[thenerdhead]

It's a cool metaphor. I think the examples are a bit more of things that you just do though. I don't normally think about having to pee, it just hits me. I don't normally consider going out for ice cream a "to do", I see it as a reward for doing things on my todos.

I can't tell the authors perspective on breaks though. They mention scheduling them are counterintuitive but believe they are needed for diffuse-mode thinking. The reason why the pomodoro technique is so effective and widely used is that we have a natural time limit to our "waves" in term of our active focus before we need a wind-down.

https://jondouglas.dev/fast-brain-slow-mind/

[johnnyo]

Yeah, some better examples that I use on a regular basis:

  1. Take out the trash on Mondays
  2. Pay the credit card bill on the 5th of every month
  3. Get a haircut every 5 weeks
  4. Pay the water bill every 3 months, etc

Having those sorts of things in my recurring To Do list are very helpful to ensure they don't get forgotten.

[macNchz]

I made a little email/web app that makes it easy to have a shared list like this for my wife and I, it’s very barebones but I use it every day: https://www.onit.today/

I found the alternatives to be either: designed to build your life around them and therefore too complex, or simple but lacking a good mechanism to have a shared list with others.

[hunter2_]

Looks great! Right now we just use a Google sheet but I'm looking to upgrade. There's something I need that isn't obvious when comparing features of apps like this: I need the next due date of a recurring task to be a specified duration (say, a week) after I mark the previous occurrence as done, not when the previous occurrence was due.

Example: my cat's water fountain can only be in service for a week before it must get washed. So I put it out on July 1 and it's due to be washed July 8. Alarm goes off on the 8th, I take it out of service (putting a non-fountain bowl out temporarily) hopefully that day but maybe a day late, and put it in the dishwasher. Some time later (maybe July 9, 10, or 11) I finally run the dishwasher and put the fountain back into service. Next due date is a week after that.

Right now, I have to manually type the next due date into my spreadsheet. I'd rather just click a button and have an app know to set another alarm a week after the button was clicked.

So a wave that isn't strictly periodic, it has a hold phase...

One thing I'm trying now is "hey Google remind me to x in a week" at the time of putting the fountain in service, but basically I'm looking to avoid specifying the duration or due date every single time.

I find many chores to be of this type. Another example is changing the HVAC filter. I want an alarm to happen 3 months after the last change, but maybe it won't be dirty yet so I let it alarm for a while, in which case the next alarm happens 3 months after marking the last one as done, not 3 months after the last alarm started.

[macNchz]

Thanks for the detailed info–I think what you're describing is how onit actually works. By default, when a repeating todo item is due, you'll get a daily email listing the things that are currently due. For each repeating todo item you can choose what happens when you check it off: either schedule it again based on now+interval, or on a strict schedule (e.g. always on Wednesday, always on the 15th of the month etc).

I use the strict schedule for things like bills or annual registrations, and the now+interval schedule for things like your cat fountain cleaning example, where I'm happy to just get a morning reminder about it until I get around to it.

I should probably update the homepage to provide some more detail on the actual functionality!

[hunter2_]

Awesome, thanks!

[jabroni_salad]

Ticktick will do this. I have one called 'air filter every 3 months' and the next iteration is always exactly 90 days from when I mark the current one as done, even if I am late or early.

[whiterock]

Do you need the premium version for that? Is there any OSS that does that? I might need to get onto that then…

[jabroni_salad]

No, I use the free version. My todo listing needs are actually very basic, I just think ticktick has the best semantic scheduling out of any that I have tried and I hate fiddling with scheduling widgets.

[hunter2_]

Thanks!

[thenerdhead]

Love the name. It’s great!

[amflare]

I've been looking for something like this for a long time. IS there a demo or screenshots to see what it looks like in use?

[hammyhavoc]

I'm autistic, and I have a whole category of recurring self-care stuff like haircuts, having a shave, doing some pull-ups, crunches, something to eat, that kind of thing. Without that, I wouldn't function so well. Never shared that before.

[pawsys]

I meant that it's counterintuitive to think about scheduling breaks, but it's actually very helpful thing to do. Thanks for the feedback. I will see if I can make it clearer in the article.