TASKERGTD in practice · 3 min read
Reminders and recurring tasks
Dmytro Sokolnikov, maker of Tasker ·
When you really need a reminder
A reminder interrupts whatever you are doing. With ten a day, you get used to swiping them away — and miss the one that mattered.
Set reminders for things with an exact time that are easy to forget in the flow of the day: pills, a call, leaving the house, a payment on the last day.
When to remind
A reminder should come while you still have time to act. For a 10:00 meeting across town, 9:15 is useful, 9:59 is not. For a birthday gift — a few days ahead, not that same morning.
What to do when a reminder arrives
- you can do it now — do it and close it;
- you can’t do it now — snooze it to a specific time, not “for later”;
- it no longer matters — close the reminder so it doesn’t hang around.
Recurring tasks
Paying for the internet every month, watering the plants every Saturday, the weekly review, the yearly car inspection — there is no point writing these down from scratch each time. Write them once and set a rule: daily, weekly on certain days, monthly on a certain day, yearly.
A simple rule: a task you are writing down for the third time — make it recurring.
Missed one? No problem
A recurring task shouldn’t hang there as a leftover. If it didn’t work out this time, skip it and do it next time. What matters is that the rule keeps going, not that every single time gets done.
Reminders are for what matters, not for everything!
How it works in Tasker
Tasker reminders arrive in Telegram from the bot and in the bell at the top of the app. Under a reminder there is “OK” to close it everywhere, and buttons to snooze it for 10 minutes, an hour, 3 hours or until tomorrow.
You can create a reminder in the app — “+” at the top, the “Reminder” tab — or just write to the bot: “remind me tomorrow at 9 to call mom”. A repeating one is easy to ask the bot for too: “remind me every Saturday at 10 to water the plants”.
A task’s reminder is in the task’s “⋮” menu, “Add reminder”. Move the task — its reminders move with it; complete or delete the task — its reminders go away by themselves.
A recurring task: in the task’s date window — when creating it or via “Reschedule…” — choose the rule in the row under the time instead of “Don’t repeat”: daily, weekly on the days you need, monthly or yearly. Tasker schedules the next time itself when you mark the task “Done”; a missed time it closes on its own once the day is over.
A recurring task’s reminder is the “Automatic reminder” on its page: on the day at a set hour, or a few days before. It comes before every time. No longer need it to repeat? “End series” in the “⋮” menu makes this time the last.
Where reminders arrive is set in your profile, in the “Reminders” group. The “Daily digest” is there too: the day’s plan in Telegram at the time you choose.
Reminders and recurring tasks are in both modes.
All Tasker features →