The Three Repeats Method

You wrote those four paragraphs about your pricing again on Thursday

An enquiry comes in asking how your pricing works, so you write four paragraphs. You wrote those same four paragraphs in May, twice in July, and again a fortnight ago. Each version slightly different, each one taking about fifteen minutes.

That isn’t really a task anymore. It’s a system, and you’re running it by hand, from memory.

Three times makes it a system, not a task

The first time you do something, it’s new. The second time might be a coincidence. But by the third time, I’d argue you’ve stopped doing a task and started operating a process that nobody has written down.

And the fifteen minutes is the smaller cost. The bigger one is drift. Your pricing explanation now exists in four slightly different versions, and you have no idea which one a client is about to quote back at you.

Catch your repeats for one week, not a month

A week is plenty, because repeats repeat. If something doesn’t come up in seven days, it probably isn’t frequent enough to be worth building for yet.

1. Keep one note. Your phone’s notes app, or a single file called Repeats. Not a spreadsheet, and definitely not a new tool. You probably already have a few half-used ones.
2. Know the trigger. Log it the moment you think “I’ve explained this before”, or the moment you go hunting through your sent mail for an old version to copy. That second one is the strongest signal you’ll get, and it happens more often than you’d think.
3. Record four things on one line. What it was, who it was for, how long it took, and which category it belongs to.
4. Use three categories only. EXPLAIN, WRITE and BUILD.

EXPLAIN is when someone needed to understand something. Your pricing, your process, why you don’t take rush jobs, how the client portal works.

WRITE is when you produced a document or message with a shape you already knew. A follow-up, a proposal, the monthly report, a quote.

BUILD is when you put a thing together. A spreadsheet, a deck, a checklist, an onboarding folder.

A few lines from one week might look like this:

Mon, monthly report for Kate, from scratch again, 40 min, WRITE
Wed, set up folders + checklist for new client, 25 min, BUILD
Thu, explained pricing tiers to new enquiry, email, 15 min, EXPLAIN

Score each repeat before you build anything

Give each repeat a score from 1 to 5 for frequency and for tedium, then multiply them.

• Frequency. 1 is monthly, 3 is weekly, 5 is most days.
• Tedium. How much of it is retyping what you already know? 1 is interesting every time, 5 is the thing you’d happily pay someone else to do.

If it scores 15 or more, build it this month. Between 8 and 14, leave it on the list and see if it climbs. Under 8, leave it alone, because looking after the asset will cost you more than just doing the job.

Then check the stakes separately, as an override rather than a third score. Ask yourself what it costs when the output comes out wrong. If the answer involves a client’s money or trust, a high score still means build it, but it changes what you build: a careful draft that a person reads and approves every time. Build the draft, never the send. The automation guide uses the same rule for anything where a mistake would cost a client.

One skeleton per category is all you need

Anything in [BRACKETS] is a variable. Fill those in, save the rest as fixed text, and you shouldn’t need to write that prompt again.

All three skeletons assume you have a voice file. If you don’t, The Voice File walks you through building one in about ninety minutes, and every skeleton here leans on it. They’re also deliberately short. When one needs to work for someone other than you, rebuild it on the fuller structure in Prompts That Hold.

EXPLAIN

Answer as me. My voice file is below.

WHO IS ASKING: [role, what they already know, what they're worried about]
WHAT THEY ASKED: [paste their actual words]
WHAT THEY NEED TO UNDERSTAND: [the one thing]
MY ACTUAL POSITION: [prices, timelines, what I do and don't do]
WHAT I NEVER SAY ABOUT THIS: [the traps]
LENGTH: [80 words]. FORMAT: [reply email]

Lead with the answer, not the background. If anything above is missing or
contradicts itself, ask me before writing.

As an example, a filled-in pricing one might read: WHO IS ASKING: a clinic owner who already has two cheaper quotes. WHAT THEY NEED TO UNDERSTAND: the price covers the rebuild, not the hours. MY ACTUAL POSITION: three tiers, $2,400 / $5,900 / $12,000, no hourly rate, no discounts for scope I’ve already cut. WHAT I NEVER SAY: anything apologetic about the number. Once that’s saved, it can answer that kind of enquiry in under a minute for the rest of the year.

WRITE

Draft a [document type] using the structure below, which is the one I always use.

STRUCTURE:
[paste the headings from the last good one you wrote]

INPUTS FOR THIS ONE:
- CLIENT: [client name]
- PERIOD: [dates]
- RAW MATERIAL: [paste the numbers, notes or transcript]

RULES:
- Follow my voice file exactly.
- Invent nothing. No numbers, names or dates I haven't given you. Where one is
  missing, write MISSING in its place and list it at the end.
- [length and format]

Draft it, then list every MISSING you left behind.

That forty-minute monthly report becomes something much smaller: paste last month’s headings once, paste this month’s numbers each time, read the MISSING list, and fill the gaps.

BUILD

Build [the thing] as [a markdown checklist / a table / a one-page HTML doc].

IT IS FOR: [who uses it, and at what moment]
IT MUST CONTAIN: [the non-negotiable parts]
IT MUST NOT: [the failure modes you've watched happen]
MODEL IT ON: [paste the best version you've made by hand]

Build the complete thing. No placeholders, no "insert content here". Then tell
me the three parts you were least confident about.

New client onboarding is the obvious first candidate. Paste in the folder structure and checklist from your smoothest client, name the two things that went wrong last time, and you’ve got a repeatable setup instead of a memory test.

A prompt you retype isn’t an asset

There are four tests. An asset has a name you’d actually say out loud, like “the pricing explainer”. It lives in one place you can get to without searching. The parts that change are marked as [VARIABLES], and everything else is fixed text you don’t touch. And someone who isn’t you could run it and get something usable.

If it fails any of those, you’re still doing the task, just with extra steps. The most common failure is the second one: the prompt is good, it works, and it’s buried in a chat from six weeks ago.

Keep them in a project, a skill, a Notion page, or a plain text file on your desktop. The rule is one place, not the perfect place.

When not to bother

Don’t build for one-offs, or for things you’ve only done twice. Twice might be a coincidence, and the shape isn’t clear yet.

Don’t build for anything that needs your judgement every time. A pricing exception, a hard conversation with a long-term client, a reference for someone who left on bad terms. The judgement is the work, so there’s nothing underneath it to reuse.

Don’t build anything that sends, files or pays when getting it wrong is expensive. Invoices, legal wording, medical details, client money. Drafting, yes. Sending, no.

And don’t build for work you’re about to stop doing. Three repeats during a one-off migration is still a one-off migration.

What you’ve got now

A week-long way to catch your repeats, and a score that tells you which ones are worth building. The skeletons cover whichever one comes out on top, and my guess is it’ll be something you explain. If you’d rather fill in the blanks on screen, the free Three Repeats Prompt Builder does the same job.

Open a note called Repeats now, and log the next thing you catch yourself explaining.