Shadowing Practice: Learn 95% of ChatGPT Work in Under 20 Minutes - Learn English Speaking with Video

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You're in the right place if you use ChatGPT every day.

Know that ChatGPT Work is a major upgrade, but you're still using it like a normal chatbot because no one,

not even OpenAI, can explain what you're supposed to do differently.

Now ChatGPT goes from just answering questions to doing work for you by connecting to all of your tools.

Okay, Dominic, but what does that mean?

I guess I'll take a stab at this.

Here in ChatGPT Work, I've asked it to create a Google Calendar reminder for my brother's birthday.

A simple enough task that regular ChatGPT can do as well.

But watch what happens next.

In my next prompt, I tell ChatGPT Work to add a cake emoji to the event title, put reminder to buy gift in the calendar description,

and I also say to carry these rules forward for every birthday event.

And after fast forwarding, We can see the AI has saved both defaults for every future birthday event.

But what exactly does that mean?

To answer that, let's open a brand new session within ChatGPT Work and say, create a birthday reminder for Sam Elman on April 22nd.

And let's fast forward to see what happens.

And we see the cake emoji in the title and the gift reminder in the description, even though I never asked for either one in this session,

which illustrates ChatGPT Work's biggest advantage over regular ChatGPT.

ChatGPT work remembers the rules you want it to follow and carries them into future tasks.

So the more you teach it about how you work, the more useful it becomes.

And that's just the tip of the iceberg.

So let's get started.

Before diving in, let's first take a quick look at all the products you have access to.

On one end of the spectrum is good old ChatGPT chat.

I'm not gonna waste your time with this today.

On the other end, we have Codex, which is designed for coders and programmers.

So we're not touching this today either.

The middle is where it gets confusing because there are two versions of ChatGPT Work.

ChatGPT Work Web lives inside the web version of ChatGPT.

It has a few unique advantages, but it's a lot less capable than the desktop version.

ChatGPT Work Desktop is the one I recommend using for everyone who's not technical.

So that's what we'll be focusing on for the rest of this video.

Good job, OpenAI for making this so simple.

As an ex-Googler, I can tell you, we never made our product lineup so confusing for our consumers.

And something like this never ever bit us in the ass.

Once you've downloaded the desktop version of ChatGPT Work, you only need one other thing to unlock its full capabilities, a Google Doc.

Think of this document as the master rule book for ChatGPT Work, written entirely in plain English.

The purpose section explains how this document works, The global rule section contains the instructions ChatGPT Work follows for all tasks.

Voice principles controls how the AI writes and maintenance explains how ChatGPT Work should keep the file organized as it grows.

Taking a closer look at the Google Doc, we see that ChatGPT Work added the Google Calendar birthday rule from earlier as a subsection under global rules.

The voice principle section is thin on purpose because you'll learn how to teach it to sound like you later on.

And the same goes for the routing map.

I've linked the starter template for you down below.

And when you download this, make sure you go to files, download, and download as a markdown file, okay?

And you're gonna need to rename this exactly, all right?

You're not gonna rename this to like agent.

You're not gonna rename this to agent one.

You're gonna rename this to agents.md.

Exactly like that, okay?

Or ChatGPT work is not gonna recognize it.

Next, create a folder anywhere on your desktop, call it whatever you want.

For me, I'll just say Jeff Work OS.

And then we're gonna move the agents.md file into that folder, all right?

And then back in the ChatGPT desktop app, make sure the work toggle is selected.

And then under choose project, we're gonna pick that folder we just created, all right?

And once your folder has been added or mounted,

ChatGPT work will now automatically read your agents.md file before it performs any task.

And the best part is, you don't even need to manually maintain this file.

You can just tell ChatGPT work.

Remember this rule.

Whenever I ask you to rename image files, use a short but descriptive name so I know what each image is without opening it.

And let's just fast forward here.

Clicking into the agents.md file opens it up in the preview pane.

And we can see that ChatGPT work added a subsection under global rules with our file name convention.

