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For you who prefer listening to reading, this post is also available as an episode of the ""Done!"" podcast:

The same thing, over and over again

It is a valid and very good ques­tion since we all have tasks we repeat with a cer­tain, pre­dictable inter­val. I do reports relat­ed to my account­ing every month. I record a pod­cast every week and look through my dif­fer­ent chan­nels for com­mu­ni­ca­tion dai­ly. And these are just a few of my recur­ring tasks.

Relat­ed to the clock, rel­e­vant in the calendar

Recur­ring tasks are no dif­fer­ent from oth­er to-do tasks. If they need to hap­pen at a spe­cif­ic time, they belong in the cal­en­dar. If they do not nec­es­sar­i­ly need to be per­formed at a par­tic­u­lar time — even if they need to be done some­time dur­ing a spe­cif­ic day — I rec­om­mend you keep them on the to-do list instead.

Same same but different

I sup­pose some peo­ple sched­ule the recur­ring tasks in the cal­en­dar due to the sim­ple rea­son that most dig­i­tal cal­en­dars have a ​“recurring”-function. Luck­i­ly, every dig­i­tal to-do list tools with a cer­tain degree of self-respect have the same kind of fea­ture these days — whether you use the Tasks-func­tion in Out­look, Microsoft To-Do, Todoist, Asana, or one of the many oth­er tools out there.

Do this

Look through your cal­en­dar and see if you can find recur­ring tasks you have sched­uled even though they do not nec­es­sar­i­ly need to hap­pen at the par­tic­u­lar time they are sched­uled to be done.

Move these recur­ring tasks to the to-do list instead and set the inter­val at which you want it to reoc­cur on your dai­ly list. Done!

Check it off with­out hav­ing to move it

If you keep the recur­ring tasks that do not need to be per­formed at a par­tic­u­lar time on your to-do list, you will not have to block time in the cal­en­dar for no good rea­son. You can do the task when it suits you dur­ing the day with­out hav­ing to resched­ule things in the cal­en­dar. And, you also get to check it off every time you have com­plet­ed the task — even if you per­form it dai­ly, week­ly, or monthly.

What’s your way?

How do you man­age your recur­ring tasks? How do you keep track of when they need to be done, and the next time, the time after that? Feel free to write to me and share!

(Look­ing for more tips on how to stay organ­ised in your cal­en­dar? Also take a look at how to tell the cal­en­dar and the to-do-list apart!)