Your digital legacy in 15 minutes: a quick guide to start today

Fifteen minutes that can change how you are remembered

Think about this: if someone wanted to know who you are fifty years from now, where would they look? Your social media posts will probably be gone. Your email account will have been deleted for inactivity. The photos on your phone will be trapped in a device no one knows how to unlock.

Most people assume their story will preserve itself. That someone will take care of it. That technology will sort it out. But the reality is that, without a conscious action, your story will be lost in exactly the same way the stories of billions of people who lived before you have been lost.

The good news is that creating your digital legacy does not require weeks of work or technical expertise. You can start today, right now, and have a public profile with your story documented in less than fifteen minutes.

This guide takes you through the process step by step. No jargon, no complications, no excuses.

The first step is the simplest. Go to vestigia.me/en/sign-up and create your account. You only need your name and an email address. There are no endless forms, no complicated verifications, no pricing plan to choose because there are no pricing plans. It is free.

In less than two minutes you will have your account created and you will be inside your dashboard, ready to start building your profile.

One important detail: your username will be part of your public profile URL. If your name is Sarah Johnson and you choose the username "sarahjohnson," your profile will be available at vestigia.me/sarahjohnson. Choose something that represents you and is easy to share.

Minute 2 to 5: write your basic biography

This is where most people freeze. They sit in front of the screen and think: "What do I write about myself?" The answer is simpler than it seems.

You are not writing a novel or a resume. You are telling who you are in your own words. Think about what you would say if a stranger asked you: "Tell me about yourself."

If you do not know where to start

Begin with this sentence: "I am from [your city] and I have spent my life..."

It does not matter if you have spent your life as an electrician, a nurse, a full-time parent, a chef, an office worker, or a retiree. Every life is a life that deserves to be told. From that first sentence, everything else follows.

What to include in your biography

You do not need to tell everything. For now, focus on the essentials:

Where you are from: your city or town, the neighborhood where you grew up, where your family comes from. This places the reader and provides context.
What you do or have done: your profession, your trade, your calling. It does not have to be something grand. "I have been a hairdresser for thirty years in the same neighborhood" is a perfectly valid and powerful sentence.
What defines you as a person: your values, your passions, what you consider important. Are you the kind of person who always arrives on time? Do you cook for everyone every Sunday? Have you been tending the same garden for years? Those details are what make you unique.
Your family: who matters in your life. You do not need a complete family tree, just the people who form your circle and give meaning to your story.

How much to write

There is no minimum or maximum. If you write three paragraphs, that is fine. If you write ten, that is fine too. What matters is that it is authentic. You can always come back and expand your biography later. Today you only need a first version.

A helpful trick: write as if you were telling your life story to a grandchild who has not been born yet. Naturally, warmly, without pressure.

Minute 5 to 8: add your most important achievements

This section generates the most resistance, because when people think of "achievements" they think of awards, university degrees, or extraordinary feats. But an achievement is anything you are proud of.

What counts as an achievement

Practically everything:

Raising your family through difficult circumstances.
Starting your own business, no matter how small.
Learning a trade on your own.
Volunteering in your community for years.
Overcoming an illness.
Caring for a dependent family member.
Landing your first job after a tough period.
Maintaining a friendship for decades.
Teaching someone something that they went on to use.

You do not need your achievements to impress anyone. You need them to reflect who you are and what you have done with your life. A father who walked his children to school every day because he did not have a car has an achievement just as valid as a businessman who opened ten shops.

How to write them

Be specific. Instead of "I was a hard worker," write "I worked for 35 years at the same shoe factory in Northampton and was promoted to floor manager." Instead of "I like helping others," write "Since 2005, I have volunteered at the food bank in my neighborhood every Friday without fail."

Concrete details give credibility and make your achievement memorable. There is no need to exaggerate or embellish. Reality, told honestly, is enough.

How many achievements to add

Start with three or four. The ones that come to mind first are usually the most important. There will be time to add more later. Remember: today we are creating a first version in fifteen minutes, not writing an encyclopedia.

Minute 8 to 12: upload representative photos

A picture is worth a thousand words, and in the case of a digital legacy this is quite literally true. Photos are the first thing someone looks at when they visit a profile, and the ones that generate the most emotion when viewed years later.

