Recurring Tasks and Events

Note: This article assumes you've read the articles "Creating a Task in Motion" [Link] and "Creating an Event in Motion" [Link]. If you haven't, we recommend starting there for foundational concepts.

Recurring Tasks 🔄

Recurring tasks can save you time and effort by automating the scheduling and management of tasks that need to be done on a regular basis. Recurring tasks are great for those tasks or obligations in your life that repeat on a specific cadence (daily, weekly, bi-weekly, etc).

For example, if you have a daily meditation practice you can create a recurring task that repeats each day to accommodate your meditation. Simply create the recurring task once, and boom— it’s scheduled in perpetuity with just the click of a button.

With Motion, you can easily set up recurring tasks to ensure you never miss a deadline or forget an important task.

Recurring Task Cadences

Recurring tasks can be scheduled with a variety of repetition cadences including:

• ‘Daily’

  • On specific days, everyday, or every weekday.

• ‘Once a Week’

  • On specific days, any week day, on any day.

• ‘Once Every 2 Weeks’

  • Any of these days in the first week, any weekday in the first week, any day in the first week, any weekday in the second week, or any day in the second week.

• ‘Once a Month’

  • 1st, 2nd, 3rd, or 4th occurrence of a particular day of the week in that month. Any day of the month, or any day in a particular week of that month.

• ‘Once Every 3 Months’

  • First or last occurrence of a particular day of the week. Any day in the 1st, second, or last week of the month. Or any day in the 1st, 2nd, or 3rd month.

To create a recurring task, follow these simple steps:

1. Navigate to the ‘Calendar’ view.

2. Click the ‘+ task’ button or use the shortcut Option+Space/Control+Space (Shortcuts are Desktop Only).

3. In the task modal, select the recurring option represented by cycle arrows 🔄.

4. Define the frequency at which you'd like the task to recur.

5. Click ‘Create task’ to lock in your recurring task.

Important details to note about recurring tasks:

• Recurring tasks on the calendar are indicated by the 🔄 symbol.

• To update a recurring task, click ‘Edit’ to activate the fields in the task modal.

• Recurring tasks are split between the ‘Mother Task’ and the resulting recurring task instances.

• Any updates you make to the Mother Task will apply to all instances of the Child Tasks.

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Benefits of Recurring Tasks:

Time and Energy Savings

By setting a task as “Recurring,” it automatically appears on your calendar at the desired intervals. No need to create a new task for each instance—set it once, and our system takes care of the rest.

Intelligent Handling of Missed Tasks

If you miss a recurring task instance, our system intelligently re-schedules the instance for another time instead of creating a duplicate task. This keeps your task list clean and focused, avoiding clutter and confusion.

Please Note: daily recurring tasks are unable to be rolled into the next day, as that is when the new occurrence of the task will be created. If there is no available time to schedule a daily recurring task in your calendar, it will result in a ‘could not fit’ state.

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Recurring Events 🔄

Creating a recurring event in Motion is a simple process that helps you keep track of important events such as meetings, anniversaries, birthdays, or annual reviews.

Here's how to create a recurring event:

• Click the ‘+’ button located between the ‘Refresh all tasks’ and ‘Week’ buttons in your calendar view. This will open the event creation modal.

• Locate and click the ‘Does not repeat’ option in the event details. A drop-down menu will appear with various recurrence options.

Creating a yearly recurring event:

• If you’d like to create a ‘yearly’ recurring event, click ‘Custom’ from the subsequent options.

• In the custom settings, set the recurrence to once every 12 months.

• Ex: An annual company off-site get-together that occurs the same time each year.

Once these steps are complete, your event will now recur annually on the same date. To edit or delete the event, you can easily do so from the event interface.