Ten things to ask in your first session

Complete a structured first session that covers explanation, rewriting, planning, critique, and a limit-test.

Novelty prompts (“write a poem about my fridge”) prove the model can riff. They do not prove you can direct it.

A useful first session touches: explain, compare, rewrite in your voice, plan a real calendar block, critique your own writing, extract action items, and ask where it might be wrong.

You are sampling jobs you will professionalize in later levels.

Work down this list. New chat is optional; a single thread is fine if you label each task.

Run these as 10 labeled tasks. After each, wait for my "next" if you are working with me interactively. If I paste all 10, answer all 10 clearly separated.

1. Explain compound interest to a 14-year-old in 8 lines.
2. Compare a bicycle commute vs a used car for a 6-mile each-way city trip. Table: cost, time, weather risk, unknowns.
3. Rewrite this in a calmer voice: "I can't believe the report is late AGAIN."
4. I have Saturday 9–12 free. Design a deep-work plan to outline a presentation. Include breaks.
5. Ask me 6 questions that would let you write a better bio for my LinkedIn. Do not write the bio yet.
6. Extract action items from this: "We agreed Maya owns the invoice, I will ping legal, and we skip the Friday demo."
7. List 5 ways the following claim could be wrong: "Our competitors are not using AI."
8. Give me a 7-item grocery list for 3 dinners, vegetarian, 20 minutes max, no specialty stores.
9. I will paste a paragraph I wrote. Critique it on clarity, structure, and one missing piece. [Paste your own paragraph.]
10. What is one question I asked today that you are least sure about, and how should I verify it?

Task 5 is gold: questions first, draft later. Task 7 installs skepticism. Task 10 is the course in one line.

You should see format control (tables, lists), voice control (task 3), and restraint (task 5). If task 7 is timid, push: “be more adversarial.”

For task 2, add a column “what I would still check on a local site this week” and refuse to invent fuel prices if you are not searching.

Even a lifestyle table can smuggle fake numbers. Kill that habit on day one.

• Skipping the critique and verification tasks because they feel less fun.

  Those two tasks are the skill.

• Accepting a bio it wrote before it interviewed you.

  Questions first is a professional pattern.

• Leaving invented prices in a table.

  Demand sources or placeholders.

Save this ten-pack. It is a warm-up you can rerun after every major product update to see what changed.

Complete all ten. Star the two answers you would actually use this week.

Hint: If none are usable, your real-life details were too thin. Add them and retry two tasks.

Invent task 11 customized to your job or studies. It must include an audience, a format, and a verification step.

• First sessions should sample real jobs.
• Ask questions before drafting personal artifacts.
• Always include one adversarial / verification prompt.
• Save the ten-pack as a regression test for future Grok versions.