We’ve all been there—that moment when you realize you’re in way over your head. For me, it happened during my first briefing with a smart light vendor, when it became painfully obvious that I couldn’t tell a standard A19 bulb from a BR30 can light.
Clearly I needed help, fast. A crash course right then and there—something that would give me a solid baseline knowledge of lighting before I publicly embarrassed myself again. This particular knowledge crisis took place way back in 2019, before ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini existed. That left me at the mercy of Google, or even (gasp!) my local public library branch.
But now that we do have ChatGPT and all the other AI chatbots at our disposal, there’s an easy prompt that can help you level up from “dunce” in almost any topic in just 10 minutes.
I’m talking about the “80/20” prompt, which is derived from the 80/20 rule (aka the Pareto principle) that says 80 percent of results come from only 20 percent of the causes. The 80/20 rule has been used in fields ranging from business (e.g., “80 percent of your earnings come from 20 percent of your customers”) to cooking. And as AI prompt engineers quickly discovered, it can also be applied to learning new skills.
There are many versions of the 80/20 AI prompt, but here’s a common one I’ve seen floating around:
I want to learn [TOPIC]. I don’t need to become an expert—I just want a solid working understanding. Identify the most important 20% of concepts, terms, or ideas that will give me about 80% of what I need to know. Teach me those first, in plain language.
And here’s an even shorter version:
What’s the 20% of [TOPIC] I should learn first to understand 80% of it?
This prompt gets the AI to prioritize the most vital 20 percent of a given subject that will get you 80 percent familiar, while also making it clear that you’re not looking for a master’s degree. You just need some basic grounding on the topic and you need it quickly.
I tried this prompt using ChatGPT GPT-5.5 Instant for my previous light bulb conundrum and got a primer that I wish I’d had back then. Here’s a representative snippet of ChatGPT’s reply:
A19 = the “normal lamp bulb”
This is the standard bulb shape used in:
- table lamps
- floor lamps
- many ceiling fixtures
- basic sconces
The “19” refers to size.
If someone says:
“This fixture takes A19 bulbs”
they mean: standard household light bulbs.
That’s it.
Phew! Not expert-level knowledge, to be sure, but enough to get me through my next meeting without making a fool of myself.
Next I tried something a tad trickier: quantum mechanics. (I was an English major in college, so I know less about molecules than I did about light bulbs back in the day.) Here’s a small portion of what I got:
A quantum object is described by a wavefunction
This is the central idea.
A particle (like an electron) is not just a tiny marble with a definite position and speed.
Instead, it’s described by something called a wavefunction, which encodes:
- where it might be
- what it might do
- the probabilities of different outcomes
You can think of the wavefunction as a “cloud of possibilities.”
Well, OK, I can kind of follow that! I’m still no expert after reading ChatGPT’s 80/20 primer, but at least I now have a rough idea of Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle.
A couple of caveats about the 80/20 prompt:
- It’s only as good as the AI’s base knowledge. A massive model like Claude Opus 4.7 or GPT-5.5 will likely give you a solid 80/20 briefing on just about any topic, but a small “instant” model might give you a sketchier answer.
- You can try grounding the AI with a PDF about the topic and asking for the 80/20 treatment based on the uploaded file. You could also ask the AI to search the web before replying.
- It’s not great for learning hands-on skills that require real practice, like painting. Stick to concepts instead.
One final tip: Try adding a time restriction to the 80/20 prompt (e.g., “I have 10 minutes to bone up about…”). It can help to either expand the 80/20 answer you get (months) or compress it into a smaller, more digestible package (hours).
