Claude God Tip #15: Why Does Claude Talk So Much? (Or So Little?)... The Styles Feature

Claude God Tip #15: Why Does Claude Talk So Much? (Or So Little?)... The Styles Feature

Published: December 12, 2025 • 8 min read

This blog post is one of those where a part of me is tempted to brush it off and say, surely everyone knows about this, writing about it is completely useless. However, I am going to write about it for that one person whose mind is about to be blown. This is a small tip but a very, very useful one.

The Frustrations You Have Probably Felt

Have you ever had conversations with Claude on the web, gotten responses, and then thought to yourself:

1. Why does it respond with soooo much information when I just asked this simple question?
2. Why does it not break the information down better, step by step, so that I can understand its response easily?
3. Why is the model joking or trying to joke with me? It is starting to sound too informal and I do not like it because I am here for business.
4. Why does the model respond with soooo little information when I asked this question that obviously has so much depth?

Well, you are in luck because today, I will show you how to control all 4 of these with Claude on the web.

The Styles Feature

There is a feature in Claude called Styles that allows you to control the format with which Claude responds to your prompts.

In Claude, you can turn on this feature by clicking on the icon with two horizontal lines. This icon should show the label "Search and Tools" when you hover over it. When you click on it, you should see an option called "Use Style". Clicking on this should reveal a list of 5 styles as well as the option to "Create and edit styles". If you are anything like me, the option you would be the most excited about is the option to "Create and edit styles" but I will save my excitement for future Claude God tips.

The 5 built-in styles you should see are:

Normal is the default selected option, but you can change it to any of the other options at any point in time.

Matching Your Frustration to the Right Style

Now let us revisit the questions I asked you at the top:

The Experiment: Same Question, 5 Different Styles

Without beating around the bush, let me show you what the model's response was when I asked the question "How do I stop procrastinating?" across the different styles.

Experiment Setup

Why these controls? If you have read this post about tokens and context windows, you understand how messages get fed to LLMs. Using fresh chats with no project context and paused memory ensures each style is tested in isolation.

Response Preview

Before we dive in, here is a quick preview of how each style responded:

Normal Style Response

Procrastination usually isn't about laziness—it's often about emotions like anxiety, perfectionism, or feeling overwhelmed. Here are some practical approaches:

Start ridiculously small. Instead of "work on project," try "open the document" or "write one sentence." The hardest part is often just beginning, and tiny steps remove that barrier.

Use the 2-minute rule. Commit to doing something for just 2 minutes. You can stop after that if you want, but you'll usually keep going once you've started.

Identify what's actually blocking you. Are you scared it won't be perfect? Not sure where to start? Dreading the task itself? Once you know the real obstacle, you can address it directly—like giving yourself permission to do a "messy first draft" if perfectionism is the issue.

Remove friction. Make the task easier to start than to avoid. Close distracting tabs, put your phone in another room, or set up your workspace the night before.

Build in accountability. Tell someone what you're going to do, work alongside a friend (even virtually), or use a timer and report back to yourself.

Be kind to yourself. Beating yourself up about procrastinating often just creates more anxiety, which leads to more procrastination. Notice when you do start something and acknowledge that.

What kind of tasks do you find yourself putting off most? That might help narrow down what approach would work best for you.

Formal Style Response

Overcoming procrastination requires understanding its root causes and implementing practical strategies to address them. The most effective approach combines self-awareness with structural changes to your environment and habits.

Procrastination typically stems from one of several sources: the task feels overwhelming, you fear not doing it perfectly, the reward seems too distant, or you simply find the work unpleasant. Identifying which factor drives your procrastination allows you to select the most relevant solution.

Breaking large projects into smaller, concrete actions makes starting much easier. Rather than "write report," your task becomes "draft the introduction paragraph" or "gather three relevant sources." This reduces the psychological barrier to beginning and creates a clearer path forward. Each small completion also provides momentum that naturally carries you to the next step.

The environment you work in significantly influences your ability to focus. Remove or reduce access to distractions before you begin. This might mean putting your phone in another room, using website blockers during work sessions, or choosing a location where interruptions are less likely. Making the productive choice the easy choice reduces the constant need for willpower.

Time-boxing through methods like the Pomodoro Technique creates natural boundaries that make work feel more manageable. Committing to focus for just twenty-five minutes, knowing a break follows, is far less daunting than facing an undefined stretch of work time. These structured intervals also help you build accurate estimates of how long tasks actually take, which reduces future avoidance.

Addressing perfectionism requires consciously giving yourself permission to produce imperfect first drafts. The goal of initial work is progress, not polish. Editing and refinement come later, after you have something concrete to work with. Many people find that starting becomes easier once they accept that messy beginnings are normal and necessary.

Building in immediate rewards or accountability can bridge the gap when natural motivation falls short. This might mean working alongside someone else, scheduling specific check-ins with a colleague, or allowing yourself a genuine break or treat after completing defined milestones. External structure often helps where internal motivation alone proves insufficient.

Finally, examining whether chronic procrastination on certain types of tasks reveals a deeper issue proves valuable. Sometimes persistent avoidance indicates that responsibilities need to be restructured, delegated, or that larger career or life adjustments deserve consideration. Procrastination can serve as useful information about misalignment between your work and your strengths or values.

Explanatory Style Response

Procrastination is fascinating when you really dig into it, because it's not actually about laziness or poor time management—it's fundamentally about emotion regulation. Let me walk you through what's happening in your brain and how to work with it.

