Tips & Tricks Tuesday: Making notes to self with repeating tasks

It can be helpful to make notes to yourself, but it’s also easy to set them aside. This week’s tip, shared by robfreundlich, shows how you can use due dates and repeats to keep your notes fresh on your mind.

I have some things I need to remind myself all the time - kind of a cross between affirmations and mental notes or “notes to self”. Since I’m in the habit of checking my RTM lists frequently throughout the day, I decided to use RTM to help me by doing the following:

1. Set up a location called “brain”.
2. Create a task for each of these reminders with the following attributes:
Location: brain
Due date: today
Repeat: after 1 day
Priority: 1
3. On each of my Smart Lists that I want the reminder to appear on, I simply add “or location:brain” to the end of the search.
4. When I get annoyed by the fact that they are showing as overdue, I mark them complete, and the Repeat brings them back for me.

This results in bold-faced notes at the top of each list, with a red bar to the left, so I can’t help but notice them and be reminded of them. I don’t use priorities very much (a la Monk Things Done), so they are often the *only* P1 tasks on the list, which makes them stand out even more. (NOTE: If you don’t want them boldfaced, don’t bother with the Due Date/Repeat. I like the boldface because they stand out nicely).

I have certain Smart Lists that I don’t include them in, like “To Mail” and “Out”, since they generally don’t apply to those lists. But most of my other Smart Lists have them.

Thanks for sharing this tip, robfreundlich! You’re our Tips & Tricks Tuesday winner this week.

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