Four expiration categories at capture

When This Fires

• At the moment of capturing any information into your reference system
• When Tag time-sensitive information with explicit expiration…'s expiration date assignment feels like an unnecessary precision exercise
• When building templates or intake forms for your knowledge management system
• Complements Tag time-sensitive information with explicit expiration… (expiration at capture) with the simplified decision framework

Common Failure Mode

Everything in the middle: classifying most items as "1-6 months" because it feels safe. This produces a large monthly sweep backlog and under-differentiates between ephemeral items (that should be 1-week and auto-purged) and structural items (that only need annual review). Use the full range of categories.

The Protocol

(1) When capturing an item, ask: "How long is this information valid?" (2) Classify into one of four categories: 1 week (meeting logistics, event details, temp credentials) → tag and let auto-expire or sweep weekly. 1-6 months (project data, current pricing, team status) → tag, sweep monthly (Monthly expiration sweep). 1-5 years (policies, architecture, long-term plans) → tag, sweep annually. Evergreen (principles, frameworks, mental models) → tag as no-expiry (Mark genuinely timeless material as evergreen/no-expiry…). (3) When uncertain between adjacent categories, choose the shorter one (When uncertain about lifespan, expire at 3 months not 1…). Better to renew a valid item than to miss a stale one. (4) Assign a specific date within the category: for "1-6 months," set a date 3 months out (the conservative default). For "1-5 years," set 1 year out. (5) The category determines the review cadence; the specific date determines when the item surfaces in the sweep.