Now I can drop a folder of photos into my WorkOS folder.

And in a new chat, I can say, rename the photos in the images folder.

And after about a minute, we're just gonna skip ahead here.

We can see the images have been renamed according to our new rule.

So just to be clear, ChatGPT Work could already analyze and rename images, but without rules in place,

it'll rename the photos differently every time, giving you inconsistent results which leads us to the most important takeaway from this video.

If you use ChatGPT Work without mounting a folder, you're basically using regular ChatGPT.

Once you mount a folder with an agents.md file inside,

ChatGPT Work reads that file before every task and follows your preferences so you get consistent results.

One thing I'm choosing not to cover today is the three ChatGPT models because that's a whole separate rabbit hole.

But luckily for us, today's sponsor HubSpot has a free guide that breaks it down.

It's one of the clearest explanations of which model is good for what.

And honestly, I've been making the mistake of defaulting to the most powerful model, SOL, for everything, wasting like a bunch of tokens.

But now I know better.

For a recent presentation, I started off using SOL to build the narrative

and to analyze a bunch of earnings call transcripts and financial statements.

Then I actually jumped to Luna to pull thousands of numbers from the financials into a spreadsheet.

And it was surprisingly fast and accurate.

Then finally, I used Terra to actually build out the slide titles and speaker notes.

Inside, you also get nine ready to run workflows from just getting started all the way to connecting Gmail, Slack and Drive for recurring automations.

So check out the free guide by clicking the link down below.

Thank you HubSpot for sponsoring this video.

Next up, let's see how we can supercharge plugins with our agents.md file.

As a quick reminder, plugins connect ChatGPT Work to tools you already use like Notion, Gmail, and Slack.

In Claude, this is called connectors.

And in Gemini, this is called connected apps.

And connecting to an app within ChatGPT Work is very easy.

You just go to plugins and then search for a tool like Google Calendar, and you simply follow the instructions.

But just giving access by itself isn't that useful.

teaching ChatGPT work how you like to use that app is another thing entirely.

And that's where the agents.md file comes in.

For example, with your folder mounted, start a new chat and say,

remember this, meetings default to 45 minutes and format Google calendar descriptions so they're easy to scan.

Start with bottom line up front, followed by three short bullets with relevant context.

And we're just gonna skip ahead here.

Opening up the agents.md file, we see ChatGPT Work added the new rule under Google Calendar rules directly, which is a great example of us,

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the user, setting the rules and the AI doing the grunt work.

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Now, in a fresh ChatGPT session, I can upload my apartment lease and say,

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create a Google Calendar event for a call I have with my real estate agent tomorrow at 10 a.m.

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I've attached my lease for your reference.

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And let's fast forward.

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And again, we see ChatGPT Work has created the event following the instructions saved inside our agents.md file.

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45 minute event, bottom line up front with three bullets, even though we didn't repeat those instructions in the prompt.

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But there's a problem.

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Google Calendar is only one app.

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And as you connect more, Notion, Gmail, Google Calendar, Teams, Granola, Spotify, so on and so forth,

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adding all those rules for all those apps in one agents.md file will get very messy.

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So here's a pro tip.

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We can tell ChatGPT Work, create a tool conventions.md file that will house all rules governing tools moving forward.

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Move every tool or plugin specific rule from agents.md into it.

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Replace the moved content in agents.md with a link.

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And we're just gonna send this off.

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While that's working, let me quickly explain why we just did that.

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ChatGPT Work loads agents.md before every single task.

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So a bloated file means worse outputs and wasted tokens.

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And since we're not using tools like calendar in every task,

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moving those app specific rules into a separate file keeps agents.md lean and organized.

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Opening up the newly created tool conventions file, we see that both the image file and Google Calendar rules got moved over.

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And over in our agents.md file,

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that entire section got replaced by a pointer to the newly created tool conventions file.

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Now that you understand how plugins work together with agents.md, here are three useful plugin rules that you can add today.

