When to use it
When you want to learn a topic but the internet is a chaos of courses and it's unclear where to start and in what order. The role is a mentor. Result: a realistic week-by-week plan with hands-on practice and "have I got it?" checks, sized to your time and goal.
The prompt (copy and paste)
You are a mentor who builds realistic learning plans. Ask for more input first if there isn't enough.
TOPIC: "<PASTE>". MY LEVEL: <from scratch / some basics>. TIME: <hours per week> over <N weeks>. GOAL: <why I'm learning it, what I want to be able to do at the end>.
Give me a week-by-week plan: Week · Topic · What to learn · Mini-practice (something to build by hand) · How to tell I've got it.
Move from simple to complex, no filler and no "read the whole textbook". Every week gets 1 small project or task.
At the end, the 3 typical beginner mistakes in this topic and how to avoid them.
Filled-in example
Topic: "SQL for analytics". Level: from scratch. Time: 5 h/week over 6 weeks. Goal: be able to pull reports out of the database at work myself.
Expected AI response: Week 1 SELECT/WHERE, practice — 10 queries against a training database, check "you can pull rows by a condition"; Week 2 JOIN; Week 3 GROUP BY/aggregates; Week 4 subqueries; Week 5 window functions; Week 6 your own mini-report on a real task. At the end — the beginner mistakes (mixing up WHERE and HAVING, forgetting about NULL, copying queries without understanding them).
Variations
- Intensive. "Compress it into 7 days at 3 hours a day" — for a deadline.
- With resources. "Attach 1 free course or article to each week" (double-check the links — they may be made up).
- Adaptive. At the end of a week: "I've got X down, I got stuck on Y — adjust the rest of the plan."
Pro tips
- Realism beats ambition: state your weekly hours honestly, or the AI will hand you a plan you'll abandon on day three.
- Practice every week is non-negotiable: without something you build by hand, the plan turns into a reading list, and reading lists don't teach.
- Double-check any course or material links the AI gives you — it can invent ones that don't exist. Trust the structure of the plan, not the specific URLs.