A new habit or data source feels useful in week one. A month later, nobody knows if it still pays off. Run one honest review, then decide: keep, change, or stop.
When to use
- About 30 days after the owner turns on something new: meeting recordings, a daily digest, an inbox rule, a new tracker, a routine you run for them.
- When the owner asks "is this still worth it?" or "what did we get from X?"
- Before you expand a new setup (more sources, more people, more automation).
Skip it if there is less than about two weeks of data. Offer to run it later instead.
What to gather
Look at the real record for the period, not your memory of it.
- Captured: how many items came in (recordings, notes, digests, tickets). Note the date range.
- Used: how many items fed something downstream: a reply, a decision, a task, a doc, a follow-up. Count them. Name two or three concrete examples.
- Ignored: items that were captured and never opened, cited, or acted on.
- Silent failures: gaps in the dates, broken syncs, expired auth, empty or truncated items, things captured but never surfaced to the owner, alerts that fired and went nowhere.
- Cost: time the owner spent on it, noise it created, and any privacy or sharing risk.
- Owner signal: what the owner said about it during the month, including complaints and things they asked for twice.
If a source is out of reach, say so. Do not guess the numbers.
How to judge it
- Keep what was used and cost little.
- Change what was useful but noisy, late, or hard to find. Propose one concrete change per item.
- Stop what was captured but almost never used, or what cost more than it gave.
- Treat a silent failure as its own finding, even if the rest looks fine. Fix or flag it first.
- Judge by use, not volume. Many captured items with little downstream use is a stop or change signal, not a win.
Output format
Send one short message. BLUF first.
Checkpoint: <habit or source>, <date range>
Bottom line: <keep / change / stop, in one sentence>
Captured: <n> items. Used: <n> (<short examples>). Ignored: <n>.
Silent failures: <none, or one line each>
Keep: <1-3 lines>
Change: <1-3 lines, one concrete change each>
Stop: <1-3 lines>
No long tables. No restated setup history. If there is nothing to stop, say "Stop: nothing".
Follow-up offer
End with one offer, and let the owner pick:
- another checkpoint in about a month (good after a change), or
- a recurring digest (weekly or monthly) of what the source produced and what got used, or
- nothing, if the verdict is stop.
Schedule it only after the owner says yes. If they say stop, help them turn the source off and remove anything it created that they no longer want.