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The Beauty of the Recurring Task

There’s a certain kind of to-do list item that can really bite you in the butt: the recurring task. While programs like Sciral Consistency are designed specifically for managing fuzzy-intervaled tasks, MS Entourage has a handy “Recurrence Pattern??? box that lets you define how often and when an item should pop up on your radar screen. This is a feature I love and use whenever I can.

In addition to the common “Every Monday??? and “Every Other Month??? items, Entourage lets you set a manual interval for repetition that’s based on the last time the task was completed. For example, anyone who’s lived in San Francisco knows how inexplicably dusty your house gets. I have a reminder to sweep the bunnies from the hallway every 5 days (regardless of the day of the week that falls on). So if I tick it off today, it automatically pops back up again next Sunday. Then it hangs around, bugging me, until I do it again, and so on.

Recurringtask

This is a great feature for handling a lot of stuff you don’t want to forget about—but that you don’t want sitting interminably on your to-do list.

  • Change baking soda in freezer & fridge (every 180 days)
  • Check in on progress of My Bloody Valentine’s next record (every 120 days)
  • Check for price changes on CD-R media (every 90 days)
  • Change water filter in coffee maker (every 30 days)
  • Check email on disused email account (every 14 days)
  • Think about making a new set of 5ives (every 10 days)
  • Call Mom (every 7 days)
  • Sift through spam folder for false positives (every 5 days)
  • Process outstanding Hipster PDA cards (every 3 days)

The thing I like best about this—and I admit that this is a subtle feature—is that regardless of how long it takes me to finish the task, it always re-generates itself with the correct interval. If I don’t feel like sweeping the floor and it takes 7 days instead of 5, no problem. Better next time.

Much nicer than watching a half-dozen, guilt-inducing items pile up behind one another like a traffic jam.

Ennis's picture

You can do this easily...

You can do this easily enough with a tickler system, where each task simply has the duration attached. Whenever you're done you have to set up the next appointment for it before you check it off. If you take this approach, you can implement recurrence in any software, as long as you're responsible for the recurrance.

A pain? Perhaps? But I like knowing that I set it again, b/c it validates that I don't have to do it again for X time units, reminds me that it will have to be done on that time, and it a bit more satisfying than just checking something off (Ha! I don't have to dust for another 5 days! And then it will take me only 15 minutes!)

That said, I'm not very good with such tasks ...

[And I'm on a PC. I can do recurrence pretty well on my Covey-Franklin electronic organizer, buggy as it is]

 
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