How to Skip Specific Days When Scheduling Tasks in Todoist
Todoist provides an intuitive method of scheduling tasks using plain language like “every day,” “every 15th,” or “every other Friday.” However, there are limits to what the app can understand in terms of language.
For example, it may sound reasonable to schedule a task that repeats every day except certain days, but Todoist won’t recognize inputs worded as “every day except.”
Instead, the platform offers a workaround to set up the task with the exact days on which we want it to be repeated. Like so:
“[Task name] every Monday, Wednesday, Friday, Saturday”
Even so, listing out each day in this manner can be troublesome.
It can even be absurd if we want our task to repeat every day except for certain days of the month, as the image below shows:
Another common recurring schedule setup is to have a task repeat every certain day of the month or earlier if that day falls on a weekend.
Todoist is currently unable to handle such scheduling.
By connecting Todoist to Make, however, we can get around such limitations effortlessly.
The result we’ll see is Todoist tasks that repeat on the precise days of our choice - no manual date-typing needed.
Register for a free Make account if you haven’t already, and then follow along as we share how to schedule Todoist tasks that:
Repeat every day except for certain days.
Repeat every certain day of the month or earlier if that day happens to fall on a weekend.
How to schedule Todoist tasks that repeat every day except for certain days
1. Set up the Make scenario and the module that creates a Todoist task
Start by logging into your Make account and create a new scenario.
Then, add the Todoist > Create a Task module and connect the module to your Todoist account.
Fill out the module’s settings with your task’s details. For example, type your task’s name into the Content field and add it to a project via the Project setting.
You can also enable the module’s Show advanced settings switch to set up your task’s priority.
Then, under the Due date setting:
Leave the Format setting as Only date.
Add the {{now}} variable to the Date field. Doing so will set your task date as the date on which the scenario is run. For example, if you run your scenario today, then your task will be created on your to-do list for today.
Click OK when you’ve finished configuring the module.
2. Schedule your scenario
Click the schedule setting panel at the bottom of the scenario editor.
Under the Run scenario setting, select either Days of the week or Days of the month depending on whether you want to avoid creating a Todoist task on certain days of the week or month, respectively.
For example, if we want to create a Todoist task every day except the 1st and 4th of the month, we’ll select Days of the month.
Under the Days setting, use the checkboxes to set up the days on which you want to create your Todoist task.
Manually selecting each checkbox is too much of a hassle, so click the Select all check box to instantly select all of them.
Then, deselect the days on which you don’t want your Todoist task to repeat. In this case, we’ll deselect the check boxes next to 1 and 4.
Finally, set the time at which your scenario should run. The selected time should be before the time you’ll start looking at your tasks.
For instance, if you check Todoist tasks after waking up at 8 AM, then you could set your scenario to run at 6 AM.
Click OK to save your scheduling setting, then turn your scenario on. That’s it!
Make will now automatically create a Todoist task every day except for the days you’ve specified.
How to schedule Todoist tasks that repeat every certain day of the month or earlier if that day falls on a weekend
This solution is especially useful for scheduling work tasks that we want to get done on a certain day - or a couple of days earlier if it falls during the weekend.
For example, we may want to have a Todoist task for reviewing our monthly key performance indicators (KPIs) on the 25th of every month.
But if the 25th falls on a Saturday or Sunday, then we want to schedule the task for the Friday just before the 25th instead.
It’s currently impossible to schedule our task in this way using Todoist itself, but we can get it done in Make. Let’s see how.
1. Set up the Make scenario and add the module that creates a Todoist task
Create a new Make scenario and add the Todoist > Create a Task module like how we did for the previous solution shared above.
In other words, connect your Todoist account to the module, then set up your task’s content and other details.
Under the Due date field, leave the Format setting as Only date. After that, type this function into the Date field:
{{switch(formatDate(setDate(now; 25); "ddd"); "Sat"; addDays(setDate(now; 25); -1); "Sun"; addDays(setDate(now; 25); -2); setDate(now; 25))}}
Check the image below for reference.
This function checks whether the 25th falls on a Saturday or Sunday, and then sets the appropriate date for your task.
If the 25th falls on a Saturday, the function sets the task date as the 24th.
If the 25th falls on a Sunday, the function sets the task date as the 23rd.
If the 25th falls on neither a Saturday nor a Sunday, the function sets the task date as the 25th.
Click OK when you’re done.
2. Schedule the scenario
Click the schedule setting panel at the bottom of the scenario editor.
Since we want to schedule our Todoist task once a month, we’ll set the Run scenario setting to Days of the month.
Select a day and time on which you want your scenario to run. You can use any day and time as long as it falls before the day and time at which you want to see your task.
Here, we’ll set our scenario to run on the 20th of every month at 8:30 AM.
Then, we’ll turn our scenario on.
Now, on the 20th of each month, Make will determine whether the 25th falls during the workweek or weekend, then create our Todoist task on the appropriate day.
Hooray for not getting bothered about work during the weekend!
Schedule your to-do’s with precision and perfectly organize your life
With Make, we unlock new ways of scheduling our Todoist tasks and bringing calm to our days. And this is just the tip of the iceberg.
Make can also help us automatically create follow-up Todoist tasks when certain events occur. Here are some templates for building Make scenarios that do just that:
What’s more, we can apply the techniques we’ve learned above to any other app with event or task-scheduling features, such as Google Calendar or Asana, to bring Make’s advanced scheduling capabilities to them.
Sign up for a Make account here to start putting these productivity boosters to work!