ChatGPT Prompt Templates: 40 Fill-in-the-Blank Templates for Work

The short version: below are 40 ChatGPT prompt templates you can copy, fill in the brackets, and use straight away for emails, meetings, reports, marketing, hiring and the conversations nobody wants to have. They work because they force you to give ChatGPT the specifics it needs, not because the wording is magic, and I'll show you exactly where they fall apart if you skip that step.

Why most people's ChatGPT prompts don't work

I've been using ChatGPT daily since late 2022, and I still watch clients type one line like "write me an email about the delayed project" and then complain the output sounds like a robot. It sounds like a robot because the prompt gave it nothing to work with. ChatGPT doesn't know your tone, your relationship with the recipient, or what you want to happen next, so it guesses, and the guess is always generic.

Templates fix this by building the missing information straight into the prompt. You're not writing a clever sentence, you're filling in blanks: who, what, tone, length, outcome. That's it. I keep 40 of these in a single Google Doc and reuse them weekly, and I'm going to give you the exact ones I use, organised by the kind of work that eats people's days.

One thing before the list, because nobody else selling you a template pack will say this: the template gets you a draft, not a finished piece of work. If you paste the output straight into an email without reading it back, you'll send something that's grammatically fine and completely wrong for the relationship. I've done it. I once sent a "firm but polite" decline email to a long-standing supplier that ChatGPT had written a little too firm, and I had to send a second email an hour later softening it. The template did its job. I didn't do mine, which was to read it as the person receiving it, not the person who wrote it.

Email templates (8)

• Write a [friendly/firm/apologetic] email to [recipient] about [topic], keeping it under [number] words, and end with a clear next step.
• Turn these bullet points into a professional email: [paste bullets]. Audience is [who], purpose is [what].
• Write a follow-up email to [name] who hasn't replied to my message from [date] about [topic]. Keep it short and give them an easy way out.
• Write a "no" email to [request] that's polite but doesn't leave room for negotiation.
• Rewrite this email to sound less like I'm asking permission and more like I've already decided: [paste email].
• Write an email introducing [person A] to [person B] for the purpose of [reason], in 3 sentences.
• Write a thank-you email to [name] for [specific thing they did], mentioning [specific detail] so it doesn't read as generic.
• Write an out-of-office reply for [dates], redirecting urgent matters to [colleague] and setting expectations for response time.

The follow-up template is the one I use most, maybe three times a week. Last month I had a warm lead who'd gone quiet after a call, and instead of the usual "just checking in" (which everyone ignores), I used the template above and asked ChatGPT to give them an easy exit. The line it produced was "if now isn't the right time, just let me know and I'll check back in the new quarter." She replied within the hour, because I'd made it easy to say no, which paradoxically made her say yes.

Meeting templates (6)

• Write an agenda for a [length]-minute meeting about [topic] with these attendees: [names/roles].
• Turn these messy notes into meeting minutes with action owners and deadlines: [paste notes].
• Write three questions I should ask in a meeting about [topic] to make sure we don't leave without a decision.
• Write a message declining a meeting invite for [meeting name] and suggesting [alternative] instead.
• Summarise this meeting transcript into five bullet points: what was decided, what wasn't, and who owns what: [paste transcript].
• Write a one-paragraph pre-read for a meeting about [topic], explaining why we're meeting and what decision needs to be made.

The transcript summary one has saved me real hours. I record most of my client calls (with permission), and instead of listening back to 50 minutes of audio to write up notes, I run the transcript through the template above and get a clean summary in under a minute. If you want to see how this applies specifically to running a small business day to day, I've gone deeper on the workload side of things in my piece on ChatGPT prompts for small business owners, which covers a lot of the admin that meetings generate.

Report and document templates (6)

• Turn these numbers into three sentences a non-finance person would understand: [paste numbers].
• Write an executive summary of this report in under 150 words: [paste report].
• Write a status update for [project name] covering what's done, what's blocked, and what's next.
• Turn this list of features into a one-page proposal for [client name], explaining the problem, the solution, and the cost.
• Write a risk register entry for [risk], including likelihood, impact, and mitigation.
• Rewrite this paragraph so a 12-year-old could understand it, without losing the key point: [paste paragraph].

I use the "12-year-old" rewrite more than any other document template, mainly on my own writing. I've been in marketing for over two decades and I still default to jargon when I'm tired, and this prompt catches it every time. If a sentence still sounds convoluted after that rewrite, the problem isn't the words, it's that I don't understand the point I'm trying to make yet, which is worth knowing before you send a report out.

Marketing and content templates (6)

• Write 5 subject lines for an email about [topic], aimed at [audience], each under 45 characters.
• Turn this blog post into 3 LinkedIn posts, each with a different angle: [paste post].
• Write a product description for [product] that leads with the problem it solves, not the features.
• Write 3 versions of a call-to-action for [offer]: one urgent, one friendly, one direct.
• Turn this customer complaint into 3 lessons for how we could improve [product/service]: [paste complaint].
• Write a case study outline for [client], structured as: problem, what we did, result, quote.

Here's the bit most posts about ChatGPT templates skip over: if you use the exact templates above word for word, and so does everyone else who bought the same template pack, your LinkedIn posts and email subject lines start to sound identical to your competitor's. I've seen it happen in my own feed, three businesses in a row posting suspiciously similar "3 lessons from a customer complaint" posts within the same week. The fix isn't a cleverer template, it's putting one real detail into the brackets that nobody else has, your actual complaint, your actual client, your actual number. If you want templates built specifically for social captions rather than general marketing copy, my post on ChatGPT prompts for Instagram captions covers that ground in more depth.

