How I Use Context to Learn Faster, Write Better, and Make Clearer Decisions with AI

A step-by-step guide with the real workflows I use to build a personal context file and use it to write, learn, and make decisions.

Let me be honest, when I started using AI, I used to think I needed a “secret prompt library” to get better results from AI, and maximise my productivity.

You know the vibe.

• Use this exact 3,217 word mega prompt

• Paste this and you’ll unlock god mode

• Say you are a world class XYZ who… and then magic happens.

Honestly, I tried a lot of those.

Sometimes they worked a bit. But most of the time, I still got the same problem you probably see every day: Generic answers.

I mean to say the response that sounds smart, but if you remove the fancy words, it is the same advice everyone else is getting.

And that’s where I learned that I don’t need more prompts instead I just need to provide more context.

Once I understood that, AI stopped being a noisy search engine and started becoming something closer to a second brain that actually knows me.

And now, in this post, I am going to show you exactly how I use context in real ways so AI stops guessing and starts being actually useful.

What “Context” Really Means When You Use AI Alone

When I say “context”, I literally mean:

What does the AI already know about you and your situation before you ask the question?

Let me give you an example to explain this in more simple terms.

Most people prompt like this: Give me 10 ideas for side hustles.

You see, AI has to guess:

• Who are you?

• What skills do you have?

• How much time do you have?

• What do you refuse to do?

• What do you actually want from life?

And so it gives you a response that could apply to a 17 year old student in India or a 55 year old manager in Germany.

The only reason is that there is “no context”.

Now look at this:

I am a full time MERN stack developer with 4 years of experience. I enjoy writing online and I am already making around $5K per month from content. I hate sales calls and I do not want to manage a big team. I can give 2 hours per day consistently. Suggest 10 side hustle ideas that fit this exact profile, and for each one tell me what a realistic income could be after 6 months if I execute properly.

Same question but now with context.

And you need to understand that context is not about writing a 40 line prompt.

It is about feeding AI the 3 to 7 things that actually matter:

• Who you are

• What you already have

• What you refuse to do

• What constraints you live in (time, money, skills)

• What success looks like for you

Once you understand that, you can use context in almost any area of your life.

Now, let me show you how I do it in practice.

Step 1: Build Your Personal Context File (Once)

Before you try any fancy workflow, you need to build one simple thing: A personal context file.

I literally have this saved in a note.

You can keep it in Notion, Google Docs, or even inside ChatGPT, or wherever you like.

Here is a simple structure you can steal:

• Who I am (short version)

• What I am working on right now

• My skills

• My constraints

• My non negotiables

• My goals for the next 6 to 12 months

Here is a real style example, so you see how specific it should be:

Who I am

I am a web developer with MERN stack experience and a content creator. I write long form, practical posts about AI, productivity, and online business. I care a lot about depth and hate generic advice.

What I am working on right now

• Growing my Substack and newsletter income

• Creating digital products around AI workflows

• Improving my writing speed without losing quality

My skills

• Writing long, detailed posts

• Technical understanding of web dev

• Comfortable with most AI tools and prompts

My constraints

• I do not want a 20 person agency

• I prefer deep work blocks over meetings

• I have around X hours per day that I can invest

My non negotiables

• I do not want to do hard selling on calls

• I want location freedom

• I want the work to feel interesting, not soul crushing

My goals (6 to 12 months)

• Hit $X/month from content and products

• Build simple systems so I am not working 12 hours daily

• Build a small but high quality audience that trusts me

This is your “base context”.

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Now here is how I use it.

How I feed this to AI

Every time I start a new session for something serious, I paste this and say:

This is my base context. Read it and ask me 3 follow up questions to clarify anything that feels fuzzy. Summarize it in a way you can use for future answers in this chat.

This does two things:

1. Forces the model to really internalize who you are.

2. Forces you to answer the questions you usually skip.

Once you do this once for a session, every other prompt becomes easier and 10 times more specific.

Now let us plug this into real workflows.

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Workflow 1: Context For Learning Anything 5 Times Faster

Let’s say you want to learn “applied AI as a developer”.

Normal way: Teach me AI or I want to learn AI so give me the resources.

And AI vomits a course outline that jumps from history of AI to gradient descent to LSTMs.

What next? Well, you get bored in 3 minutes, and do something else.

Here’s the context way:

1) Tell AI how you learn

Here is how I learn best:

• I already know JavaScript and basic Python

• I learn faster when I have small projects, not theory

• I have 1 hour per day for the next 30 days

• I get bored if I do math proofs, but I am fine with intuition

Based on this, ask me 5 questions to understand my current level in AI and what I want to build.

Later, please answer the questions honestly what the ChatGPT gives.

2) Ask for a tailored roadmap

Then ask:

Using everything above, design a 30 day learning plan for me to go from ‘basic intuition’ to ‘can build small AI powered features in my apps’.

Constraints:

• Max 1 hour per day

• Every week should end with a tiny project

• Suggest very specific resources, not just ‘watch YouTube’

Keep the plan focused on things I will actually use as a MERN dev.

You see, suddenly the plan become so better, and useful that I can go with thanks to context. It fits your time, your skills, your brain.

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Workflow 2: Context For Writing That Does Not Sound Like Everyone Else

Let me be honest, most people use this prompt to generate a post: Write me a blog post about how to use AI for productivity.

Then they wonder why their draft sounds like every Medium article from 2020.

Here is how I use context instead.