- So for the longest time,
I have wanted to do my task management inside Notion
where I run the rest of my business,
but I have been plagued by a pernicious issue,
that until today, I couldn't seem to figure out,
and that is the issue of recurring tasks.
How do you do them,
how do you say, I wanna do a task today,
and I want it to come right back around
into my task manager next week?
Well, over the past week or so,
I've been figuring out a method for doing that,
and in this video I'm gonna teach you how to do it
and also share a template
so you can use it in your own Notion workspace.
So let's just jump right into it.
Here we have a recurring tasks template,
you will find a link in the description
for copying this and playing around with it.
In this video, I'm going to explain it to you,
show you how it works under the hood.
The main limitation that we are gonna run into here
is that we cannot change the state of say, a due column,
a date column,
based on what happens to something like a check box column.
So unfortunately what we can't do here
is check Done, and then have it come around later.
So what we have here is a task table
that has both recurring and one-time tasks.
So when I've got things listed as one time,
what I can do to check those off is simply check them off.
But with recurring ones,
checking them off isn't really gonna do anything
except for change the sort order,
because I need to do them again at some point.
So instead what we have is, first,
a due column that tells us when the due date is.
And then we also have a next due column,
so this is showing us when the next time we should do it is,
based on a recur interval.
So this is just the number of days
that you want to wait until the task is due again.
And all you do to check it off,
is look at that next due date, right here.
And then move over to due and set it to that next due date.
And bam, your next due date
will automatically update itself, based on your interval.
And there's some logic in here to make sure
that even if you are overdue by a certain amount of days,
it is going to move forward
the number of days that you would want.
There is a very, very, very complex formula
that took me the better part of a day to code
to make sure this actually works.
If you're really curious about it,
there is the formula,
in both a condensed version and an extended version,
in the template, so you can take a look at it.
But essentially this solves
the problem that I had in my head,
which was, if we're overdue by, say five days,
on a monthly task, well,
if that task was set
for the first of the month, every single month,
and we check it off on the fifth of the month,
without this logic,
it would get set to the fifth of next month.
But we want it to stay on the first of the month.
So this logic essentially says
"Hey, as long as we're not really, really, really overdue,
"we're just gonna go forward by the interval."
There's a lotta code in there that checks that out.
So that's essentially how you do this.
And with an unfiltered view,
you're just gonna get a series of moving dates here,
which isn't really what we want,
but you can combine this with the filtering mechanisms
to get a really useful view.
So here is our main view
that shows all tasks no matter what.
And if we look at the filter criteria here,
all we're showing is tasks that are assigned to me,
which in this case is every task,
and we are sorting by, first,
the done criteria being checked off,
and then their due date in ascending order.
Let's go ahead and check this one
back to its unchecked state,
so we can go over to this other view that I've created here.
So this one is a little bit more useful.
Instead of showing everything,
if you go to the filtering here,
first, we got the same sort criteria,
except we're not even going to show
ones that are checked off for one-time tasks.
And then we have a nice little set of filters
that shows anything assigned to me,
where the due date is on or before a week from now,
so this is essentially
anything that is due a week from now,
and including anything due today and overdue tasks.
And then we have a nice little nested group of filters here
that show us all of our recurring tasks,
but they also show us all of our one-time tasks
that have not yet been checked off.
So, the upshot of this is when you have a one-time task
you can check that right off,
and it's going to simply go away.
And then with our recurring tasks,
if I update the due date
to a date that is outside of our filter criteria,
then it's not going to show either.
So with this task, we were actually overdue by a week here.
So let me go ahead and update it to today.
And now the next due date is going to be one week from now.
Well we know we're a week out,
so I would see that,
let's go ahead and update this to 14 days
just to show you what would happen,
if I go ahead and update this to October 26th.
Let's go ahead and do that, and it is gone.
So, with the combination
of checking Done on your one-time tasks,
and then moving your due date
based on this next due column with your recurring tasks,
you can get a task management list
that works really well
for basically anything that you have to do.
To make it just a little bit easier
to see at a glance what's overdue,
what's due today, and what's planned,
let's go back over to this All Tasks View here.
We've got these little colors in this column called state.
