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How to Create Recurring Tasks in Todoist: A Detailed Step-by-Step Guide

Todoist’s recurring tasks are an efficient way to automate the scheduling of repeating tasks or to create long-term habits.

However, if you’ve already used Todoist, you’ve seen that there’s no direct menu to create repeating tasks in this app; instead, there’s a faster and more efficient way.

To create recurring tasks, just type your task with the recurrence, like “Write report every Monday,” and Todoist’s NLP will schedule it to repeat.

However, many users encounter a frustrating issue: future recurring tasks don’t show up until you mark the current one as complete. This can be inconvenient for those who want to see all their recurring tasks upfront.

In this guide, we’ll walk you through the process of how to create recurring tasks in Todoist, explain the reason behind the common issue of future tasks not appearing, and offer a workaround to ensure that you can see all your recurring tasks at once, without waiting for the current one to be completed.

How To Create Recurring Tasks in Todoist 2025: step-by-step guide

Understanding Recurring Tasks in Todoist

Recurring tasks in Todoist are a great way to automate and simplify creating routine tasks. A recurring task repeats based on the interval you define, and you only need to set it up once.

For example, you might set up a task like “Write weekly report every Monday,” and Todoist will automatically create the next instance after you mark the current one as complete.

Here’s a breakdown of how recurring tasks work in Todoist:

  • Recurrence Setup: You can set tasks to repeat at regular intervals, such as daily, weekly, monthly, or on specific days of the week. Todoist supports natural language input for recurring tasks, meaning you can type something like “every 3 days” or “every 1st of the month,” and it will automatically recognize the pattern.
  • Automatic Updates: Once you complete a recurring task, Todoist will automatically schedule the next occurrence. For example, if you complete the “Write weekly report every Monday” task, the next “Write weekly report every Monday” task will appear on the following Monday.
  • The Issue: By default, future recurring tasks won’t show up until you complete the current one. This means that if you set a task to recur weekly, the next instance won’t appear on your list until you check off the current instance. This behavior can be frustrating if you prefer to see all upcoming recurring tasks ahead of time.

How To Create Recurring Tasks in Todoist: Step-by-Step

Now, let’s start by creating a simple recurring task in Todoist. Follow these steps:

  1. Click on the + button or Add a task at the top of your task list.
  2. In the task description field, type out the task you need to create, such as “Write weekly report” or “Buy groceries.”
  3. Next, to set up the recurrence, use natural language to define how often the task should be repeated. Here are some examples:
    • For a task that repeats every Monday, type: “every Monday.” For a task that repeats on the 1st of every month, type: “every 1st of the month.” For a task that repeats every 2 days, type: “every 2 days.”
    • The Todoist will recognize the recurrence pattern and automatically adjust the task to repeat based on your input.
  4. After entering the task name and recurrence, select the due date (if any) and set a priority level (optional).
  5. Save the task. Once saved, it will appear in your task list for the current instance. After completing it, Todoist will automatically create the next instance of the task.

Here are some Screenshots explaining the process of how to add recurring tasks in Todoist

Adding repeating task in Todoist
Click on Add tasks
Adding repeating task with Todoist NLP
write the recurrence pattern
Description of the repeating tasks
Click on the task to add descriptions

Todoist recurring tasks not working or showing up.

Here’s the problem many of us Todoist users have faced: future recurring tasks don’t appear in your task list until you complete the current task. So, if you’ve set up a task to repeat every Monday, you won’t see the next Monday’s task until you mark the current one as complete. This behavior may feel restrictive if you want to plan your tasks ahead of time.

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Why Does This Happen?

The reason for this design is that Todoist tries to keep your task list clean and focused; by not displaying future tasks until they’re due, Todoist avoids cluttering your task list with tasks that are not yet actionable.

It only shows tasks that need your attention now. While this can be helpful for some users, it can be frustrating if you want to plan out future tasks or see all your recurring tasks at once.

Fortunately, there’s a workaround to solve this issue.

Workaround for Seeing Future Recurring Tasks Right Away

If you want to see all your recurring tasks immediately (without waiting for the current task to be completed), you can manually create and bulk import your future recurring tasks into Todoist. Here’s how:

1. Create a Text File with Future Dates

Instead of relying on Todoist’s automatic recurrence system, you can manually list all the future instances of your recurring tasks in a text file. Here’s how to do it:

  • Open a text editor such as Notepad (Windows) or TextEdit (Mac), or you can get ChatGPT’s help to create the task list for you.
  • Write each task with its respective due date. For example, if your recurring task is “Write weekly report,” and you want to see the next few weeks’ worth of reports, you’d write: Write weekly report 2025-02-21 Write weekly report 2025-02-28 Write weekly report 2024-06-04
  • You can adjust the dates based on your desired recurrence schedule (e.g., every Monday, every 1st of the month).

2. Bulk Import the Text into the Todoist task list

Choose your text file and upload it. Todoist will automatically create separate tasks for each of the dates listed, and they will all appear in your task list immediately.

Adding bulk tasks in Todoist
Seeing all recurring tasks in Todoist's upcoming section

Now, when you enter the upcoming section of Todoist, all your recurring tasks will appear.

3. Enhance Tasks with Labels and Priorities (Optional)

You can add extra organization to your tasks by including labels (e.g., @work, @personal) and priority levels (e.g., p1, p2) in the text file. For example:

Write weekly report 2025-02-21 @work p1
Write weekly report 2025-02-28 @work p2

This will assign labels and priorities to each task when imported into Todoist.

Check out our comparison on Todoist vs Trello 🔍.

4. Use AI to Generate Dates (Optional)

If typing out all the dates feels tedious, you can use AI tools like ChatGPT to generate the list of dates for you. For example, you can ask, “Give me all the Mondays for the next 6 months,” and ChatGPT will generate the dates. You can then copy and paste them into your text file for bulk import.

How to View Recurring Tasks in Calendar View of Todoist

To ensure that you can see all your upcoming recurring tasks, use the Calendar View in Todoist:

  1. Switch to Calendar View by selecting it from the sidebar.
  2. Enable the Future Occurrences option in the settings to view all upcoming tasks, even if the current task is incomplete. This will help you see future recurring tasks on your calendar.

Check out Google Tasks vs Todoist.

Best Practices for Managing Repeating Tasks in Todoist

  • Be Specific with Your Recurrence: When creating recurring tasks, be clear about the pattern (e.g., “every Monday” vs. “every 1st of the month”) to avoid confusion.
  • Use Labels and Priorities: Labels (e.g., @work, @home) and priorities (e.g., p1, p2) help you categorize and prioritize your tasks effectively.
  • Use Custom Filters: Create custom filters to quickly view your recurring tasks by category or due date.

Conclusion

Creating recurring tasks in Todoist is an excellent way to stay organized, but the default behavior of only showing future tasks after you complete the current one can be frustrating for some users. By using the bulk import workaround, you can manually create future recurring tasks and view them all at once. Additionally, using Calendar View with the “Future Occurrences” setting can also help you keep track of upcoming tasks.

With these tips and workarounds, you can take full advantage of Todoist’s recurring task feature and ensure your task list remains organized and easy to manage.

If you want an easier-to-use task management app, check out this Flowsavvy review.

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