Field Notes / Tactics
Never take the first answer from AI
The most expensive habit in AI is accepting the first response. The first answer is a draft. Treat it like one.
Here is the tactic, word for word the way I run it:
Reflect ten times, carefully and thoughtfully, on your last response. On each iteration, show your reasoning, name any changes that would make this stronger, and explain why. Then iterate again on the iteration before it. After the tenth pass, give me the final version.
Round one reviews the answer. Round two reviews round one. By round ten you have something a first pass never produces. And more times than not, somewhere in the middle, the model stops and says: I was wrong about that. Here is what is actually true.
Read that again. It catches its own errors, but only when you make it look.
Why this works
A first response is the model's fastest plausible answer. Reflection forces it to spend effort where speed was hiding the gaps: checking claims, testing the logic, comparing alternatives. You are not asking it to be humble. You are making review part of the job, the same way a good manager makes review part of any job.
Where it saves real money
- Anything with numbers. Pricing, projections, unit math. First answers miss; tenth answers get audited.
- Anything legal or contractual. The reflection pass is where hallucinated clauses get confessed.
- Anything you'll act on. If a decision follows the answer, the answer earns ten rounds.
Even on the best model available, keep asking: is this the best you can do? Is there anything else? You'd do it to a junior analyst. Do it to the machine.
Want this running in your business, not just in your notes app? Book a whiteboard session and bring your gnarliest workflow.