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For Gmail, never include a sign off in my Gmail replies because I already have a default signature set up.

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For Notion, always use the existing templates in my Notion databases instead of creating pages from scratch.

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For Slack, when summarizing Slack threads, always separate the output into decisions, action items, and open questions.

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As a quick recap, plugins let you connect ChatGPT work to your apps.

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And although by itself, this is nothing new, you can use agents.md to teach the AI how you use those apps.

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By the way, my free cowork toolkit includes all the templates you need to organize your rules, folders, and workflows in one week.

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Yes, it is built for Cloud Cowork, but the exact same logic and frameworks apply to ChatGPT Work, link down below.

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Moving on to my favorite feature, the side panel.

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So basically, the side panel in ChatGPT Work has three completely different functions.

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First, it lets you preview and edit files as you've seen already.

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Second, it's a fully functional browser, and we're gonna get into the benefits of that in a bit.

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And third, I can use the side chat function to hide stuff from the main chat.

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And this is not to be confused with a side chick.

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Okay, that was really bad.

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I'm kind of struggling today.

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Hang on, hang on, hang on.

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Starting with the preview pane, let's go through an example.

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If we open up our tool conventions.md file in the side panel, we can highlight the entire Google Calendar section,

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click Edit, and we can say, add a section for Gmail, Notion, and Slack using the same structure,

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H2 headers, with clearly labeled placeholder rules under each one.

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And let's fast forward, just a few seconds later, the same file has matching sections for all four tools.

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And if you made a mistake, you can just click the undo button here.

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I'm just gonna click redo.

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Simple enough, right?

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Pro tip, whenever you see a hyperlinked file or folder,

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you can right click and choose show in finder or the windows equivalent to quickly locate it within your workspace,

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letting you easily drag the file or folder into another location.

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Next up, the in-app browser can be opened by pressing command and control T, right?

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Just like opening up a new tab and typing in the URL.

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And you should know that we could technically ask ChatGPT to open up the in-app browser in a prompt, but obviously that's super slow.

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Why would we ever do this though?

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Let's go through two real use cases.

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Here, I'm on my partnerships page and instead of taking screenshots or copy pasting the URL, I can click the annotate icon,

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select this specific section of the page and say, hey, create a preview of this section in dark mode.

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And let's see what happens.

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Think of annotation mode like leaving a comment directly on a website.

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Instead of describing where something's on the page, I can point to the exact element and explain the change I want in plain English.

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First, we see that ChatGPT Work gives us a mockup of how the dark mode would look, right?

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Light mode, dark mode, which is already pretty cool.

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Better yet, because ChatGPT Work is connected to my website hosted on Ghost,

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I can actually ask ChatGPT Work to implement this change, which I did off camera.

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Meaning, if you go to my website right now, You will see there is now a dark toggle and it looks pretty incredible.

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To be clear, those were two separate steps.

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Anyone can open a public webpage and ask for a mock-up,

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but actually pushing the change live requires ChatGPT work to be connected to that platform.

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A lot of you are gonna be horrified by this next example, but technically you can log into your accounts within the in-app browser.

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So if you trust OpenAI and Scam Outlet, I mean, Sam Altman, you can hand off a lot of tedious work.

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For example, I recently launched a course

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and I had ChatGPT work test every single link within the lesson descriptions to check for dead links

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and to confirm they all open up in a new tab so the learning experience isn't interrupted, which would have been super annoying to do manually.

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Lastly, we can type forward slash side to open up a

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temporary side chat I can see everything in the main conversation without interrupting anything.

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So as an example, here I have an active task where ChatGPT work is reviewing a dense PDF.

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And I have a question, but I don't want to interrupt the task.

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And so I open side chat and ask, based on the uploaded PDF, what does personal assessment mean in plain English versus salaries tax?

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And fast forwarding a little bit here, we see it answers my question without interfering with the main task.

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A few things to know when using side chat.

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It already has the context from the main task, so you don't need to re-explain or re-upload anything.

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And second, nothing inside the side chat flows back into the main chat.

