How to Create Recurring Tasks in Notion: Complete Guide

Honestly, recurring tasks in Notion is one of the most requested things I hear from clients.

And I get why.

It sounds like it should just... exist.

You'd expect a tool as powerful as Notion to have a simple "repeat this task every Monday" toggle somewhere.

But it doesn't work that way, and if you try to set it up without understanding what's actually happening under the hood, you're going to waste a lot of time building something that half-works.

So let me show you how I actually do this, and more importantly, why I do it this way.

First, Understand What You're Actually Building

Before touching any settings, you need to understand one thing about Notion.

Notion doesn't have tasks.

I mean, it does, but not really.

What it has is databases.

A "tasks database" is just a database where you've decided the rows represent tasks.

So when you're asking for recurring tasks, what you're actually asking for is recurring row creation.

That distinction matters because once you understand it, the whole thing clicks.

Now, once I reframe it that way with clients, the next question becomes: what kind of recurring creation do you actually need?

Because in my experience, there are two completely different use cases, and they need completely different setups.

Use case one is when you want tasks created on a schedule, no matter what.

Let's say you want a "process email inbox" task created every weekday.

Whether or not you did it yesterday, a new task shows up today.

This is useful when you need a record of every instance, for example, when you're tracking what your team is actually completing over time.

If an employee skips three days, you want to see three incomplete tasks sitting there.

Use case two is when you only want one instance of the task in play at a time.

Let's say you're catching up on email.

If you don't do it today, you'll do it tomorrow, and that's fine.

You don't need a pile of overdue "process inbox" tasks stacking up.

You just need one, and when it's done, the next one gets created.

Most people come to me thinking they want the first type when they actually want the second.

So before building anything, figure out which one applies to you.

Setting Up Type One: Schedule-Based Recurring Tasks

The obvious starting point is Notion's built-in database templates.

You can create a template called "process email inbox," set it to repeat every weekday, and it looks like it works.

And it does work, sort of.

The problem shows up the moment you try to assign a due date.

You can only assign today as the due date.

That's it.

You can't say "create this task today, but make it due tomorrow."

That might sound like a small thing, but it's actually a dealbreaker for how I work.

At the end of every day, before I close my laptop, I schedule and organize the next day.

I mean, that's the whole point of the system.

If I can't create tasks today that are due tomorrow, the template method is basically useless for me.

So I don't use it.

I wouldn't recommend it to anyone who cares about planning ahead.

What I use instead is Notion Automations.

Open up your automation panel and set the trigger to a time-based schedule.

You can choose daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly, with full control over which specific days it fires.

So if I want a task created every weekday but due the following day, I set the trigger to fire Sunday through Thursday.

Because a task created on Sunday should be due Monday, a task created on Thursday should be due Friday, and so on.

Then in the automation action, instead of assigning a static date, I use a custom formula.

The formula is dateTriggered.dateAdd(1, 'days').

That basically takes the date the automation fired and adds one day to it.

Simple, but this is what makes it actually useful for planning.

Now, one extra thing I always add is a recurring checkbox property in the task database, and I set it to checked by default inside the automation.

This might seem unnecessary, but I've seen it come up constantly with clients.

A lot of people don't want their main task views cluttered with recurring tasks.

They want to see their project work front and center, and have recurring tasks filtered into their own view.

The checkbox makes that filtering possible.

You can also use it to set default statuses, assign owners, or tag recurring tasks however your system needs.

Bear in mind, without that checkbox, you'd have to manually filter by task name every time, which gets messy fast.

So the end result of this setup: a new task gets created automatically on the right days, due on the right date, tagged as recurring, with whatever default status you want.

That's type one.

It doesn't care what happened to last week's tasks.

It just keeps creating.

Setting Up Type Two: Creation After Completion

This one is more interesting, and honestly, more useful for a lot of people.

The idea is simple: you don't get a new task until you finish the current one.

So instead of a time-based trigger, the automation trigger is a status change.

Specifically, when the status of a task is set to "complete," and the task name contains "process email inbox."

Both conditions matter.

The status change catches the event.

The task name condition makes sure this automation only fires for the right task, not every task you ever complete.

Now, the formula for the due date gets a little more interesting here.

Because with type two, you don't know when someone is going to complete the task.

They might complete it on a Tuesday.

They might complete it on a Saturday.

So you can't just say "due tomorrow" and call it done.

Well, actually you can, if that's what you want.

Let's say I have three different recurring patterns in play:

1. Due tomorrow (always, regardless of when it was completed)
2. Due next Friday (always the coming Friday, even if I completed it on a Wednesday)
3. Due the first of next month (always the first day of the following month)

Each of these needs its own formula.

The "due tomorrow" formula is easy: take today's date, add one day.

The "next Friday" and "first of next month" formulas are more complex.

I mean, they're doable, but I'm not going to walk through the full logic here.

The formulas are in the description of the video.

And honestly, if you need a different formula entirely, just ask Notion AI or any AI assistant what you want in plain English.

"Give me a formula that returns the first day of next month."

It'll write it for you.

You paste it in.

That's basically the whole workflow now.

So once this is all set up, let's say today is November 21st and I complete a task.

Three new tasks get created automatically.

The "due tomorrow" one lands on November 22nd.

The "next Friday" one lands on November 28th.

The "first of next month" one lands on December 1st.

All correct.

All automatic.

No manual entry.

Bear in mind, this type two setup means if you complete a task on a weird day, the due date adjusts accordingly.

That's the whole point.

It's flexible in a way that a fixed schedule can't be.

The tradeoff is you lose the historical record.

You won't see a stack of incomplete tasks from the days you skipped.

You just get one task at a time, always reflecting where you are right now.

For most solo operators and small teams, type two is probably what you actually want.

For managers tracking team completion rates, type one gives you the visibility you need.

In my opinion, the right answer is almost always determined by whether accountability or flexibility matters more in that specific context.

Some clients I've worked with actually run both in parallel for different types of recurring work.

Project check-ins on a fixed schedule.

Personal habits on completion-based triggers.

That works well too.

The only thing that's going to trip you up is not deciding upfront which type you need before you build.

Because the trigger structure is completely different, and retrofitting one into the other is more work than just starting over.

So start there.

Decide the type.

Then build the automation.

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