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Daily schedule adapted to your actual sleep/awake hours

igorrs says:
If you go to bed late and still completes tasks after midnight, you'll probably wish to visualize the tasks that are due on your "actual" day (which may go on until 2am, for example), so as to easily plan your daily activities and keep track of them during all of your active hours.

I accomplish that with a smart list called Daily Schedule, created from this search:
dueBefore:3am AND NOT (due:tomorrow AND dueBefore:12:01am)

When I wake up, that smart list will present me with all the tasks that are overdue, due today, or due tomorrow at a specific time before 3am. That should be my actual daily schedule.

To customize it, you can replace 3am with any time when you are usually already sleeping.


This smart list takes advantage of how RTM interprets "3am" in the search: it's always in the future. So, if you wake up at 10am, for example, you'll see tasks that are due before 3am on the next day. If you keep accomplishing stuff until 2am, Daily Schedule will still be showing tasks that are due before 3am (now on the same day!), so you always see the right thing. :)

The exclusion of the tasks that are "due:tomorrow AND dueBefore:12:01am" is a necessary hack that avoids showing tasks that are due on the next day without a due time. For searches, RTM considers these tasks to be due at 12am.

So, if you only searched for dueBefore:3am, visualizing the list in the afternoon (for example) would also show all tasks that are due tomorrow with no due time, which would certainly be unwanted.
After midnight, however, these tasks with no due time will obviously show up (as they become due today). This is unavoidable with the currently available search features, but I don't particularly dislike it (indeed, it makes sense for a lot of tasks).

In any case, the Daily Schedule smart list is still much more useful than the alternatives I have considered to solve the same problem. :)
Posted at 4:25am on March 12, 2014
emily (Remember The Milk) says:
Hi igorrs,

This is a really handy tip for those of us who work unusual hours. :)

You're this week's Tips & Tricks Tuesday winner, and we've added a free year of Pro to your Remember The Milk account. :) Thanks for sharing your tip!
Posted 9 years ago
mosius says:
Fantastic tip. Have you noticed that it works on the computer, but not on the phone? Is that just me?
Posted 7 years ago
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