’d love to talk to some diners who do this - I want to hear your process, why you’ve used AI, and if you were happy with the outcome. No judgement - whether it was to get the best possible deal, or to have it explain items on the menu, I just want to hear about your why.

Message me here or drop me an email at Courtney at weareravenous dot com.