So this is another formula, and I can open up this toggle
so you can see it a little bit more clearly.
This basically shows a red circle if it's overdue,
a green circle if it is due today,
a blue circle if it is planned,
or a white circle of it has no due date whatsoever.
So, I just built this into the system
so that I could see every day at a glance,
hey, what's overdue in my system,
what's due today, and what's comin' up in the near future?
And if you wanted to,
you could make these blue circles split out
into maybe purple ones for coming up in the next week,
blue for far out in the future,
whatever is that you want to do.
(electronic crackle) So, like I said,
the template link for this is in the description
if you just want to duplicate and play with it,
but on this channel
I really want to help you understand these systems,
I think this is crucial
because when you have actual practice with the systems
you're going to start to be able to combine Notion's tools,
in new and innovative ways,
I actually view Notion as almost a programming language
with more graphical elements
than most programming languages,
there's a lotta code in there too,
and if you can understand
how to use these functions in different ways,
you're gonna be able to solve lots of different problems.
So, let's go ahead and build this,
essentially from scratch here.
If we have a brand new table here,
first we're gonna name our main row Tasks.
So we're gonna have our task names there.
We're going to create a select criteria,
with the properties One-Time and Recurring.
Then we're going to do a due date.
We're gonna have an assignee column.
Person.
We're gonna have a recur interval,
that's gonna just be a simple number.
And then we have our two formula columns,
the first one being Next Due Date, and then we have State.
Okay, so these are all of the columns
that we're going to need for this task management system,
I'm now just going to put them
in the order in which I want them.
I just realized I forgot, the most important one,
which is our Done check box,
we're not usin' that for any crazy formulas, but hey
what good is a task manager without a fancy checkbox?
So we're gonna move that, move this,
and let's just create a recurring task example,
and a one-off task example.
Set our tags correctly for each of these,
we're gonna set a due date.
So let's just go ahead and set it today for both of them.
Set it to me 'cause I get all the tasks,
at least in this example.
And then for a recurring one,
let's set a recur interval of, say, seven days.
So, from here, I'm not going to type out the exact formula
because that would be a little bit crazy
for a YouTube video, if you want to check it out,
if you wanna study in the template,
feel free, go ahead, you know, go nuts,
learn how to use the formulas,
I think that's a really powerful part of Notion.
But for now we are just gonna copy and paste,
the ultimate secret weapon
of basically every programmer in the world.
So for our next Due, we'll go ahead and edit the formula.
Paste that in, back to formula,
as Dr. Osborne's underlings would say.
And then we're gonna grab the compressed version
of our state formula as well.
Head on over into here, paste that in, bada bing, bada boom!
We have ourselves a recurring task manager
that can also elegantly handle one-time tasks.
The only thing you wanna do from here,
is create your filters.
So we can do that real quick.
I'll do assignee equals me.
We had Due is on, or before, one week from now,
so we're getting a week out,
we're also seeing anything potentially overdue.
Then we're gonna create a filter group,
where the type is either recurring,
or, another filter group here,
the type is one time, and the Done property is not checked.
And there we go, there's our filter group.
So we've got one week out,
so if I go ahead and move this to now, it's there,
if I go ahead and move it to the 26th, it's gone.
If I go ahead and check this off, it's gone.
So that is how you get recurring tasks,
in a task manager within Notion.
Again, I'm gonna to have the template link for this,
in the description down below, so check that out.
And if you enjoyed this tutorial
and you wanna see more just like it,
hit that Subscribe button, hit that Like button,
help me launch this brand new channel,
and, if you want a written version of this tutorial,
you can go over thomasjfrank.com/notion,
or find the other link in the description below,
I'll have a written up version
and I'm also going to be linking to all of my templates,
I've got a note taking system, a video management system.
I've got a course that I'm working on,
so you can sign up to get updates about that,
and last but not least,
there are several other great Notion creators
here on YouTube and all over the internet,
and a lot of them have their own takes on recurring tasks,
so I'm gonna link to a few of them
in the article version of this video,
check them out, go follow them as well,
I know Danny Hatcher has one, Marie Poulin has one.
So check everyone out that's got their own recurring tasks,
and I will see you in the next tutorial.
(upbeat bass music)