Your ChatGPT instructions probably aren’t being ignored. They’re just sitting in the wrong room.
Most people fix a “the AI ignores me” problem by writing louder, longer instructions. This approach does the opposite: it moves each instruction to the place where it actually applies, and it’s faster than rewriting your prompts.
The Key Idea
ChatGPT gives you five places to put an instruction. Each one has a different job. When a rule lands in the wrong place, it either doesn’t show up where you need it or it gets overridden by something more specific. A rule buried in a general box can lose to a project’s instructions. A rule that only matters for one task can leak into chats where it makes no sense.
The fix is to sort your instructions by how long they stay true and how far they should reach. Ask two things about every rule: “How long will this stay true?” and “How many conversations should it touch?” The answers tell you which room it belongs in.
The Old Way vs. The Better Way
The old way: You paste everything into one giant custom instructions box. Your job, your tone, your thesis formatting rules, your side business details. Or you retype the same paragraph at the start of every chat. The result is a cluttered box where half the rules contradict the current task, and you never quite know which ones ChatGPT is following.
The better way: Every instruction goes to the narrowest place where it still works. Broad and stable things go wide. Narrow and temporary things go small. Nothing is repeated, and nothing leaks into conversations where it doesn’t belong.
Here’s the map:
- 🧍 Custom instructions: Stable facts about you and how you like answers. This covers your regular chats. One catch: inside a project, the project’s instructions win. Example: “I’m a nurse, keep answers under 200 words unless I ask.” Another good one: “Give me the answer first, then the reasoning.”
- 🧠 Memory: Things that come up naturally and change slowly, like your kid’s age or the tools you use. Review it now and then and delete stale entries. If you switched from one note app to another last spring, the old entry is now quietly steering your advice the wrong way.
- 📁 Project instructions: Rules for one ongoing thing, like a thesis or a side business. They only apply inside that project. Example: “Always use APA citations and flag any claim that needs a source.”
- 📄 Project files: Reference documents you’d otherwise paste in every single time, like a style guide, a product list, or meeting notes.
- The prompt itself: Anything specific to this one task. Example: “Draft a polite reply to this email, three sentences max.”
The One-Question Test
Ask yourself: would I tell this to every assistant I ever hired?
If yes, it goes in custom instructions. “Keep it short,” “I’m a nurse,” “don’t pad the answer.” Any new hire would need to hear those on day one, no matter what job they were handed.
If it only matters for one piece of work, it goes in the project. “Use APA citations” or “our brand voice is casual” is useless in a chat about dinner plans, and it can quietly mess up other conversations. Picture asking for a pasta recipe and getting footnotes. That’s a project rule living in the wrong room.
A quick gut check helps too. If you’d only mention it when briefing someone on a specific assignment, it’s a project rule. If you’d mention it to anyone, it’s a custom instruction.
How To Clean This Up in 15 Minutes
- Open your custom instructions. Read every line and run the hired-assistant test. Anything that fails gets cut. Paste the cut lines into a scratch note so nothing is lost.
- Move the cut lines into a project. If you have an ongoing thing, like a thesis or a side business, make a project and put its rules there. Give the project a clear name so you remember what it’s for.
- Move pasted documents into project files. If you keep pasting the same style guide or notes, upload it once instead. You save time and keep your prompts clean.
- Open memory and delete the stale stuff. Old tools, outdated details, anything that isn’t true anymore. Do this once a month and it stays tidy.
- Keep the prompt for the task only. What you want, right now, for this one job. If a line in your prompt starts with “Always,” it probably belongs somewhere else.
One useful add-on from the comments: put a line in your custom instructions about what to do when ChatGPT doesn’t know something. That’s a stable preference about how you want answers, so it belongs there. Something like “If you’re not sure, say so instead of guessing” works well.
Your Turn
Pick one instruction you retype all the time and decide which of the five places it belongs. Move it today and see if it sticks. Then test it: start a fresh chat and check whether ChatGPT follows the rule without you repeating it.
Where do you keep your most-used instructions? Drop it in the comments, I’m curious what’s living in the wrong room!
Credit to u/Asdbusiness12 on r/ChatGPTPromptGenius for the breakdown.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: What should I tell it to do when it doesn’t know something?
Add a line to your custom instructions that says what to do when it’s unsure, such as asking you a clarifying question or saying it isn’t sure instead of guessing. Without that line, the assistant may fill the gap with a confident guess, and that’s often where odd answers come from. It’s a small addition that saves a lot of cleanup later.
Q: How do I catch stale memory entries before they cause problems?
Keep a short note outside the app with your most-used instructions, then compare it against what memory has stored. Entries go stale quietly, and you usually only notice when an answer comes out strange. When that happens, check memory first, since an outdated fact is a common cause.
Q: How often should I reread my project instructions?
One commenter rereads theirs about once a month because they forget what they told the assistant. A monthly skim is enough to catch rules that no longer fit the project. It’s also a good habit before you return to a project after a long break.
Custom instructions vs memory vs projects: where each instruction should live
by u/Asdbusiness12 in ChatGPTPromptGenius