Repeating work

Any interval you like

Every 9 days. Every 4 weeks. The third Tuesday. Not just daily and weekly.

Real routines don't fit a dropdown of five options. Filter changes, quarterly reviews, fortnightly one-to-ones.

How to use it

Three places make one, all with the same builder: Tasks → Repeating → New repeating task; the Repeats tickbox in the add-task form; and Repeats under Other settings on a once-over card.

Frequency gives you five choices: Daily (the default), Weekly, Monthly, Annually, Custom. Custom opens on Repeat every 3 days — the pair every calendar app shows you, a number and a unit. The refinements follow the unit rather than the button, so "every 3 weeks" gets On these days and "every 2 months" gets Land it on — a date, or an nth weekday, which is how you say "the 4th Thursday of November".

First one on is where the pattern starts counting from, and for a yearly rule it's where the month comes from. Stop after (optional) ends it. As you build, you get it back in plain English — "Every year on the 8th" — with the next few dates.

Tick Repeats on an inbox item and you get a repeating task rather than a one-off, so you'll find it under Repeating instead of in the one-off list.

Subscribing from inside the app

Settings → Subscription → See plans, any time.

Your first day in YWGSD is free and needs no card, so there's nothing to cancel and nothing to forget. But "free for a day" is only generous if you can choose to stay whenever you decide to — not when the app decides to ask you.

How to use it

Settings → Subscription. With no subscription on the account it reads "There's no subscription on this account." with See plans under it; that opens the same plans screen, with the same prices and Restore purchases, that you'd meet when a free day runs out.

See when you finished things

Turn on Show done and finished work appears on past days, at the time you ticked it off.

The calendar is built for the day ahead, so by default yesterday looks empty whatever you got through. When you need to answer "when did I actually do that?" — a client asking, an invoice to back up, or just wanting to see that the week was not wasted — this is the only place the answer exists.

How to use it

On the calendar, press Show done. It becomes Hide done while it's on, and the setting follows your account rather than the device. Navigate to any past day or week and finished work is drawn where you ticked it, with a tick at the leading edge.

On the iPhone: Settings → Show finished work, then open any past day in the day view. The setting is the same one the web uses, so turning it on in either place turns it on in both.

The honest version

It shows when you marked it done, not how long it took. YWGSD knows the first and cannot know the second, so a finished task is drawn as a moment rather than a block — stretching it across its planned duration would be inventing history. Off by default, because most days you want the day ahead.

You choose what a missed one means

Some habits should chase you. Some should just break the streak.

A missed gym session shouldn't stack up into four make-up sessions, but a missed invoice run absolutely should.

How to use it

If you miss one on the recurring task — "let it go" or "must catch up". Catch-up occurrences never silently expire.

The honest version

"Let it go" is the default, and a let-go occurrence leaves no trace at all. no marker on the repeat — not even a count on the Repeating screen. The row is still in the database; nothing renders it. That is what the option means ("Miss one and it's gone"), and it is right for a habit, but it is the wrong default for work that still has to happen. Pick "Must catch up" for anything you'd be annoyed to lose — invoice runs, statements, filings. See "Missed 'let it go' occurrences" under Not yet reachable, and scripts/sql/find-missing-task.sql for getting one back.

Edit one without editing all

Change this week's without touching the pattern.

How to use it

Click any occurrence on the calendar and do what you like with it — complete it, park it, pin it. The pattern doesn't move. To change the pattern itself, edit the task under Repeating.

How overdue something is, at a glance

Every missed deadline tells you how long ago, and a missed hard one is drawn louder than a missed soft one.

“Due Sep 2” tells you nothing in November. And a hard deadline is the biggest promise you can make here — we'll push work into your evening to keep one. Drawing a missed hard deadline exactly like a missed soft one threw that distinction away.

How to use it

Read the deadline pill on any past-due row. A soft one stays tinted: Due Sep 5 (5d ago). A missed hard one is filled: Hard due Sep 8 (2d ago).

The honest version

Treat the bracket as a rough feel, not a number to act on — the real date is right beside it. It always rounds down, so 27 days reads “3wk ago” rather than “1mon ago”, and it never says “4wk”. Months are real calendar months, so “3mon ago” means the same date three months back. And there's no bracket at all when the deadline hasn't actually passed, which happens more than you'd think: “past due” means the work landed after its deadline, so a repeat due next March that gets placed a day late is past due today with nothing “ago” about it.

Cancel this one, or stop it repeating

Skipping today and killing the routine are two different decisions, so you get asked which one you meant.

Most planners make you work the difference out for yourself, usually by deleting something and finding out afterwards what else went with it. People put off stopping a routine because they don't know what it'll take down with it.

