My scheduled GTD tasks
The same weekend I switched to Things for task management, I added a new idea for a blog post, due right about now: why not blog my repeating tasks? As I explained a year and a half ago in a thread on AskMeFi, I have “a lot of little ‘life maintenance’ things I should be remembering to do on a regular schedule [but] that I wouldn’t normally think/remember to do . . . .” That thread generated a lot of creative ideas, and I think I’ve come up with a few good ones since then. Without further ado:
Daily
| Daily review |
The sine qua non of the GTD system. I use a version of this checklist, though I admit it often boils down simply to a reminder to clear my email inbox every night. |
Monthly
| Get a haircut |
It’s good to have the reminder about a week in advance, so I can plan ahead and drop in to the barber when I have half an hour free. |
| Lower prices on half.com and Amazon |
I’ve always got a few books for sale on these sites, and some manage to linger long after I’ve first listed them. At the same time, I care more about cutting down on clutter than making top dollar, so this task reminds me to drop the price on my inventory to put them back up at the top of the stack and get them moving. |
| Move money to pay for rent |
Reminds me to transfer my part of the rent to my checking account about a week before the end of the month. Naturally, I’ve also got one for “mail rent check.” These are not things I want to risk. |
Every two months
| Cancel something |
For the same reason I like to get rid of old books, above, I generally like a periodical reminder to keep things simple. I took the task’s name from Merlin Mann, who’s got agreat list of unnecessaries. I admit, some months it’s tough to find something to do without; when that happens, I look for other good decluttering ideas to add to the task for next time. |
| Unsubscribe from unread RSS feeds |
This is a special case of the “cancel something” task, I suppose. If I don’t consciously set out to do it, though, I can go months on autopilot just ignoring blogs that have turned boring or (worse) content that I feel guilty about skipping. |
| Update PRL list on phone |
This is the thing they do when you bring your phone in for service — it downloads a new list of cell towers, I believe, which can reduce roaming charges. Dial *228 if you’re on Verizon. |
Every three months
| Recalibrate MacBook battery |
I used to think this procedure, which Apple recommends be done every few months, improved the life of my battery. Looking into it recently, I now believe it’s only meant to recalibrate the software’s reading of how much juice remains on the hardware. Still, it seems like useful maintenance. |
| Request cash back checks from live.com and fatwallet.com |
I occasionally use these cashback services, which credit you a certain amount back on purchases bought through their portals. Both require the credit to sit in your account three months (I think) before it can be withdrawn, and I used to dutifully set a reminder for three months after every such purchase. Then, of course, I realized I could cut down on the hassle by withdrawing whatever was available from both sites a few times a year. Duh. |
Every four months
| Back up phone numbers to Mac |
Just a reminder to back up my cell phone’s address book to my hard drive a few times a year. This comes in handy for my GrandCentral address book hack, and paid off as well when GrandCentral switched to Google Voice — I was able to upload my full (Mac) address book with a few clicks, and Google matched new numbers to existing names. |
Every year
| Buy x a birthday present |
These are staggered, of course, to correspond with my friends’ and family’s birthdays. What’s convenient, aside from the timely reminder, is having a set place to record the occasional untimely gift idea. |
| Clean out paper file |
This is a recent addition, born out of my burgeoning, GTD-approved physical archive. In the same way that I don’t like physical media or unread RSS feeds cluttering my life, you can imagine I like to keep unnecessary paper records to a minimum. Once a year feels right for this. |
| Get Valentines’ Day flowers for Jessica |
This is the most useless reminder on this list, since she’s sure to remind me herself… |
| Throw out socks with holes |
This is something I just don’t notice unless I force myself to. |
Every fifteen months
| Create new recurring tasks from Ask MeFi thread |
The most meta one on this list. This was something that occurred to me after perusing the responses to my Ask Metafilter question about recurring tasks — a number of them didn’t apply to me at the time, but still seemed like something I’d want to remember in the future (I lived in a dorm when I posted my question and so didn’t have a rent check to worry about, for instance; now I do). So, I come back to the thread periodically to see what else applies. I haven’t hit this task for the first time yet, but I’m looking forward to it. |
That’s the most interesting of ‘em. You can tell that I basically collect these things, so if you’ve got some interesting ones, leave a comment!
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