Recurrence without a due date

[Dave Cunningham]

Hi, friends.  I'm interested in creating recurring tasks without the requirement that there is a DUE date.  I just want the task to start appearing a certain number of days/weeks/months after I completed the last instance.  I want this because I don't want the due date for many tasks - their due date isn't firm, and I want due date to represent a commitment in my task list.  (I'm finding that not respecting the due date in an absolute way causes me to spend too much time figuring out what I should work on).

 

I reviewed several previous posts, and I didn't find anything that provided a clean answer.  I know I can achieve this with views and playing around, or I can create the next instance myself when I complete the current task...but I don't want to do either.  I want a simple way to have the task appear beginning at a certain time, and I'll decide then when it really should be completed.  Is this feature significant enough to others to consider for a future release?

[Dwight Arthur]

Hi, Dave. As you know you cannot create a recurrence without a due date. Here's a workaround, which fails on your requirement for something "simple" but more-or-less does what you want.

-Create a task named "parent" with start and due date set for the intended start date of your next instance of the thing you have to do. Create a context named "hidden" and set "hide-in-todo" in the context properties in the F8 manage contexts popup. Assign your parent task to the hidden context. In the recurrence popup, set the parent task to recur 3 weeks after completion or any other "recurrs after" schedule you like. In advanced recurrence options, select "reset all tasks to uncompleted" and "automatically recurr when any subtask is completed". Now, create a child task under this parent. Name it after the thing you have to do. Do not set any recurrence. In the timing and reminders section, turn on the checkbox next to start date then turn off the checkbox next to due date. You should now have "inherit parent dates" turned off, with the next time you have to do this thing as the start date and the due date blank. If the dates have gotten messed up at all, edit them to put the correct dates in.

Now, in your to-do list, once the start date has arrived you should see the task but not its parent, the task should have the correct start date and no due date. When you complete the task it should be recreated with a start date 3 weeks later (or whatever interval you chose). There's one gotcha: If you assign a due date to the task, let's say three days later than the start date, when you complete the task and it is regenerated, it will have a due date three days later than the new start date. Unavoidable, sorry, when that happens you just have to clear the due date yourself.

To answer your question, I would be in favor of allowing recurrence with start date and no due date and would vote for this in uservoice if you set it up. However, there are a lot of other things I would consider a higher priority, like showing the result of start date parsing in the parsing results window, and allowing both start and due dates to be specified separately in parsing a task caption.

-Dwight

[David Rees]

I don't understand why a due date is required for recurrence either. Many of my use cases are I don't want to start worrying about something until a particular date, that doesn't mean its due on that date.

d

[Nick Clark]

Another solution might be to set a due date so far in the future it will effectively never come up. It will keep getting pushed off each time you complete the task a generate a new one.

[Dave Cunningham]

Thanks, Dwight.  Not a bad solution, but I'm leery of using complex structures to do things like this.  Always seems like once I get there, I realize some other unexpected consequence.

 

I did notice an existing entry in UserVoice, and I added a vote for that capability.  Thanks again for the responses, all. 

[Dwight]

Hi, David. Here’s a way to think about the due date requirement on recurring tasks.

 

MLO actually recognizes the kind of use cases you are describing, and for that reason it’s really good at handling tasks that have a start date but no due date. The exception is for recurring tasks. So, in order for the task to have a scheduled recurrence, you normally need some idea of when you will finish the current occurrence, right? So you can just set the current recurrence to finish just before the next one begins. I say “normally” because when you say “recurs x period after completed” you may well have no idea when you will complete it or when the next occurrence will actually begin. In those cases you can use the technique that someone posted and give a due date that’s impossibly far into the future. That works for most cases, the exception being Dave the OP, who wants to treat tasks that have a due date assigned more seriously than those that don’t. So in his case it’s not just that the due date is an annoyingly pointless thing, it actually detracts from his task management.

 

-Dwight

Reminder: I’m just a user of MLO and this is just my opinion and may have no resemblance to the actual design philosophies and decisions of MLO developers.

[David Rees]

I agree that workaround works, its just not optimal. In fact its what I used on Bonsai. For Dave the OP, it seems to me he could work around his problem by always putting the due dates after a certain known date. Then he could use advanced rules to only select tasks with due dates before that date...

d  

[Elizabeth Lindsay]

Here is how I handle it.  I am using the Getting Things Done (GTD) technique of contexts for each activity on my list.  For those items that truly have a due date (must by done by that date), I add the context "! Due Date".  For items where I am only setting a due date to allow me to manage recurrences, I do not add that context.  Then, when I'm looking at my Overdue view I can clearly differentiate those where I missed a true deadline versus a MLO deadline.

[Mike]

I have a lot of recurring tasks and about 95% of them are not required to be completed by a specific due date. It is a daily annoyance to have to mentally ignore the printed due date of recurring items, in the Active By Context view that I spend most of my doing time in. I do need to see the due dates of other items though. I sure wish that this will be corrected. Thanks.