Reading Triage
Decides read, skim or discard on the first screen and holds to it, so a reading list stops functioning as a guilt archive.
Free — no card needed
Create a free account
to open Reading Triage — and the other 364 prompts across 21 categories.
Already have an account?
Running it, start to finish
- Clear anything older than a few weeks.
- Apply the thirty-second rule to everything new.
- Unsubscribe from the source that fills the list without earning it.
What you get back
The output this produces, every time.
- Declares an aged backlog bankrupt, since items older than a few weeks will not be read.
- Identifies the source producing most of your backlog and none of your value.
- States plainly that keeping up is not achievable, which converts permanent failure into a deliberate narrow focus.
Getting better results
Where this usually goes wrong, and how to avoid it.
- Actually clear the backlog. Section 1 feels wasteful and is not. What matters resurfaces, and the relief is what makes the new rule stick.
- Capture what it changes. A summary is available from the source. A note saying what you will now do differently is the only kind worth writing.
- Unsubscribe from the section 4 source. Most backlogs are dominated by one input that has never produced anything useful. Removing it is the largest single win.
More Productivity prompts
All Productivity →- Productivity
Inbox to Decision Queue
Reduces a backlog of messages to the small number of genuine decisions inside it, with a draft reply for each of the rest.
ClaudeChatGPTGemini000Open → - Productivity
Weekly Review That Changes Something
A review that ends with one changed behaviour rather than a tidy list and the same week repeated.
ClaudeChatGPT000Open → - Productivity
Week Triage by Consequence
Sorts an overloaded list by what actually happens if each item slips, rather than by urgency theatre — and tells you what to drop outright.
ClaudeChatGPT000Open →
Written for The AI University. Every prompt in this library is original work — authored, tested and revised here, not collected from elsewhere. 365 of them, free with an account.