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95% of People STILL Prompt ChatGPT-5 Wrong

2025-09-23 Education
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Jeff Su
Jeff Su
1.8m subscribers

Mastering GPT-5: 5 Essential Prompting Strategies After Architectural Shifts

OpenAI fundamentally changed GPT-5's architecture, making old prompts fail. Learn five simple, proven tips—from routing nudges to perfection loops—to immediately boost your GPT-5 output quality.

Short Summary

  • Force the model into deeper reasoning paths using specific "nudge phrases."
  • Control output length precisely using verbosity directives.
  • Exploit OpenAI's built-in optimization and self-critique mechanisms.

This guide distills a month of testing into actionable prompting strategies tailored for GPT-5’s new architecture. Apply these techniques to overcome performance degradation and unlock the model's true potential for complex tasks.

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Description

🦾 HubSpot’s #ChatGPT Playbook: https://clickhubspot.com/65d274 If your ChatGPT-5 results seem worse, it's not just you. #OpenAI fundamentally changed GPT-5’s architecture, which is why old prompting techniques are now less effective. After a month of testing, I've found 5 simple tips that dramatically improve your outputs. This video covers everything from easy "nudge phrases" that force deeper reasoning to advanced "perfection loops" for complex tasks, helping you master the new model. *TIMESTAMPS* 00:00 Why ChatGPT-5 is WORSE than before 00:34 Update #1 from OpenAI 01:29 Update #2 from OpenAI 02:10 Tip 1: Router Nudge Phrases 04:32 Tip 2: Verbosity Control 06:18 Tip 3: OpenAI’s Prompt Optimizer 08:12 Tip 4: Create an XML Sandwich 09:55 Tip 5: The Perfection Loop 11:26 ChatGPT-5 Updates Recap *RESOURCES MENTIONED* My free AI Toolkit: https://academy.jeffsu.org/ai-toolkit?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=video&utm_campaign=189 Prompts & Phrases from the video: https://www.jeffsu.org/chatgpt-5-prompting-best-practices *BUILD A POWERFUL WORKFLOW* 📈 The Workspace Academy - https://academy.jeffsu.org/workspace-academy?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=video&utm_campaign=189 ✍️ My Notion Command Center - https://www.pressplay.cc/link/s/DE1C4C50 *BE MY FRIEND:* 📧 Subscribe to my newsletter - https://www.jeffsu.org/newsletter/?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=video&utm_campaign=description 📸 Instagram - https://instagram.com/j.sushie 🤝 LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jsu05/ *MY FAVORITE GEAR* 🎬 My YouTube Gear - https://www.jeffsu.org/yt-gear/ 🎒 Everyday Carry - https://www.jeffsu.org/my-edc/ #ai

Top Comments (10)

@guyprovost 2025-09-27

95% of youtubers says they have metrics on how users uses chatGPT when 95% of them never shows where these metrics comes from!

299 22 replies
@josephfortier5450 2025-09-26

Positive: you are spot on the tips you give. Negative: you go too fast, you don’t summarize at the end and one of my favorite prompts is if you only remember one thing of my video is this …. This helps me learn. Btw, I’m 72 and I’m still learning AI.

105 13 replies
@ddark5633 2025-09-23

Great tips! I’m a college professor teaching business courses, and I really appreciate the clarity of your insights. Higher education is struggling right now to teach students how to use AI effectively and prepare them for their careers. One of the biggest challenges is that there are so many AI tools out there, and the technology is evolving at a pace no education system can fully keep up with. I think the safest and most impactful way to prepare future professionals is to focus on teaching the core foundations of AI usage rather than chasing every new tool. Could you make a video on what universal skills and/or knowledge business students should have in order to be “AI-ready”? That would be super helpful for both educators and students. Thank you!

78 11 replies
@ralfrav4668 2025-10-05

Pro tip: Use a one-word trigger for this, result is you just have to type perfmode somewhere in your prompt, same result but faster/easier: Setup — paste this once into ChatGPT: Please remember: when I include the word "perfmode" (case-insensitive) in any prompt, you must (1) build a 100-point quality rubric for my task and iterate silently until the result scores ≥95/100; (2) run an extra source check for any unstable facts and cite key sources; (3) show only the final answer (no drafts or outlines). Confirm this is saved. Optional: Make it the default: Treat "perfmode" as the default behavior even when I don’t type it.

75 4 replies
@JeffSu 2025-09-23

🦾 HubSpot’s ChatGPT Playbook: https://clickhubspot.com/65d274 TIMESTAMPS 00:00 Why ChatGPT-5 is WORSE than before 00:34 Update #1 from OpenAI 01:29 Update #2 from OpenAI 02:10 Tip 1: Router Nudge Phrases 04:32 Tip 2: Verbosity Control 06:18 Tip 3: OpenAI’s Prompt Optimizer 08:12 Tip 4: Create an XML Sandwich 09:55 Tip 5: The Perfection Loop 11:26 ChatGPT-5 Updates Recap

43 5 replies
@PixelGlue 2025-09-23

The quality and clarity of your videos will never cease to impress me.

31 3 replies
@dertyp3463 2025-09-27

It tends to get stuck sometimes, especially if you agree to its suggestions. you ask it to "list data so and so", it'll do that and ask you "want me to format xy?" if you say yes (because it has reasonable suggestions sometimes) it'll just keep going "should I now...?", "now want me to...?", when all you do is wanna view the data but it keeps on wanting to format it. relevance seems to be a factor here

10 1 replies
@MeganKrejci 2025-11-19

The “think carefully”, “make a rubric” , and “specificity” tips brought me a much higher quality output today. Thank you.

6 1 replies
@patrickegan8866 2025-09-27

Good to know I'm not far off with my prompts but now have some specific ways to improve. Thanks

5 1 replies
@mvmalyi 2025-09-24

Thumbnails often looking like Jeff used a prompt “make me smile even more” a few times

2 1 replies

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