How to use it

Open any occurrence of a repeating task and press Cancel task. It names the pattern back to you — "Clear email to zero" repeats every day. This is the one on Fri, Sep 11 — and offers:

Cancel just this one — that date only. The next one arrives as normal.
Stop it repeating — this one and everything after it. Nothing you've already finished is touched, and clearing the stop date under Repeating brings it back.
Never mind — nothing happens.

A one-off doesn't get asked. There's nothing to choose between.

The honest version

Cancel just this one can't be undone — there's no "restore a cancelled task" anywhere yet. Stop it repeating can: clear the stop date under Tasks → Repeating. And if you stop the repeat that carries your inbox reminder, Settings turns the review cadence off to match, so it never claims reviews are on when the reminder is gone.

Pause a routine

Going away for a month? Pause it.

Pause is for when you're coming back. If you're not, Stop it repeating from any occurrence is the honest choice — it keeps your history and reads correctly under Tasks → Repeating.

How to use it

Tasks → Repeating → Pause on the task. It dims, shows a Paused badge and stops putting occurrences on your calendar. The same button becomes Resume, and resuming picks the pattern up exactly where it left off.

The list is ordered by what wants your attention: running first, then paused. Anything whose stop date has passed folds away behind N finished · Show, since those only ever pile up.

When work leaves your working hours

A block that landed outside your hours says so.

To make a hard deadline we'll put work in your evening or your weekend. That's what a hard deadline is for. But a three-hour job turning up at midnight looked exactly like a block you'd chosen to put there.

How to use it

Read the block. It says 16:45 · 3h · outside your hours, on the calendar and on the phone's day view.

The honest version

Only a hard deadline can do this. If you didn't want your evening used, the task wanted a soft deadline — or the deadline wanted moving.

Say what a task is waiting on

Say this one needs that one finished first, and it'll never be scheduled the wrong way round.

Some work can't start until other work is done, and a planner that books them the wrong way round is worse than no planner. You find out at 9am that today's job depends on something scheduled for Thursday.

How to use it

Two places. When you're adding a task, tick Starts after something else and search for it. On a task that already exists: Edit → Waiting on. Anything you tick gets scheduled ahead of it, down to the time of day.

The honest version

If the thing you're waiting on can't be placed at all — it's in Won't fit — the waiting task gets scheduled as though nothing were blocking it. Holding work hostage to a task we've already given up on would be worse, but it does mean a dependency on an impossible task quietly stops meaning anything. Loops get broken by priority instead of refused, so a bad chain degrades rather than losing work.

Clear a day, or part of one

Take a day off the table and everything moves itself around it.

You wake up ill on Tuesday. You don't want to cancel nine tasks and retype them on Thursday. You want to say the day's gone and have the plan absorb it.

How to use it

Calendar → Block time. Pick the day, choose The whole day or Some hours, press Block it. On the phone: the ⋯ menu → Block time, which defaults to whichever day you're looking at. To undo it, open the same sheet on that day and press Unblock this day.

A blocked stretch is drawn as a striped band marked Blocked, so an empty day tells you why it's empty, and the day's summary line reads Blocked out.

The honest version

It isn't a task and never shows up in a task list — no duration, no deadline, never rescheduled. Anything that no longer fits before its deadline turns up under Won't fit rather than being quietly squeezed in. And blocking a day leaves work you pinned there by hand exactly where it is: a pin is you overruling us, and this doesn't overrule you back.

Choose what opens first

Land on the view you actually use.

The right first screen depends on the person and the device. "What's next" is a phone question. "Is this week even possible" is a desk one.

How to use it

Settings → What opens first. On a computer: Day, Week, Month or Agenda. On the phone: Agenda (what's next, as a list) or The day (drawn to scale, so you can see the gaps). Switch whenever you like — this is only where you start.

The honest version

There's one setting per surface, shared across your devices, so what you pick on the phone doesn't disturb what your computer opens on. On the phone, switching views mid-session is temporary: the next launch goes back to your setting, so a stray tap can't quietly outrank it.

Quick actions

Right-click anything on the calendar, or long-press it on the phone.

Marking something done is the thing you do most, and it used to cost a click, a panel, a read and another click. You already knew what you wanted before you touched the screen.

How to use it

Right-click a block on the calendar or a row on Tasks (long-press on the phone) for Done, Pin to this time / Unpin, and Cancel task. Right-click a meeting for Free this time up / Treat this as busy. Every task row also carries a circle on the left — one click marks it done.

The honest version

The menu is short on purpose. Anything that needs a question asked — how much is left, which time to pin to, this occurrence or the whole repeat — opens the full panel instead, because a menu is a bad place to ask a question. That's why the cancel item on a repeating task reads Cancel….

What a day amounts to

Every day header tells you how much work is on it.

A to-scale calendar shows you shapes. The number is what tells you whether the day is actually possible.

How to use it

Read the line under the date: 50m of work · 2 meetings. Past two weeks you get a day rather than a time, so those read N with no time yet — real, placed work that just doesn't have a clock time yet.

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