Which photos to choose

You do not need many. With three to five well-chosen photos, you can build a gallery that tells your story at a glance:

Your profile photo: a photo where your face is clearly visible. It does not need to be professional or recent. If your favorite photo is one from ten years ago, use it. What matters is that it represents you.
A family photo: an image with the people who matter most to you. A family meal, a celebration, an everyday moment. These photos are the ones that will have the most value for future generations.
A photo of your work or environment: an image that shows what you do or where you spend your time. Your workshop, your office, your garden, your kitchen. The space where your daily life unfolds says a great deal about who you are.
A photo that tells a story: the image from that special trip, that important celebration, that moment you remember with particular fondness. A photo with a story behind it.
A photo from your past: if you have one, a photo from when you were young. For your descendants, seeing what you looked like when you were young will be fascinating. For you, including it is a way of honoring every stage of your life.

Add context to every photo

Do not upload photos without a description. Write a brief note for each one: who is in it, when it was taken, where, what was happening. In twenty years, that description will be as valuable as the photo itself. A photo without context is a photo that loses its story.

Do not chase perfection

You do not need professional photos or perfectly framed images. Candid photos, the ones that capture real moments, are the ones with the most value. A slightly blurry photo of a Christmas dinner with the whole family has infinitely more value than a perfect but cold studio portrait.

Minute 12 to 15: review and publish

You are almost there. You have your biography written, your achievements documented, and your photos uploaded. Now take a couple of minutes to review everything.

Review your biography

Read it out loud once. Does it sound like you? Is there anything that is not quite accurate? Is there something you consider essential that is missing? Correct what needs correcting, but do not obsess. This is not an exam. You can always edit it later.

Check your photos

Do they display well? Are the descriptions accurate? Does your profile photo represent you?

Publish

Hit the publish button. Your profile is now available at vestigia.me/your-username. Share it with whoever you want: family, friends, anyone. Or do not share it with anyone and simply leave it there, as an anchor in time that says: "I existed, and this is my story."

What to do next

The fifteen minutes are up and your digital legacy now exists. But this is just the beginning. Over time, you can keep expanding your profile:

Expand your biography

Come back when you have time and feel like it, and add more details. That childhood anecdote you did not include. The story of how you met your partner. The memory of your first day at work. There is no rush, but every detail you add enriches your story.

Add more achievements

Over the following days, achievements you had not thought of will come to mind. Write them down and add them to your profile. Sometimes the most significant achievements are the ones we do not recognize as such until someone points them out.

Upload more photos

Go through your albums, both physical and digital. There are surely more photos that deserve a place in your digital legacy. And do not forget old photographs: scan them before they deteriorate.

Invite your family

Your digital legacy is personal, but your story is connected to the stories of other people. Invite your parents, your children, your siblings to create their own profiles on Vestigia. The more people in your family who document their story, the richer the collective memory becomes.

The most common excuses and why they do not hold up

We have been accompanying people through the process of creating their digital legacy for a while now, and we always hear the same objections. Here are the most frequent ones:

"My life is not interesting"

Every life is interesting. Absolutely every single one. The thing is, from the inside, your own life seems ordinary because you live it every day. But your grandchildren, forty years from now, will be dying to know what your town was like when you were little, what games you played in the street, what your first job was like, what you ate on Sundays. Your everyday life today is tomorrow's fascinating history.

"I will do it when I have time"

You have just read that it takes fifteen minutes. You do not need a free weekend. You do not need a holiday. You need a quarter of an hour and the decision to start.

"I am not good at writing"

You do not need to be a writer. You need to be honest. Write the way you talk. If your natural way of expressing yourself is simple and direct, perfect. That is exactly what makes a biography authentic. The best biographies are not the best written ones; they are the most honest ones.

"I do not have good photos"

You do not need good photos. You need real photos. A slightly blurry photo from that barbecue in the garden is a thousand times more valuable than a perfect studio photo that holds no memories.

"What if I want to change it later?"

You can change your profile whenever you want, as many times as you want. Nothing you publish is permanent. Think of your digital legacy as a living document that grows with you.

The time is now

There is no perfect moment to start. You will not be more ready tomorrow than you are today. And every day you postpone is a day in which some memory fades a little more, some detail is lost.

Fifteen minutes. That is all you need to take the first step. Sign up now, write a few lines about who you are, upload a couple of photos, and publish your profile. It does not have to be perfect. It just has to exist.

Because in a hundred years, what will matter is not whether your biography had the perfect comma or whether the photo was high resolution. What will matter is that someone can read your name, see your face, learn your story, and know that you existed. That you lived. That you left your mark.

Those fifteen minutes can be the difference between being remembered and being forgotten. Start now.