Lesson 3 · What Should I Even Ask?
The Beginner’s AI Series · about 3 minutes to read · see all lessons
“I don’t even know what I don’t know.” I said that out loud, to a dog, in my kitchen. Thirty-five years of engineering and I couldn’t think of one thing to type into a free text box.
Turns out I was one sentence away from the answer the whole time.
Boomer’s note: “This is the most common ailment in all of beginner AI — question paralysis. The cure costs nothing and takes nine words. Do pay attention.”
What this lesson does
Solves the blank-box problem forever, with one move: you don’t need to know what to ask — ask the AI what to ask.
Why you’d care
Every beginner hits this wall. You sit down, the box blinks at you, and your mind goes as blank as the page. Most people quietly close the tab and decide AI “isn’t for them.” That’s like standing in a new country, overwhelmed, hoping someone reads your mind. Nobody reads minds. But the moment you point and say “what is that?” — the whole place opens up.
The AI can’t read your mind either. But here’s the beautiful part: it’s very good at helping you figure out what you’re trying to say. You just have to hand it the job.
How to do the thing
Step 1. Open your chatbot and describe your situation instead of asking a question. Type: “I’m brand new to AI. What are five useful things you could help someone like me with?” Read the list. One of them will make you sit up.
Step 2. Got a project but no idea where to start? Flip it around: “I’m planning a trip to Japan. What questions should I be asking that I haven’t thought of?” The AI generates the questions; you pick the good ones. You’re not the question factory anymore — you’re the quality control.
Step 3. For anything you’re trying to do, use the magic opener: “Here’s what I’m trying to do: ___. What do you need to know from me to help?” Now IT interviews YOU. Fill in the blank with anything — planning a party, understanding a bill, learning a hobby.
Step 4. And for anything you wish you knew how to do — my flagship discovery: ask the AI to do the thing for you first, then ask it to show you how it did it, step by step. You get the result AND the lesson. That one trick is half this website.
Step 5. Keep the house rule taped to your monitor: Never ASSUME. Always ASK. Don’t assume it can’t help, don’t assume you need to know the right words, don’t assume the question is too dumb. Ask.
🐾 Step 4 is the whole series in one sentence
Go back and read it again. Ask it to do the thing, then ask it to show you how it did it.
Uncle did not learn to write website code. He said “my homepage is too wordy, fix it, show me the plan first.” Then he read the plan, said go, and read the explanation afterward. The page you are reading was rebuilt that way.
He did not learn to organise his Google Drive either. He said “go through my folder and clean it up.” What came back was a checklist of exactly what to drag where, and why.
Here’s what I’m trying to do: ___. Do it for me. Show me the plan first and wait for my go. When you’re finished, explain what you just did, step by step, like I’m ten.
That paragraph is the most valuable thing on this website. Copy it. It works on anything.
What could go wrong
“Its suggestions were generic.” It doesn’t know you yet. Add one sentence about yourself first: “I’m a retired teacher who likes gardening and has bad knees” changes every suggestion that follows. (The next lesson makes this systematic — and Lesson 10 turns that one sentence into a whole file the AI reads every time, so it never forgets who you are.)
“I asked it what to ask, and now there’s too much to ask.” A wonderful problem. Pick ONE. The rest will still be there tomorrow — the box doesn’t close.
“It offered to help with something it probably can’t do.” Healthy instinct! It does overpromise sometimes. Trying is free; believing without checking is the only real mistake. A later lesson covers the checking.
Boomer’s verdict
“He spent a month not knowing what to ask, then asked what to ask, and hasn’t stopped asking since. There’s a lesson in there. It’s this one. 10/10.”
🕐 Uncle Tries It — Try It Too (under 2 minutes)
Type this, exactly: “I’m brand new to AI. Ask me three questions about my life, then tell me the most useful thing you could help me with.” Answer its three questions. Prepare to be surprised.
Bonus move: once you’ve got a question you like, don’t just ask one AI — ask three at once and compare. We built the Golden Rule Machine for exactly that: type your question once, fire it at Perplexity, Claude, and Gemini, and score the answers side by side.
Feeling like there’s a lot to remember? There isn’t — Boomer’s Promise from Lesson 1 still stands: learn it once here, then have the AI remember it for you.
You just finished Lesson 3
Next → Lesson 4: The SCOPE Method
Five seconds of thinking that fixes 90% of bad answers.
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