The fifth form of leverage
Once upon a time there were four: labor, money, media, and code. Then emerges the fifth form: the prompts.
No matter who you are, a CEO running a Fortune 500 company or someone grinding through a nine-to-five, we’re all handed the same finite amount of time, roughly 24 hours a day, and roughly 30-40 years for putting in our work.
Except the successful employ more leverage to their advantage. Without it, we are trading away our hours at a linear scale. A lawyer is no different than a barista, trading away their time for their respective hourly rate. If they want more money, they have to put in more hours.
Leverage, on the other hand, is a multiplier. According to Naval Ravikant, there are four kinds of leverage:
Labor: having more people work for you, so your work get done faster and better
Capital: having more money gets more access to resources and get things done faster
Media: creating content that can be consumed infinite number of times (blog posts, books, music, movies, youtube videos)
Code: computer programs solve a problem consistently with near zero incremental cost
Naval was right. But not anymore. There now exists a fifth form of leverage.
The Prompts (more accurately the AIs, but their current form is still mostly prompts and chatbots).
The leverage of the prompts is about harnessing the raw power of AI through crafted instructions, turning a simple string of words into a force that generates ideas, content, or solutions on demand.
This is the ultimate permissionless leverage; unlike writing code yourself, which requires deep expertise, or building an audience via media, prompting lets anyone with a keyboard marshal the intelligence of AI to maximize their productivity. All the benefits of coding, but with just human languages. (I have a theory that English prompts outperform, but that’s up for debate).
This form of leverage democratizes creativity and productivity, combining human ingenuity and machine efficiency, and at its core a broader shift where the real skill isn’t just knowing stuff, but knowing how to ask the right questions.
If you have to ask, you will never know. If you know, you need only ask.
- Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
Now, the biggest hurdle becomes the ability to communicate with the AI well. A better prompt gives a better result. And it requires a certain amount of specific to craft a truly effective prompt, and fuzzy, vague instructions lead to outputs that often miss.
This is why we built BetterPrompt.me
The ultimate way to share a prompt and democratize access to this fifth form of leverage. People with good prompts finally have a way to let others use the prompts, without exposing the underlying logic.
We are still early in this journey and would love for you to join us!