Hiring and management templates (6)

• Write a job advert for [role], being specific about salary range [range] and what the first 90 days look like.
• Write 5 interview questions for [role] that test for [specific skill], not just experience.
• Write feedback for [name] on [specific piece of work], starting with what worked, then what to change, then one clear ask.
• Write a message to a team member who missed a deadline, that's direct but doesn't humiliate them.
• Turn this list of responsibilities into a one-page onboarding checklist for a new [role].
• Write a reference for [name] who worked with me as [role] for [length of time], focusing on [specific strength].

The feedback template is worth using even if you already know what you want to say, because it forces a structure most people skip under pressure: what worked first, then the change, then one specific ask, not five. I've written feedback for freelancers, VAs and junior team members with this template, and the "one clear ask" part is what stops feedback conversations turning into a list of everything that's wrong with someone's work.

Planning and strategy templates (4)

• Write a one-page plan to achieve [goal] in [timeframe], with 3 milestones and what could go wrong.
• Turn this brain dump into a prioritised to-do list, sorted by what moves [goal] forward: [paste brain dump].
• Write 3 questions I should be asking myself before I say yes to [opportunity/project].
• Compare these two options for [decision] and tell me what I'm not considering: [paste option A and B].

The "what am I not considering" prompt is the one I'd keep if I had to give up the other 39. When I was deciding whether to take on a bigger consultancy retainer last year against launching a smaller cohort programme, I fed both options into ChatGPT with that exact wording and it flagged something I'd missed, that the retainer would eat the exact hours I'd need for delivery of the cohort. Neither option was wrong. I'd just failed to see the collision between them.

Difficult conversation templates (4)

• Write a script for telling [name] that [difficult news], that's honest but not cold.
• Write a message asking for a pay rise, based on these achievements: [paste achievements], for a role at [company].
• Write a response to a client who's asking for [unreasonable request], that holds the line without burning the relationship.
• Write an apology for [mistake] that takes responsibility without over-explaining.

The pay rise template deserves its own mention because I've had three people tell me it worked for them exactly as written, once they filled in the achievements. The mistake most people make is leaving that bracket vague, "did good work this year", when what you need is numbers: revenue brought in, projects delivered early, a specific problem you solved that your manager would recognise. A vague achievement produces a vague ask, and vague asks get vague answers.

How to build your own template library in five steps

Forty templates is a good start, not an endpoint. Here's how I built mine, and how you can build one that fits your actual job rather than a generic one.

• Step 1: for one week, write down every time you open ChatGPT and what you typed. Most people find they're solving the same five or six problems repeatedly.
• Step 2: for each recurring problem, write the prompt that got you the best result, then remove the specific details and replace them with brackets.
• Step 3: keep the templates in one document, not scattered across notes apps, so you reuse them instead of retyping from scratch.
• Step 4: review the document every month and delete anything you haven't used, because a template you never open is clutter, not a resource.
• Step 5: always fill the brackets with something specific to the situation, a real name, a real number, a real detail, even when you're rushing, because that's the difference between output that sounds like you and output that sounds like everyone else's ChatGPT draft.

If your work involves a lot of client-facing writing, whether that's a CV, a salon booking message, or a menu update, it's worth building sector-specific templates rather than only general ones. I've written dedicated template collections for a few of these already, including CV writing prompts for job seekers, prompts for hairdressers and salons, and prompts for cafe owners, all built the same way, brackets filled with real specifics rather than generic placeholders.

The uncomfortable bit about templates

Templates make you faster. They don't make your judgement better. If you didn't know what to say to your team about a missed deadline before ChatGPT, you'll now get a well-structured message that still says the wrong thing, just more fluently. I've watched people use these templates as a way to avoid deciding what they think, letting the AI's phrasing stand in for their own opinion. A good template surfaces the gaps in your thinking faster than a blank page does, because you have to fill in brackets like "what I want to happen next" and "the one clear ask", and if you can't fill those in, that's useful information about the conversation you're avoiding, not a prompt engineering problem.

Try my free prompt builder before you post.

If you want the full set, start at the ChatGPT Prompts and Limits: 30 Guides to Fun Prompts, Photo Edits and Daily Caps.

Frequently asked questions

Do ChatGPT prompt templates save time, or just move the work around?

They save real time on structure and phrasing, typically cutting a 20 minute email down to 5 minutes, but they don't remove the thinking work of deciding what you want to say, which still has to come from you before you fill in the brackets.

What's the biggest mistake people make with fill-in-the-blank prompts?

Leaving the brackets vague, writing "did good work" instead of a specific achievement, which produces vague, forgettable output regardless of how good the template's structure is.

Should I use the same templates as everyone else who's read this list?

Use the structure, not the wording, and always put one detail into the brackets that's specific to your situation, your real number, your real client, your real deadline, so the output doesn't read the same as everyone else's version of the same template.

How many templates should I keep in regular use?

Most people only need 8 to 10 that match their actual weekly work, so start with the categories closest to your job (emails and meetings for most roles) and only add more once you notice a repeated problem those don't cover.

Where to check the details

• OpenAI's own platform documentation