When you procrastinate, you're essentially choosing short-term mood repair over long-term goals. Your brain perceives the task as threatening in some way—maybe it'll be boring, difficult, or might result in failure or judgment—and procrastination becomes a way to avoid those uncomfortable feelings. The relief you feel when you choose to do something easier is real and immediate, which is why the pattern is so sticky.

Here's the key insight: you can't think your way out of procrastination because it's not a logic problem. Instead, you need to address the emotional resistance and make starting feel less threatening.

The most powerful approach is to make the first step absurdly small. Not "work on the report" but "open the document." Not "exercise for 30 minutes" but "put on workout clothes." This works because starting is the hardest part—once you're in motion, continuing feels much easier. You're essentially tricking your brain by making the ask so small that the emotional resistance doesn't have a chance to activate.

You also want to separate starting from finishing in your mind. Give yourself permission to work for just two minutes and then stop if you want to. This removes the mental weight of commitment. What usually happens is that once those two minutes pass, you naturally keep going because the emotional barrier has dissolved.

Another angle is to get curious about your specific resistance. When you notice yourself procrastinating, pause and ask: "What exactly am I afraid of here?" Sometimes it's perfectionism—you're avoiding starting because you can't do it perfectly. Sometimes it's uncertainty about how to begin. Sometimes it's that the task feels meaningless. Each of these calls for a different response, and simply naming the feeling can reduce its power.

It also helps to build what I call "starting rituals"—consistent cues that signal to your brain it's time to work. Maybe it's making a specific type of tea, sitting in a particular spot, or playing certain music. These environmental cues eventually become psychological scaffolding that makes starting feel more automatic and less dependent on motivation.

One thing to watch out for: don't try to become someone who never procrastinates. That sets you up for shame spirals when you inevitably do. Instead, aim to procrastinate less and recover faster when you do. Self-compassion actually predicts better follow-through than self-criticism, because beating yourself up just adds another negative emotion to avoid.

What type of tasks do you find yourself putting off most often? Understanding your pattern can help us think about which specific strategies might work best for you.

Concise Style Response

Here are the most effective strategies:

Break tasks down - Large projects feel overwhelming. Split them into small, specific actions you can start immediately.

Use the 2-minute rule - If something takes less than 2 minutes, do it now. For bigger tasks, commit to just 2 minutes of work to overcome the starting barrier.

Remove friction - Make starting easier than avoiding. Put your workout clothes out, close distracting tabs, set up your workspace in advance.

Set implementation intentions - Instead of "I'll exercise today," decide "I'll go for a run at 7am after breakfast." Specific plans work better than vague goals.

Understand your avoidance - Are you procrastinating because the task is unclear, boring, anxiety-inducing, or you're perfectionistic? The solution depends on the cause.

Use time constraints - Set a timer for focused work periods (like 25 minutes). Deadlines create urgency even if self-imposed.

Change your environment - Sometimes a different location (library, café) helps break the procrastination pattern.

The key is starting with whichever strategy feels easiest to you right now, not trying to implement everything at once.

Learning Style Response

I'd like to understand your situation better so we can figure out what might work for you specifically.

What have you already tried to address your procrastination? And when you notice yourself procrastinating, what does that typically look like - are you switching to easier tasks, getting distracted by something else, or just feeling stuck and unable to start?

Also, what kinds of tasks do you tend to procrastinate on most? Is it things that feel overwhelming, tasks that seem boring, or something else?

Understanding your specific patterns will help us identify strategies that actually address what's happening for you, rather than just generic advice.

From the above, you can see that the model responded differently based on the chosen style. The Learning style is interesting because the model is attempting to better understand your situation before responding, just like any teacher would do. If you try out the different styles with the extended thinking feature turned on, you would see that the model actively acknowledges the chosen style and prepares its response based on that.

The Token Experiment

Now after getting all these responses, I decided to try out something fun. How many tokens does each style use up for the simple question "How do I stop procrastinating?"

Hopefully by now you have read all my token-related posts, or at least this very first one, to understand why this is an important question to ask. The summary is that token consumption affects how quickly your context window in a chat fills up, that is, how long before you get the dreadful message: "Claude hit the maximum length for this conversation. Please start a new conversation to continue chatting with Claude."

I decided to use the Proactive Tool-Based Snapshot method of tracking tokens which I talked about in this blog post. The difference here is that I would be exploiting the web_search tool, and not the project_knowledge_search tool since all the chats were created outside of any project to keep the test controlled.

So in all 5 chats above, I sent this prompt with the default style "Normal" selected:

Search the web for the word, 'Echo', then tell me our current token usage.
Strictly follow the format below for the response:

Current Token Usage

Tokens Used: X out of Y
Tokens Remaining: Y-X
Percentage Used: ~Z%

Token Usage Results

While the percentage usage is approximately the same across all styles, you can see that the amount of tokens used is different for each style. The highest number of tokens was used with the Explanatory style (as expected) and the lowest number was used for the Concise style (also as expected).

Now notice that I am actively ignoring the Learning style (even though its value is the real lowest value) because as you can see from the response generated with that style, it did not exactly provide an answer but tried to probe deeper to understand my needs, just like a teacher would. If I had responded to it and then allowed it to generate an additional response, it would have probably used up the highest number of tokens, which makes sense given that the Learning style is supposed to provide patient, educational responses that build understanding.

When to Use Each Style

How I Personally Use Styles

Personally, I always use the Concise style within a chat that sort of acts as my "Google search" chat. I titled it "General Questions" so that Claude gets to the point instead of rambling when I ask quick questions there.

Now note that the most powerful way to use styles would be to create custom styles, and over the next few days or weeks, I will walk you through multiple custom styles that would blow your mind.

As always, thanks for reading!