Submitted by Maxbear35 on 2024/06/28 12:37

! am attempting to move from Anydo into the IQ calendar. After discussing this with a very helpful Pierre I find myself stuck at the problem of handling repeating events (such as my weekly language class etc.) 

As the event date comes up and get's done I want to mark it as done and grey the item to indicate it as done. Sadly you can't do this in IQ because if you do then all repeated items of the same event will consequently  be marked done and greyed out 

My question is how do other IQ calendar users handle repeating events and possibly marking them as done. 

Any guidance appreciated. 

Comments

Hi Maxbear,

Maybe look at the below screenshot first to get a visual clue to the system I am going to explain.

I do not put weekly events in the calendar at all. I have an Action grid that holds all my current tasks. Those I should be working on over the next day or two are top level items, others are sorted under different time and priority-related parent items at the bottom of the grid (like "after deadline X", "soon", "mid-term" etc.). Pretty standard, I guess.

To come back to your question: At the top of that grid, I have a top level item for each day of the week. I have set up a column that computes the date for the next Monday / Tuesday etc. So every Tuesday, for example, the Monday item's column value changes automatically to the date of Monday next from yesterday's date. Under the weekday TLIs, I will put:

  • weekly / repeating events (e. g. kids' music classes, sports training, checking work-related encrypted e-mail twice weekly etc.)
  • tasks that need completion on that day
  • ticklers for important events on one of the following days
  • tasks that can not be started before that day for some reason
  • items I want to put off tackling for a few days or am not sure what to do with and want to delay thinking about

Below the seven weekday items, there is a section of the grid devoted to 'tomorrow', it is marked by visual separators (blank items with different background colours) at its top and bottom. This allows me to always have tomorrow's concerns in view and so prepare for them mentally. At the top of that section, I can also put reminders for things I want to do whenever time allows (like going somewhere with the kids), or health-related reminders. I often leave these in place there for a couple of days.

Below that follow the tasks I want to work on right now or events I have to attend today, sorted from top ('do now') to bottom ('do after that', 'do after that', ...). This gives me a fully linear view of today's tasks and events. Thus, what I have to focus on at any given moment is always at the top of that section.

As part of my daily review (either done in the evening or first thing in the morning), I go through the following steps:

  • Mark done any completed tasks that are still in the grid because I did not check them immediately after competing the task (I have it set up so that 'done' items are no longer shown in this grid)
  • Move yesterday's weekly repeat items up to under the next weekday they belong to (they disappear from sight under that day's parent item). Of course, I often do this immediately after the items were 'done' rather than leave them for the daily review.
  • Pull down the stuff from the 'tomorrow' section of the grid to the 'work on now' section.
  • Pull down the new stuff for the 'tomorrow' section from the weekday parent at the top that represents the next day.

As part of my weekly review (early on the weekend, usually on the Saturday), I go through the calendar for next week, add any events / appointments to the Action grid (by ticking the box in the Properties Pane) to make them appear as TLIs. Once they're all there, I sort them under the weekday headings so that they disappear for the time being to later pop up in the daily review. Sometimes, I move them under the heading of a weekday one or two days before the date so they come up for review earlier to ensure mental preparation. I then notice them and just move them under another upcoming weekday or under the weekday of the event itself when I'm fine with just revisiting them the night before.

At irregular intervals, I also go through the task 'baskets' at the bottom of the grid to move up tasks from there when I am at leisure to start work on some of these less urgent items.

I've come to really love this system - it gives me a great sense of being in control of my schedule and a lot of flexibility as to when I want to review upcoming tasks and events. Also, by handling weekly recurrences directly in the grid, it means less interaction with the calendar, which is always a bit more fiddly, having to handle popup dialogs etc. My calendar now only holds one-time events and events that occur every month, couple of months, year etc. and is used for long-term reminders while I handle short-term reminders through the weekly / daily review system based around dropping stuff under the weekday headings.

This seems kind of hard to explain verbally so I'm also attaching a screenshot below (I'm sorry some of that is in German, but I'm sure you can figure it out). As you can see, I use many different text colours to denote the context of items / tasks. E. g. especially critical tasks are in red, family-related items in cyan, health-related in green, timed events in bold pink, e-mail / messaging in purple, web-related in blue etc. Looks very retro, I know, but it really works for me.

I hope you may find this interesting, even if it is a rather complex workaround rather than a direct solution to your problem. Let me know if you have any questions.

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