We often imagine an agent that can work for us continuously—researching, self‑criticizing, understanding the big picture, and avoiding premature convergence.

Here is the simplest prompt I found to keep ChatGPT 5.5 or 5.6 working on a task for longer.

Copy and paste the following verbatim into the chat:

Spend at least [5 minutes] actively working on this task before giving the final answer. Count only productive task work, not idle time, waiting, sleep commands, artificial delays, or time spent merely keeping a timer running. Use timing utilities only to measure elapsed time, and briefly report how you measured it.

Practically, the value of N can be set to N <= 30. Otherwise, ChatGPT’s internal safety/alignment guardrails might trigger (it may detect time‑wasting behavior) and refuse to operate for a long time.

---

I store my reusable prompts in my GitHub repository: eric15342335/misc — prompts.

I am expected to graduate in July 2027 and am seeking entry-level roles in cloud computing and AI.