As I have been emphasizing the IMPACT strategy for successful AI prompting, I believe one should be able to follow what they recommended, and this leads to an honest self-critiquing on how I’ve used Google Gemini to bring my own Excel budget setup to manage my household expenses quickly.
Let us start with an overview of IMPACT:
I is for intention. Clearly state what you want the AI to achieve;
M is for Message & Metric. Here's where you want to focus on clarity, understanding and being concise & action-oriented;
P is for Purpose; as in why are you asking the question;
A is for Action, as in what is your end goal of your question or request;
C is for Clarity, as in taking the time to be clear, concise and compact;
T is for Timing, in making sure your prompt's context includes dates or deadlines.
During my Excel budget journey, I wanted to identify when during a specific week for each month that a transaction takes place (mainly for forecasting cash flow), and figuring there be a math and Excel formula combination that would provide that detail. Let us examine the two prompts, one for Excel Power Query and the other for within Excel itself, I used to quickly obtain the answers I’m looking for:
Still in Power Query Editor, I'm looking for a formula that calculates from the Date field, the Week a date falls in for a given month. We'll assume the week starts on a Sunday and using the year 2025, July 27 - July 31 would be week 5 of the month of July, and August 1 - 2 would be week 1 of the month of August, and August 3 - August 9 would be week 2. If there's an available Excel formula that I can use in Power Query Editor that would provide that solution?
Back to the Power Query formula to calculate the week for each month "Number.IntegerDivide(Date.Day([Date]) + Date.DayOfWeek(Date.StartOfMonth([Date]), Day.Sunday), 7) + 1", what is the equivalent formula for within Excel itself (assume that the Table in question has a Date column that is referenced as @Date)?
Well I Manage to utilize five of the six strategies, and was able to get the results from both questions on the first go.
The T for Timing, wasn't pertinent for what I was accomplishing, and goes to show that the IMPACT strategy is a fit to purpose exercise in that you use what you need to fulfill whatever assistance you're requesting of the AI.
Realizing IMPACT isn't the only effective AI prompting strategy, stay tuned to future postings in the coming weeks as I explore other prompting methods that have been noted as being useful in having AI work for you.