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And third, closing it deletes the side chat, so you need to copy anything you want to keep.

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As a quick recap of the side panel, here's the mental model to carry forward.

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Use the preview pane to quickly review and or edit a file ChatGPT work surfaced in chat.

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Use the in-app browser when the context you want to share with ChatGPT lives on a website.

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You side chat when the question or tangent needs the same context as the main task, but shouldn't change the deliverable.

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Now, let's move on to skills in the context of ChatGPT work.

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As a quick reminder, a skill basically takes some sort of input, like messy notes, processes that against a checklist of rules you create,

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and gives you an output, like a structured briefing.

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Diving right into an example, here I'm in the middle of a working session where ChatGPT work gave me the first draft of my next newsletter.

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and after making some edits, I've pasted the final draft I'm actually going to send out.

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What I'm about to do next will teach ChatGPT work to sound like me for every newsletter moving forward.

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In the same chat, I say, compare this final newsletter against your original draft earlier in this chat.

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Identify the repeatable differences in my writing style, then create an improved skill I can run whenever I give you a draft and my final version.

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Show me the proposed learnings before updating the voice principal section of agents.md.

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Just to be super clear, we're doing two things here.

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One, we're creating a skill called improve.

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And second, the input we're giving it contains both the initial V1 draft and my final draft.

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Then the skill compares the two to extract patterns and the output are the writing rules to carry forward.

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Here we can see that ChatGPT work identified seven repeatable learnings, ignored changes not related to our tone of voice

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and proposed updates to the voice principle section and created an improved skill that I can use in the future.

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And after approving those updates, fast forwarding a little bit, we can then open the agents.md file to see all the changes.

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And that's the key takeaway when it comes to using skills in ChatGPT work.

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You are going to make those edits and corrections anyway.

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So why not create skills that teach ChatGPT work your preferences so you re-explain yourself less and less over time.

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All right, that covers the basics.

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So let me share the next logical step on your way to building your own AI system.

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Here in my Work OS folder, it looks a little empty, but what if I dragged another folder with my travel preferences in here?

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And then in a new ChatGPT work session, I say, review the new travel folder I just added to this workspace.

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Add a travel entry to the routing map So future travel related requests are routed to this folder.

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Finish by showing me the exact entry you added and explain why.

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And we're just gonna fast forward here.

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I'm actually gonna ignore the output on purpose because it's not gonna make any sense to you right now.

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Instead, I'm gonna start a new chat and say, I wanna plan a trip to Iceland.

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How will this workspace handle that?

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And after just a few seconds,

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we see that, whoa, ChatGPT Work knows that this ask is related to like traveling and stuff,

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and therefore should be managed within the travel folder we just added.

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So what's going on?

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How did it know?

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Well, if I open up the agents.md file, we see that a new entry has been added to the routing map section, telling ChatGPT work that all travel

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and trip related tasks should be routed to the travel folder since the travel folder holds all context related to planning trips,

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like my Marriott membership, my seat preferences on flights, and what happened on previous trips.

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In plain English, instead of maintaining one giant messy folder, the routing map lets us break our work into smaller subfolders,

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one for each recurring part of our job or life.

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And because I know a lot of you will ask, I use both ChatGPT Work and Claude Co-Work since I can just mount the same folder to both, right?

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And you'll see in my actual like Jeff OS workspace, I have more than like 30 areas or like what I call workstations.

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And I have agents.md that ChatGPT recognizes and a Claude.md that Claude recognizes.

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And if you want something like this, but you don't want to build from scratch, my cowork Academy starts you off with the whole structure already built.

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The folders, the routing map and the rule files.

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It's taught in Claude cowork, yes.

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But as you just saw, the same folder works in both.

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Link down below.

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If you found this useful, check out this tutorial next on how to give your AI system perfect memory.

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See you on the next video.

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In the meantime, have a great one.

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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson

This video has 239 sentences and 3385 words to shadow. The speech runs for 19:29. The speaker talks at a natural 174 words per minute, close to everyday conversation. Only 79% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English, so the vocabulary is demanding.

