Recurring Tasks

Ultimate Brain comes with out-of-the-box support for recurring tasks. They just work. 😎

When you give a task a Due Date and a Recur Interval, each time you set that task’s Status to Done, Notion will automatically update the Due Date and set the Status back to To Do.

In short, recurring tasks in Ultimate Brain work just like they do in any other task management app. It comes with a built-in automation to process tasks as you finish them, which means there’s no need for a third-party app like Zapier or Pipedream to be in the mix.

Ultimate Brain also has the most powerful recurring tasks formula you’re ever going to see (you can see it here), which means it:

• Supports advanced intervals like Last Weekday of the Month
• Supports recurring on specific days of the week, e.g. “Every Mon, Weds, Fri”
• Intelligently handles overdue tasks

How to Create Recurring Tasks

Creating a recurring task in Ultimate Brain is easy. As long as a task has a Due Date and a Recur Interval, it’s a recurring task.

Want to make a task that repeats every day? Give it a Due Date, then set its Recur Interval to 1. You’re done.

Of course, you can get a lot fancier with your intervals if you want. Here’s the complete guide to setting up recurring tasks:

Open up any task after you’ve created it, and you’ll see a Recurring Task Properties section in the property panel. This section shows three properties you can edit:

• Recur Interval – the number of units to recur by
• Recur Unit – the unit, e.g. “Day(s)”, “Week(s)”, or “Month(s) on the Last Weekday”
• Days (Only if Set to 1 Days(s)) – lets you set specific days of the week

Hint: If you don’t see the property panel, hit the ••• button next to the pinned properties under the page title. Alternatively, use the ⌘/Ctrl + Shift + \ keyboard shortcut.

Once you’ve added both a Due Date and a Recur Interval, you’ll see a Next Due property show up as well. This is the date on which the task is next due, after the current due date. When Notion automatically processes the task, it’ll use the Next Due date to set the new Due Date.

By default, tasks recur every X days, where X is the number you entered in Recur Interval.

You can change this by setting the Recur Unit property. Here are a few examples:

But what if you want a task to only recur on certain days – like Monday, Wednesday, and Friday?

This is where the Days (Only if Set to 1 Day(s)) property comes in. This long-named property lets you choose specific days of the week on which your task will recur. As its name implies, it only works if Recur Interval is 1 and Recur Unit is Day(s).

Automatic Recurring Task Processing

Ultimate Brain comes with a database automation that will process recurring tasks immediately after their Status is set to Done.

Most views in Ultimate Brain show the Status property as a checkbox, so this means the automation will trigger when you check off a task.

The automation does the following:

• Sets the Due Date property to the current value of Next Due
• Sets Status back to To Do

This automation will only trigger for tasks that have a Recur Interval of 1 or greater.

In general, this automation should just work for you. If you do want to edit it, note that you’ll need to be on a paid Notion plan. This is because database automations require a paid plan to be edited or created – though folks on the free plan can use automations that ship with templates.

Advanced Recurring Tasks with Task History

Ultimate Brain 3.0 also ships with an Advanced Recurring Tasks automation. Much like the one described above, it triggers when a recurring task’s Status is set to Done, and it sets the Status back to To Do while updating the Due date.

Additionally, it enables Task History. When the automation runs, it will create a duplicate of the recurring task, which will inherit the Due date from the recurring task, a Completion Date, and some of the other properties from the recurring task.

You can then apply the Recurring Task w/ History page template to your original recurring task, and you’ll see a list of all instances when you’ve completed that task in the past.

This automation is disabled by default in Ultimate Brain.

To enable it, follow these steps:

1. Unlock your Tasks database.
2. Click the ⚡️ icon on any view of the Tasks database to access its Automations.
3. Click the Recurring Tasks (Simple) automation and make it inactive.
4. Click the Recurring Tasks (Advanced) automation and make it active.

You can do this process even if you’re on Notion’s free plan. However, keep in mind that actually editing the automations, or creating new ones, requires being on a paid Notion plan.

Here’s a full video tutorial:

Advanced Customization

Below, you’ll find some additional guidance around customizing the way recurring tasks work. These sections are based on answers we’ve written for customers in our support community.

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Code language: JavaScript (javascript)

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Code language: JavaScript (javascript)