Know what is running
What suits a schedule
Jobs with a natural rhythm: a morning summary of news on a topic, a weekly check of prices or availability, a Friday digest of what changed in a shared folder, a monthly reminder list from your calendar. Each produces a short report you read. Scheduling something that acts without producing anything to read is where problems start.
Unattended means unwatched
When a task runs at 3am, nobody sees the odd screen or the strange result. That's fine for a summary you'll read with breakfast. It isn't fine for anything that sends, buys or deletes. Scheduled tasks should have tighter limits than ones you watch, not looser ones.
Keep a register
Keep a simple list: task name, which tool runs it, when, what it can access, and why it exists. Review it monthly. Our Audit My Scheduled AI Tasks prompt helps you build and check it. Tasks you no longer read are pure risk: they still hold access, still cost usage, and nobody would notice if they started doing something odd.
Notifications and failures
Set each task to notify you when it finishes or fails, and read the notification. A task that has quietly failed for a month is a common discovery. Some products pause tasks that seem inactive; check your list after holidays and app updates rather than assuming everything is still running as before.
Do you know every app or service that does something automatically on your behalf? How long would the list be?