Ability to have recurring tasks

[rmw 35]

Would be great to have ability for recurring tasks

[Scott T. 662]

This was the top request in the beta for Tasks. We're definitely looking at the right way to implement it.

[PinkElephant 8,077]

In Things 3 there is another type of recurring task that I like: It repeats itself a fixed period of time after it was executed last.

It is great for everything’s that needs to be reviewed or done from time to time, but leaves some flexibility to when exactly.

[regulator_m 4]

Please make automatically recurring tasks like in example:  i want to a daily task at 0700 o´clock evening and also something like i.e tasks automatically recurring every week on a specific date/time or every 2 days at the same time.

[PinkElephant 8,077]

It is in my use cases more about „Need to give this worm pill to the dog every 6 months“, so if I confirm the task today, remind me in 6 months. Not really caring about wether the dog gets it for breakfast or at dinner, that day or maybe a week later.

On short notice I would probably like to get all reminders at the same time of the day, every day, because I hate to have things popping up all day long when I try to get something done.

[jmckimm 17]

+1

[John in Michigan USA 129]

40 minutes ago, PinkElephant said:

In Things 3 there is another type of recurring task that I like: It repeats itself a fixed period of time after it was executed last.

It is great for everything’s that needs to be reviewed or done from time to time, but leaves some flexibility to when exactly.

This would be *great* to have but the devil is in the details...if a daily task scheduled for let's say 9 pm is executed (finished) at 1 am, do you want the repeat to remind you exactly 24 hr later (at 1 am)? Or at 9pm on the next calendar day (only 21 hours after it was completed)? You can imagine a bunch of varying scenarios for weekly, monthly, semi-monthly, etc., etc. that are hard to implement in a way that will please most people without being too complex. Maybe a better way is to just expose an API for task scheduling, and let people code their own rules (or use 3rd party helper apps like Filterize) for repeating/postponing/rescheduling tasks.

[Paulinka 0]

A huge +1

 

[Flash G 38]

Yes!  Recurring tasks would be great!  I also love @PinkElephant's idea for tasks that recur a set period (number of days/weeks/months/years) after they were marked complete.  There are lots of tasks like changing my HVAC/water filters, seeing a dentist, getting my hair cut, or or mowing the lawn where I might be very late in doing them, but that resets the clock so they don't need to be done again until X time after I did them rather than X time after I was last scheduled to do so.  Other tasks like taxes or winterizing my house have fixed dates which should not be extended just because I was late the last time.  I think it would be easy to design a non-confusing API for this.  On the recurrence dialogue it could have an option for "[number] [period] since last completed".  So the recurring task wouldn't appear until the previous one was finished.  And then it would be scheduled for the number of days, weeks, months, or years that you specify.

[JoeMoo 1]

I would love to help beta/determine use cases for this.  The trade-off between complexity and usability is huge.  I personally don't think of tasks being related to times of day--reminders/calendars seem to fit that bill.  At the end of the day, an API to do help set/modify them would probably cover the specialized needs.