Picture this. It’s summer. Friday afternoon. You’ve set up rules in My tasks that move everything to the right section. Your friends are coming over to play Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 and eat pizza rolls. You’ve just checked off your last few recurring tasks. Your My tasks list is immaculate. Life is a dream. The year is 2025.
But suddenly the dream starts to fade, and the Recently assigned section at the top of your My tasks is full again. Nothing to worry about, you think. You’ve built the rules, you’ve tested the flow. But the tasks are piling up. You know they should move, but nothing’s happening. The beautiful system you handcrafted with care? It doesn’t apply to recurring tasks.
They just appear — silently, stubbornly — in Recently assigned. Hovering there, like some sort of work management sleep paralysis demon.
Okay, I’ve taken the metaphor as far as I can. Recurring tasks in My tasks don’t work like you might expect. A trigger of Task added to My tasks or Task moved to section: Recently assigned won’t work, because under the hood the task hasn’t reeeeally been assigned to you again, and it hasn’t reeeeally been moved to the Recently assigned section — it’s been duplicated from the old task.
Okay. I get it. I’m not happy about it but I get it.
So on the one hand, you’ve got regular tasks moving neatly through your Rube-Goldberg machine of rules. On the other, a bunch of recurring tasks clogging up the Recently assigned section like its their full-time job. I use Asana every day. I couldn’t imagine working without it. I think My tasks is genius. But drag and drop a recurring task to the correct section myself? Chance would be a fine thing.
But not to worry. A manual rule trigger and AI Studio will save the day. If you’ve read this far, it’s fair to presume that you’ve already got some kind of rules set up to move tasks to the correct My tasks sections based on their due dates. If so, you’re in luck. You won’t have to reinvent the wheel. Your existing sections — and even your AI-powered rules — can stay put. You can just re-use the same prompt for the manual rule.
Here’s how it will work:
- Create a manually triggered rule, we’ll call it Banish recurring tasks. That’s the trigger taken care of.
- Remove the condition card. We don’t need it.
- For the action, use Move task to a certain section: Use AI.
That’s the mechanics all sorted. Now, the real work is done in the guidance you provide to AI Studio. I’ll be very generous, and share my actual real-life prompt with you here:
Goal: To move tasks from the Recently assigned section to the correct My tasks section based on their due dates (and start dates where relevant).
Context: Recurring tasks and newly assigned tasks always land in the section “Recently assigned”. Your job is to triage these tasks when the rule is run. If no due date is set, leave the task where it is.
How to determine the correct section to move tasks to:
If the due date of the task is today, based on the current date, move the task to the Do today section.
If the due date of the task is tomorrow, based on the current date, move the task to the Due tomorrow section.
If the start date of the task is within 5 days of the current date, move the task to the Start date this week section.
If the due date of the task is within 5 days of the current date, move the task to the Upcoming (within 5 days) section.
When a task has a start date and a due date, if there is any doubt about which section to move the task to, the due date takes precedence.
If the due date of the task is more than 5 days from the current date, move the task to the Later (5 days +) section.
If the due date of the task has already passed, and the task is already overdue, move the task to the
Overdue
section.
With this setup, you can multi-select a bunch of stubborn recurring tasks and manually trigger your rule.
And they’re gone. You’ve banished them to their respective sections with only a couple of clicks.
If your beautifully crafted rules for regular tasks are a Rube-Goldberg machine, then this is more of a sledgehammer.
So let the recurring tasks pile up. Let them lurk in Recently assigned like they’re trying to haunt your to-do list. At the end of the week, you manually trigger the rule and they’re gone — each one sent exactly where it belongs. A dream.
Okay, not exactly a dream. It’s an inelegant workaround. But if I can select a bunch of unruly recurring tasks, press a button once a week, and watch them sort themselves out? That’s good enough for me.
And how do you remember to do this every week? Well… create a recurring task, I guess.
