Prompt Anxiety: Why the Blank Text Box Can Be Paralyzing and How to Overcome It

This article discusses the phenomenon of "prompt anxiety" - the paralyzing fear that can arise when faced with a blank text box for a powerful AI tool like ChatGPT. The key points are: 1. Prompt anxiety is a cognitive overload problem - the sheer possibility of what the AI can do creates pressure to craft the "perfect" first prompt, leading to writer's block. 2. The article provides three practical frameworks to overcome prompt anxiety: 1) Embrace the "worst first draft" prompt to break the seal and start iterating, 2) Use the AI to prompt itself by asking it questions to narrow down the task, and 3) Use a fill-in-the-blank template structure to provide a clear starting point. 3. The author argues that prompt anxiety is not a bug, but a feature - it reflects the responsibility of authorship when using a generative AI tool. The goal should be to move through the discomfort quickly using simple tricks, rather than trying to eliminate the anxiety entirely. 4. The article provides an "anti-anxiety starter kit" with techniques like the "5-second rule" and maintaining a "spark file" of past prompts and ideas to draw from, rather than starting from a blank slate.