A Lesson In Communication (TLDR at the bottom)

I just had a conversation with my girlfriend today. She was telling me about how I spend a lot of time working, how she tries to be understanding, but she also needs XYZ, and so on.

Old me would've gotten defensive. Started explaining why I work so much. End up shooting her feelings down without realizing it.

But instead, I paused and asked:

"What is she saying, and what does she want to have happen?"

When I looked at it that way, the answer was clear. She wanted to voice her feelings and have them validated. She wanted to renegotiate how our relationship is working right now because specific things were making her feel a negative emotion.

She wasn’t attacking me with some hidden agenda. She’s just trying to communicate what she needs.

Here's the weird part. I learned this from talking to AI.

I've spent the better part of 2 years communicating with AI and trying to get the outputs I want out of it.

Through that process, I've realized how bad I am at communicating.

There are tons of prompting guides out there, but they're all variations of "how to communicate better."

What changed things for me was learning to speak in terms of actions and changed behavior. Building prompts with a broad core identity that gives the AI context, then giving it a clear checklist ("if this happens, then do that" style instructions).

That approach gives me the most consistently good outputs from my AI agents, chatbots, and voice agents.

But getting there required hours of reviewing my own inputs. Looking at what I said, then looking at what the AI did, and figuring out where the gap was between the two.

I believe that same skill transfers directly to people.

When I'm in a conversation now, I can step outside of it and ask those same two questions: What is this person saying, and what do they want to have happen?

Putting emphasis on those two points has allowed me to:

Not get as angry at specific words and the meanings I'm placing on them, and instead focus on their intent.
Better understand what they actually want, and adjust my behavior to align with it.

I could be misattributing this due to my bias of working with AI everyday, but I'd like to believe it is.

**TLDR / What should you do:**

AI (and most people) do not want to betray you or harm you. If they're not behaving the way you want, they either misunderstood you, or they took something you said to mean A when you meant B.

When you view communication through that lens, you can begin learning to speak in a way that gets AI, and the people around you, to respond the way you need them to.

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