Your Digital Life Audit

Making the Invisible Visible

Before you can fix your digital habits, you need to see them clearly. Most people vastly underestimate their screen time, can’t name half their active subscriptions, and have no idea how many notifications interrupt them daily.

This lesson gives you AI prompts to audit every dimension of your digital life. The goal isn’t judgment — it’s data. You can’t optimize what you don’t measure.

The Screen Time Audit

Start with the data your phone already collects:

iPhone: Settings → Screen Time → See All Activity Android: Settings → Digital Wellbeing → Dashboard

Analyze my screen time data and help me understand my digital habits.

Daily screen time: [X] hours [X] minutes
Phone pickups per day: [X]

Top apps by time:
1. [App name]: [X] hours/day
2. [App name]: [X] hours/day
3. [App name]: [X] hours/day
4. [App name]: [X] hours/day
5. [App name]: [X] hours/day

For each app, tell me:
1. Annual hours spent (daily × 365)
2. What that time equals (in books read, skills learned, walks taken)
3. Whether usage is likely intentional or reflexive
4. The notification pattern — does this app pull me back in?

Also calculate: at [X] pickups per day across 16 waking hours,
how often am I interrupted? What does that mean for sustained focus?

✅ Quick Check: Why convert daily screen time to annual hours? Because “1.5 hours on Instagram” sounds manageable. “547 hours per year” — 23 full days, more than three work weeks — changes your emotional response to the same number. AI reframes your data in ways that bypass the normalization your brain has built around daily habits.

The Subscription Audit

List every recurring digital payment — apps, streaming, software, cloud storage, news:

Here are all my digital subscriptions. Help me audit them.

[List each subscription with monthly/annual cost]

For each one, help me evaluate:
1. When did I last actively use this? (Last week / last month / can't remember)
2. Does it support a core value or goal, or is it "nice to have"?
3. Is there a free alternative that covers 80%+ of what I need?
4. Am I paying for features I don't use? (Premium when basic would suffice)

Categorize each as:
- KEEP: Active weekly use, supports core values
- EVALUATE: Occasional use, may have cheaper alternatives
- CUT: Haven't used in 30+ days or provides minimal value

Calculate: Total monthly and annual savings if I cut all "CUT" items.

Common Subscription Traps

Trap	What Happens	AI Fix
Free trial → forgotten charge	You signed up for a trial and it auto-renewed	AI flags subscriptions you can’t remember starting
Tier creep	You’re on Premium but only use Basic features	AI compares your usage to plan features
Overlap	Multiple apps doing the same thing	AI identifies redundancy across subscriptions
Annual lock-in	Paid annually for something you stopped using monthly	AI flags annual subscriptions approaching renewal

The Notification Audit

For one full day, keep your phone on its normal settings. At the end of the day:

I tracked my notifications for one day. Help me categorize them.

Total notifications received: approximately [X]

By category (estimate):
- Social media (likes, comments, follows): [X]
- Email: [X]
- Messaging (texts, WhatsApp, Slack): [X]
- News/content apps: [X]
- Shopping/marketing: [X]
- Utility (calendar, reminders, weather): [X]
- Other: [X]

For each category, classify as:
- CRITICAL: Missing this would cause a real problem (meeting reminders, direct messages from family)
- USEFUL: Adds some value but isn't time-sensitive (email summaries, weather)
- NOISE: Purely attention-grabbing with no real value (social media likes, marketing pushes, news alerts)

What percentage of my notifications are NOISE?
Recommend specific changes: which apps should have notifications completely off,
which should be batched (delivered 2-3 times per day), and which stay real-time?

✅ Quick Check: What’s the difference between turning off notifications entirely and batching them? Turning off means you check when YOU decide to. Batching means notifications arrive at scheduled times (e.g., email notifications at 9am, 1pm, 5pm instead of constantly). Batching is less radical but still eliminates the constant interruption that fragments your attention. For most people, batching is the first step — full removal comes later after you realize you didn’t miss anything important.

The App Inventory

Go beyond screen time — audit every app installed on your phone:

Help me audit my installed apps.

I have approximately [X] apps on my phone.
I regularly use about [X] of them.

Help me think through:
1. For each app I use daily — does it serve a clear purpose, or am I using it out of habit?
2. For apps I haven't opened in 30+ days — what's the cost of deleting them? (Usually zero — you can always reinstall)
3. Which apps duplicate functions? (Multiple messaging apps, multiple news apps, etc.)
4. Which apps have the most aggressive engagement tactics? (Infinite scroll, push notifications, streaks, badges)

Create a DELETE / KEEP / MOVE TO FOLDER plan.
"Move to folder" means: keep installed but remove from home screen
to add friction and reduce reflexive opening.

Your Complete Digital Profile

After running all four audits, compile the results:

Based on my audits, create a complete digital profile summary:

Screen time: [X] hours/day, [X] pickups/day
Top time sinks: [apps and hours]
Subscriptions: [X] total, $[X]/month, [X] recommended to cut
Notifications: [X]/day, [X]% classified as noise
Apps: [X] installed, [X] actively used

Summarize:
1. My biggest digital cost (in time, money, and attention)
2. The single change that would have the most impact
3. My "digital minimalism score" — how intentional is my current setup?
4. What a realistic, improved version of my digital life looks like

Key Takeaways

Your phone already tracks screen time and pickups — this data is the starting point for any digital minimalism effort
Converting daily habits to annual numbers (hours/year, dollars/year) bypasses the normalization that makes wasteful habits feel acceptable
Subscriptions follow the Active/Evaluate/Cut framework — “Zombie” subscriptions (unused for 30+ days) are the easiest wins
80-90% of notifications are noise; AI categorization lets you surgically remove distractions while keeping what matters
The complete digital profile gives you a baseline to measure all future changes against

Up Next: You’ll use your audit data to begin Cal Newport’s famous 30-day digital declutter — a structured reset that separates the tools you genuinely need from the ones you’ve been using by default.