Rhythms & recurrence
Recura tasks don’t have due dates; they have rhythms. The distinction matters because a rhythm rolls with your life instead of piling up.
The two clocks
Every repeating rhythm follows one of two clocks:
| Sliding | Anchored | |
|---|---|---|
| Example | ”every 11 days" | "Tuesdays” |
| Next occurrence counts from | when you last did it | the calendar |
| Doing it late | pushes the whole cycle | doesn’t move next Tuesday |
| Urgency | ramps gradually across the cycle | snaps high on the day |
Pick sliding when the task cares about elapsed time (watering, cleaning). Pick anchored when the world fixes the date (trash pickup, a class).
Modifiers
Any rhythm can carry modifiers, and they compose:
- Active months — “Saturdays, April through October.” Out of season the task simply sleeps; no fake overdue pile in January.
- For N times — a bounded run: “daily × 21.” The count advances on every issued day (skips included — a run is 21 scheduled days, not 21 achievements) and the task retires itself at the end.
- Until a date — nothing scheduled past it.
- Starts when a linked task completes — the task lies dormant, invisible, until its prerequisite is actually done, then launches its run the next day.
Composition: the overseeding example
The lawn-care starter pack chains all four shapes together:
Fall renovation (annual) → overseed (one-shot, starts when the renovation is done) → water new seed (daily × 21, starts when the overseeding is done).
Nothing here has a date you chose. The annual marker starts the cascade whenever you actually do it; everything downstream schedules itself off reality.
Priority, not deadlines
Pending tasks carry a priority that grows relative to their own cadence — an every-3-days task two days late is urgent; a quarterly task two days late barely moved. Today sorts by that pressure, so the list starts with what actually needs you. There are no red badges and nothing shouts.