Tutorial on Repeating Tasks and Projects

[MJL]

Hello all. I have been using OF for many years but have never mastered repeating projects and tasks. It still feels like black magic. It appears to defy logic and I do not understand how repeating items work in OF. I have searched and followed other examples without success.

I am using OmniFocus-MacAppStore-2.5.x, and the current version for IOS on an iPhone 6 Plus.

Is there a tutorial available which demystifies the process to reliably create repeating tasks?

Here are some examples:

{Desired Behavior: MTWTF at 8AM each task within the project becomes Available. When I complete each task, it is deferred again for the following morning at 8AM. If I skip one or more tasks on a given day I do not want them to stack up, I just want to complete it when I get to it and then have it automatically appear as a task the following morning.}

Project: Process Inboxes Each Week Day
-Task: Voicemail
-Task: Evernote
-Task: Paper inbox
-Task: Email1
-Task: Email2
-Task: Email3
-Task: Email4

Project: Reading News
-Task: News site1
-Task: News site2
-Task: News site3
-Task: News site4

I find that setting due dates works more reliably than defer, but I do not want them to stack up if I skip a day.

How is this accomplished? Do tasks inherit the defer properties of the project, or do I set the repeating defer for each task within a project?

Thank you! I have been looking at other task managers for this reason alone, but would prefer to stay with OF.

-Mitch

[TheOldDesigner]

No black magic :) if you set a project to defer at 8am one day on completion if you don’t do it, it will not repeat until you do.

Repeat/defer is really no more than replicate on done with a new date. I have a single action list called “rituals” which has all my morning tasks each defer daily at 8am. I have a separate perspective for those, and a “meta task” to check this perspective which appears on my daily dashboard.

[MJL]

Thank you for the reply! I must be missing something fundamental to the way this works.

As a test, I created the following Single Action Project:

I set it to Repeat Every Week, and selected the week days. Defer time is 7PM for my testing. So far so good, except for the due time of 4PM which baffles me but I understand that I can ignore that for now due to the way OF functions.

Then I added the following tasks which seemed to inherit the defer time of 7PM as listed on the left side of this screen shot

I waited for 7PM, and sure enough the tasks became available. Excellent! I processed my voicemail and checked the circle.

Now, here is my challenge. The Voicemail task does not show a Next Deferred (Deferred is my preference) or Next Due in the Inspector. That is my current struggle, I expect the tasks to repeat but they do not? What should I adjust to have the Voicemail task repeat tomorrow at 7PM?

Again thank you for taking the time to help. Frustration levels are way beyond proportion!!

-Mitch

[teronel]

You have set the defer and repeat options on the project. In that case, the tasks in it will only repeat when the whole project is completed.

I think that setting repeats on each individual task will be what you want. You can select the whole bunch to set the repeat en masse.

[TheOldDesigner]

To be honest I would just set the individual tasks to repeat, 1) it simply works, and 2) it gives more future flexibility on

[MJL]

I changed the defer and repeat to the tasks and removed from the project. Seems to be working, though I’ll have a better grip on it after a few more cycles.

Thanks Teronel and TheOldDesigner for your help, I’m glad I registered and asked the question.

-Mitch

[Marsch]

Thank you guys for the info.
It helped me a lot!
I think I will set individual repeated defer dates to my projects from now on.
Take care.
/MartinS

[hari]

Thank you so much - your post helped me immensely.

[cleabig]

Great post. Very helpful.