Key vocabulary in this video

15 words from the video worth learning, with pronunciation and meaning:

Word	Pronunciation	Meaning
folder noun	/ˈfoʊldɚ/	An organizer that papers are kept in, usually with an index tab, to be stored as a single unit in a filing cabinet.
calendar noun	/ˈkæl.ən.də/	Any system by which time is divided into days, weeks, months, and years.
connect verb	/kəˈnɛkt/	To join (to another object): to attach, or to be intended to attach or capable of attaching, to another object.
reminder noun	/ɹɪˈmaɪndə(ɹ)/	Someone or something that reminds.
mount verb	/maʊnt/	To get upon; to ascend; to climb.
skill noun	/skɪl/	A capacity to do something well; a technique, an ability, usually acquired or learned, as opposed to abilities that are regarded as innate.
edit verb	/ˈɛdɪt/	To change a text, or a document.
preview noun	/ˈpɹiːvjuː/	An experience of something in advance.
desktop noun	/ˈdɛsktɒp/	The top surface of a desk.
browser noun	/ˈbɹaʊ.zəɹ/	One who or which browses.
output noun	/ˈaʊtpʊt/	Production; quantity produced, created, or completed.
plain noun	/pleɪn/	An expanse of land with relatively low relief and few trees, especially a grassy expanse.
instruction noun	/ɪnˈstɹʌkʃən/	The act of instructing, teaching, or providing with information or knowledge.
preference noun	/ˈpɹɛf(ə)ɹ(ə)ns/	The selection of one thing or person over others (with the main adposition being "for" in relation to the thing or person, but possibly also "of")
principle noun	/ˈpɹɪn.sɪ.pəl/	A fundamental assumption, fundamental law or guiding belief.

Phrasal verbs you will hear

Word	Pronunciation	Meaning
open up verb		To open.
carry forward verb		To transfer to a new page, column, ledger, or similar entity.
check out verb		To record the departure or withdrawal of someone or something (such as guests, employees, books, etc.).
go through verb		To travel from one end of something to the other.
line up verb	/laɪnˈʌp/	To align; to put in alignment; to put in correct adjustment for smooth running.
move forward verb		To cause to make progress.
build out verb		To develop or expand (a system, structure, project, etc.).
hand off verb		To pass (the ball) to a teammate.

Grammar in this video

The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:

Structure	In the video
Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now	I've asked · has saved · you've downloaded
Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it	is designed · is selected · has been added
Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing	Codex, which is · mode, which is

Pronunciation to watch

The speaker uses 71 contractions and reduced forms, such as gonna, we're, I'm. Say them the short way, as you hear them.

The “th” sounds: thin /ˈθɪn/, thread /ˈθɹɛd/
The “sh” and “zh” sounds: instruction /ɪnˈstɹʌkʃən/, partnership /ˈpɑɹtnɚʃɪp/, explanation /ˌɛkspləˈneɪʃən/, establishment /ɪˈstæb.lɪʃ.mənt/, presentation /ˌpɹɛzn̩ˈteɪʃn̩/
Long words — get the stress right: differently /ˈdɪf.ə.ɹənt.li/, technically /ˈtɛk.nɪˌkəl.i/, manually /ˈmænj(u)əliː/, temporary /ˈtɛmp(əˌɹ)ɛɹi/, explanation /ˌɛkspləˈneɪʃən/

How to practise with this video

Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
Start at 0.75× speed, shadow it sentence by sentence, then go back to normal speed once it feels easy.
Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like folder, calendar, connect.

What is the Shadowing Technique?

Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.

Shadowing technique: read the full step-by-step guide →

Shadowing Practice: Learn 95% of ChatGPT Work in Under 20 Minutes - Learn English Speaking with Video

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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson

Key vocabulary in this video

Phrasal verbs you will hear

Grammar in this video

Pronunciation to watch

How to practise with this video

What is the Shadowing Technique?