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Paper people: How do you manage recurring tasks?

Those of you who use a mostly paper system, how do you manage recurring tasks? I'm thinking more menial stuff like changing your furnace filter, watering plants, et al, that you might need to do once a week, every month, etc.

I've been using kGTD lately and really appreciate the way it distinguishes between tasks that recur after a certain number of days no matter what, and one that resets a certain number of days after you last completed it. How do you manage something like this on paper, besides (the horror!) remembering to repeatedly write them down?

Berko's picture

It seems to me that...

It seems to me that both Tickler/hard landscape (I don't care what people say, they are the same.) and NA's are valid, but I think the hard landscape is more canonical GTD if these are things that must be done on a particular day. If they are "Do this $X days after the last time it was done." items, I think having a project for these items is a good thing. At the weekly review, you go over that project and whichever items are repeating, you just throw them on your calendar for the day it needs to be done OR create a NA for it with a small note for the day: @home list -> Take out trash (thur).

Since we're using "Take out the trash" as the example, it is also a good one for the difference between the kind of recurring to-dos I'm talking about. For me, the trash collectors come once per week and there isn't anywhere to dump trash at other times. So, for me, Tuesday night hard landscape includes "Put out trash." For others, their trash may fill up every five days. So, if they take it out to the big dumpster out back on Monday, then the action would repeat on Friday or Saturday depending on whether the five days is inclusive of Monday. If the trash doesn't fill up until Sunday or things get hectic and the trash lies in an overflowing mess for a day or two (Shut up. You know it's happened to you too...) Then perhaps it doesn't get done again until the following Monday.

OK, I think you get it, and I'm starting to ramble.

 
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