How to deal with notes in repeating tasks

In Everdo, repeating tasks are implemented by cloning from a template. This is in principle not a bad idea, and I can understand why this can be useful - you can make changes to your clone and add notes to it that are only relevant for the current repetition, without affecting the template.

However, more often than not, I actually want to change the note of the template. For instance, if the notes contain checklists or other instructions on how to do something, and you notice that some steps or instructions need to be changed or updated to adapt to a new situtaion. Usually you want that these changed instructions appear in the future repetition as well. So you 1) need to remember that you need to do this in the template, not in the clone, and 2) you need to find the clone - I don’t see a simple way to jump to the template without running a search for the title of the task, am I overlooking something here?

Another small problem is that if the notes (instructions) are lengthy and the frequency is high, then the database size will increase unnecessarily because of all the duplicated notes. Maybe there should be an option to share the notes between task and template?

I can work with the current implementation, but I see some room for improvement. See also The way Repeating tasks work.

You observations are correct, there is no automatic way to update a template right now. I agree that it would be an improvement.

Personally I do have repeating items that require extensive notes. I don’t try to manage these notes in Everdo though. I just link a corresponding text file in my notes folder where I collect all reference documents.
For smaller checklists I do put those in the repeating item itself and update the template by manual copying when needed.

Thanks for the quick response. Keeping larger checklists and instructions outside of Everdo is my current solution as well. Another reason why I hope using links like obsidian://... will work in the next release. (Honestly, try out Obsidian - it’s so much better than raw text files for such purposes!)

The URL schema issue is fixed in the upcoming release (1.5.7).

I’ve heard good things about Obsidian, but I like to use a single tool (VS Code) for all my text editing needs, including notes.

1 Like

Great news, thank you!

I like VS Code, too. Actually, that’s why I immediate liked Obsidian, because it is conceptually very similar to VS Code (both are Electron apps with command pallette, plugin system etc.) But Obsidian is more than editing text, it is more about linking (all your notes, ideas, archived articles into one “vault” of knowledge). The good thing is that you can still edit notes from Obsidian with VS Code and vice versa, since it’s all in local (Markdown) text files. And now I can even link from Everdo to Obsidian.

A dedicated knowledge management tool may not be needed by everyone. But for people in academia or other knowledge workers it is very useful. And the older I get, the more I feel the need. On the one hand, I’m getting more forgetful, on the other hand, the amount of obligations, work experience, ideas and stuff I still want to learn steadily increases. Also, in this information age, the need for such tools steadily increases for everyone. That’s probably the reason why tools like Roam or Obsidian are currently booming. Without such a tool, I would be lost. The same is true for task management, so I believe demand for tools like Everdo will increase as well.