We all have tasks we do on a daily, weekly or even yearly basis and even though most times they happen on a regular basis, they can still be hard to remember once one is done if a proper system isn't put in place to remind us.

This is especially helpful when managing multiple tasks in an organization that can be recurring such as sending out weekly team meetings, financial reviews & social media postings to list a few.

These processes are repetitive but equally important as every other one-time task, as they generally indicate things we can automate in our businesses. They help companies with benefits like greatly improving work management, recognizing important processes, forming good habits, establishing a routine, increasing accountability, lessening mental stress, and shifting focus from detailed tasks to high-level information.

Notion is an excellent tool, and a little over 2 years ago, they introduced a native solution for creating recurring tasks. This update was highly requested, and in this post, I'll show you two ways to use this feature and give my honest feedback on its usability.

Method #1 (Manually Oriented):

Set up tasks once and then change the due date each time.

Method #2 (Automatic):

Using recurring database templates.

Let's dive right in with the first method...

In your database, you'd have to add two separate 'Date' properties to track the 'Due date' and the 'completed date' for your tasks. You're just going to change the due date to the next day you want the task to recur, i.e., the next day you want to accomplish it.

If you want to be able to cross things off as DONE✅, make sure some things are set up in your task management system so each recurring entry doesn't disappear into oblivion, and you can recover that task when you need it. To do this, you can add in a 'Select' property with tags like weekly, monthly, seasonally, or even just One time, depending on the frequency of your task.

You can also use a checkbox property instead of the 'select' property method by adding a checkbox property and labelling it 'Recurring?' for those repetitive tasks.

The reasoning behind this is just to create a database property that you can filter by to pull in all your recurring tasks to a linked view of the task database on any part of your workspace. This way, you can easily change all due dates at once rather than looking for them individually. This is how I have them set up in my Notion...

So essentially, tasks that will show up in the database are filtered to only show those tasks that occur weekly or monthly. This is how it looks on Notion.

This way, you simply can add the due dates for every number of tasks at the beginning of a week and the day you now want to accomplish them.

BONUS TIP:

You can add a bit of automation in this method with the use of Notion buttons that are available for everyone, even on the free plan. For example, in this use case, you can have something like a reset task button to update tasks to 'today.' Let me show how I've set this up...

We want to be able to automatically recur our task but not all. So we set up a filter within our button to only affect pages with the 'weekly and/or monthly tag' and status equals 'Done' i.e., you've completed the task in the past.

Then to configure the button itself is to add settings that say you whenever you click this button you want to:

• Change the status of the pages affected to 'In-progress.'

• Clear the 'due dates' of the pages affected by the filter.

• Mark the completed date as 'Today.'

So when you do this, it edits your pages 'date' to today just like that… 🪄

P.S. Before we move onto the next method, you can also do this automatically with the use of database automations. Instead of clicking a button, you can have it running and ongoing behind the scenes. A worthy mention is to know that you need to be on a subscription as this is a paid feature⚡. Setting this up is similar to the buttons—essentially an 'if this happens then do this' scenario in 3 simple steps.

1. Edit automations to affect pages in the filtered view (see fig 1.5).

2. When the status is set to 'complete,'

3. Then automatically set the completed date to 'today,' set the status to 'Now,' and clear out the 'due date.'

Remember this only happens when the status of the task you want to recur is set to completed, so that only stands as the trigger for this automation.

Drawbacks:

The only hindrance I see to this method is you can only recur pages to a dynamic date value like 'Today' or 'Now'; you can't set it up for a date really specific like a week from now or every Friday. But if this feels too manual for you, let me show how the other method solves this, which is the…

Recurring Database Templates (Method #2):

Let's go over to our master task list and set up an example recurring database template.

So you're going to click the drop-down arrow next to new at the top right of the template. Click 'New template.'

In this case, we're going to be reviewing our OKRs (Objectives & Key Results)

Next, get out of this page and go back into that drop-down arrow. Click the three dots to the right of that new template you just created, and you'll get a menu option like this, where you can set the page to repeat.

In this case, we want it to recur every single week on a Thursday, and I also would want it to start this Thursday, and then it's gonna create this page once again at midnight your local time.

And there you have it! This is currently the most automated way to use recurring tasks in Notion.

Drawbacks:

First of all, Repeating database creates a brand new page every single time, as opposed to the manual method which lets you utilize just one page for your task and then change the due date every single time. So there is a possibility/tendency to create unnecessary duplicate tasks that can cause digital clutter. This is something to be mindful of because it also has the ability to make your Notion slow over time when you really think about it.

In Conclusion:

Now that you've learned two ways to use recurring tasks in Notion, you can easily handle repetitive jobs and stay organized.

Notion's flexible features let you customize and schedule tasks effectively. Try different workarounds, use database templates, automations, and explore the many advanced options we've discussed in this article to tailor Notion to your needs and boost productivity.

When You're Ready, Here's How we Can Help You:

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