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You opened a chat window, typed a question, and the answer felt… fine. Not great, not terrible — just fine. The thing is, most people never change a single setting, and that's where the small wins hide. A new guide from OpenAI walks through four practical moves you can make today: choosing a model, tuning how hard it thinks, writing better instructions, and letting AI tools work together. Here's the version a busy, non-technical person can actually use.
Pick a model that matches the job
Think of an AI model like a car. A sports car is great for the highway, a pickup is great for moving furniture, and you don't need either to grab groceries. OpenAI's guide reminds users that different models in the GPT-6 family are built for different tasks. Some are fast and cheap; others are slower and better at careful thinking. If you're drafting a quick email, the fast one is plenty. If you're weighing pros and cons of a big decision, the slower one is worth the wait.
- Quick, everyday tasks (rewording an email, summarizing a short article): pick the smallest, fastest model your account offers.
- Tricky thinking tasks (planning a trip with lots of constraints, debugging a logic puzzle): pick the model the company labels as its most thoughtful.
Tune the "reasoning effort"
This is a setting most people never notice. "Reasoning effort" controls how long the AI pauses to think before answering. Low effort = quick, surface-level reply. High effort = the AI takes longer, weighs more angles, and usually gives a more careful answer. OpenAI's guide recommends turning it up for hard problems and leaving it low for simple ones. In the apps most people use, this often looks like a slider or a dropdown labeled "thinking," "effort," or "depth."
A simple rule of thumb: if the answer you got felt rushed or sloppy, try the same prompt again with reasoning effort turned higher. If the answer was already fine, you just saved yourself a few seconds and a few cents.
Write better instructions (it matters more than the model)
Here's the part the guide really leans on, and for good reason: the quality of your instruction — what AI people call a "prompt" — changes the answer more than swapping models does. A few habits that reliably help:
- Say what you want and what you don't. "Write a friendly, three-sentence apology to a client about a missed deadline. Don't include discounts or blame."
- Give a quick example. "Here is the tone I want: 'Sorry for the delay — here's what I'm doing to fix it.'"
- Tell the AI who it's pretending to be. "You are a patient teacher explaining this to a beginner."
These aren't magic tricks. They're just clearer instructions, the way you'd brief a new helper.
Let the AI use tools
The newer AI models can do more than chat — they can call outside tools (small programs that do one job well, like a calculator, a calendar, or a web search) when you ask. OpenAI's guide calls this "coordinating tools." In plain English: instead of the AI guessing, it can look something up or run a calculation before answering. For you, this often means turning on features like web search or code execution if your plan supports them. The AI then decides on its own when to use them.
Common mistakes
- Chasing the "newest" model. Newer isn't always better for your task. The fast, cheap model often beats the big one for short jobs.
- Stuffing the prompt with politeness. "Please be a kind and brilliant expert…" rarely helps. Clear instructions help.
- Forgetting reasoning effort exists. If answers feel lazy, this is the first knob to turn, not the prompt to rewrite.
Wrap-up
You don't need to learn how AI works under the hood to get more out of it. Pick a model that fits the job, turn up the thinking when it matters, write clearer instructions, and let the AI reach for tools when it needs to. Try one of these four moves today — pick whichever sounds easiest — and see how the answers change.