I told ChatGPT there was an 'extremely lazy person' here — and its answers got way better

A surprisingly effective way to make AI skip the fluff

19 Mar 2026, 09:22 · TechRadar

Features By Eric Hal Schwartz published 19 March 2026

(Image credit: Getty Images/VCG)

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Sometimes, ChatGPT answers feel like they're written to impress rather than help, but this small tweak to your prompts can carve a shortcut right through them.

For all its vaunted power, ChatGPT sometimes comes off as insecure and desperate to show every detail it has to hand, regardless of relevance to your actual question. My latest trick gets it to understand that you don't want to hack your way through a bramble of words.

It's simple — tell the AI, in the middle of your query, that there's an “extremely lazy person here”. It can turn an overly verbose response into something far more practical, and sometimes surprisingly clever.

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Try it. It reframes the conversation and your goals, nudging the AI away from textbook thoroughness and toward the bare (though still complete) minimum.

An immediate improvement

In practice, the difference can feel immediate. Ask for help cooking pasta, and you would normally get a tidy sequence of steps that includes timing, water ratios, and reminders about seasoning.

Add the "lazy" qualifier, and suddenly you only get the basics. In this case, “boil water, add a little salt, dump pasta, stir once, taste until not crunchy, drain, eat.” It is hard to argue with the efficiency, even if it might leave a few culinary purists wincing.

The same effect shows up in more complex tasks — a request for help organizing a workday might usually deliver a plan with hourly blocks and productivity tips. With the added phrase, one version boiled it down to — “Pick three things, do them first, ignore everything else until done.”

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