"Get thoughtful pushback on decisions. Challenge ideas. The tactic: Use AI as an intellectual sparring partner to stress-test your thinking, explore alternative perspectives, and identify potential blind spots before making important decisions. Try this: Present a plan, idea, or decision to an AI assistant with instructions to challenge your thinking constructively. Identify risks you haven't considered, consider secondary impacts, and add nuance to your analysis."
"I'm planning to [decision/plan] because [reasoning] and with a goal of [objective]. Play devil's advocate, give me multiple perspectives on this, be bold, surprising, creative, and thoughtful in your reply, and address these questions: What are the strongest arguments against this approach? What alternatives should I consider? What risks might I be overlooking? What questions should I be asking myself? What challenges should I expect to face? What could I do to gain more insight? What could I do to increase the chances of success?"
AI can function as an intellectual sparring partner that stresses thinking, surfaces alternative perspectives, and identifies blind spots before decisions. Users can present plans or decisions and instruct AI to challenge assumptions, outline strong counterarguments, propose alternatives, enumerate overlooked risks, and suggest questions and success strategies. Role-playing prompts (financial advisor, family member, competitor, admired person) broaden perspectives. A practical prompt template guides AI to play devil's advocate and answer specific diagnostic questions. Effective outputs require detailed context and bold instruction to avoid generic or predictable responses. Users should craft explicit prompts and provide background to obtain nuanced, surprising, and constructive pushback.
Read at Fast Company
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