Four parts of a clear instruction
Goal: what you actually want
Start with the outcome, not the topic. "Write about the sea" is a topic. "Write a short poem about the sea for my six-year-old niece's birthday card" is a goal. Words like "good" or "professional" are not goals a tool can aim at. Say what the result is for and who will use it, and most of the other choices start to make themselves.
Context: what it cannot guess
The tool knows nothing about your situation unless you say it. Who is the reader? What do they already know? What have you tried? Paste the relevant material rather than describing it. Context is the part beginners skip most, and it is usually the part that makes the biggest difference. If you would need to explain it to a new colleague, you need to explain it to the AI.
Format: the shape of the answer
Say how long, in what style and in what layout: "four short rhyming lines", "a table with three columns", "under 150 words, plain English", "bullet points I can paste into an email". Format requests are cheap to write and stop the most common annoyance: a long, padded answer when you wanted something short you could use straight away.
Limits: what to include or avoid
A useful limit names something specific: "keep it gentle, no scary sea monsters", "don't mention pricing", "only use the figures I pasted". "Make it perfect" is not a limit. Add an example only when it truly clarifies what you mean, because models copy examples closely. Put together: "Write a four-line rhyming poem about the sea for my six-year-old niece. Simple words, gentle tone, no monsters."
Pick something you might ask AI for this week. Which of the four parts would your first attempt have left out?