Inbox & accounts
Your inbox is the only honest record of your digital life. Every service you ever signed up for sent a welcome email, every subscription sends a receipt, and every password reset marks an account you forgot you had. The prompts below mine that record rather than write more of it: an inventory of your accounts and which address each one is tied to, the recurring charges you stopped noticing, the dormant logins worth closing, and a backlog turned into a short list of things that actually need a reply. Paste in the relevant messages — search your mail for "welcome", "receipt", "your subscription" or "verify your email" and copy what comes back. One caution worth reading first: this is your personal data, and a prompt is a conversation with someone else's server. Redact anything you would not want stored, never paste a message containing a password, a one-time code or a full card number, and prefer a model you trust with the rest.
24 prompts in 4 groups
Inbox & accounts21 categories
Accounts and logins
Which services you have accounts with, and which address or method you used for each.
- List every service I have an account withLongYou have signed up for hundreds of things over a decade and have no idea what they are.
- Work out which address I used whereLongSeveral addresses forwarding into one mailbox, and no memory of which one a given service knows you by.
- Find which accounts use a social loginLongBefore changing or losing a Google, Apple or Facebook account that other services depend on.
- Spot where I have signed up twiceLongTwo accounts at the same shop, one with your order history and one with the discount.
- Find the breach notices I ignoredLongWorking out which accounts genuinely need a new password rather than changing all of them.
- Find the accounts someone else is onLongFamily plans, shared subscriptions and old team seats you are still paying for or still have access to.
Subscriptions and spend
Recurring charges, renewal dates, price rises and the ones you forgot you were paying.
- List everything charging me on repeatLongThe monthly total is higher than it should be and you cannot account for the difference.
- Find the subscriptions I stopped usingLongPaying for things whose only evidence of life is the monthly receipt.
- Build a renewal calendar from my receiptsLongWanting to cancel before a renewal rather than three days after it.
- Find the quiet price risesLongServices that increased the price in a paragraph at the bottom of an email you did not read.
- Catch the trials about to start chargingMediumFree trials signed up for and immediately forgotten about.
- Find services that overlapLongPaying for three things that do the same job because each was signed up for at a different time.
Cleanup and closing
Dormant accounts, dead newsletters, and getting data deleted rather than just unsubscribing.
- Decide which old accounts to closeLongReducing how many companies hold your data, starting with the ones you no longer use.
- Write a data deletion requestLongClosing an account properly rather than just letting it sit dormant.
- Decide which newsletters actually earn their placeLongA hundred subscriptions where you genuinely read about four.
- Work out what to save before closing an accountLongThe step people skip, and regret a week later.
- Separate mail I need from mail I tolerateLongDeciding what should reach your inbox at all, versus a folder you visit deliberately.
- Plan retiring an old email addressLongAn address you have outgrown but cannot simply abandon.
Triage and actions
Turning a backlog into the few things that genuinely need you, with everything else named and dismissed.
- Turn this backlog into a short listLongSeveral hundred unread messages and no idea where to start.
- Find what I am waiting on and who owes meLongThreads where you sent something and nothing came back.
- Extract every promise I madeLongFinding the things you agreed to in passing and never wrote down.
- Summarise a thread I have been added to lateLongForty messages deep, and you have just been copied in.
- Pull every date out of my inboxLongDeadlines, renewals and appointments scattered across weeks of mail.
- Check whether this email is a scamLongA message that looks official and is asking you to do something.
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