Part 8 · Apple Reminders

Excellence can show your Apple Reminders alongside your habits. They stay in Apple Reminders; Excellence reads them and writes back only what you change. Anything Excellence adds to a reminder (efforts, notes, a goal) is kept in Excellence and syncs through iCloud like your habits.

If you turned access down earlier, the same screen has Open Settings.

The Reminders section

Under All Reminders, the sidebar’s Reminders section has two more rows:

Deadlines — open reminders with a due date, soonest first, under a heading for each day, like “Friday, October 23 (in 5 days)”. A reminder still waiting on its start date isn’t here yet. The row shows only while something is due.
Logbook — completed reminders, newest first, under the day you finished them. Right-click one › Mark as Incomplete to bring it back.

Then come your lists. A ”/” in a list’s name nests it, so “Work/Projects” sits inside “Work”. Right-click a list for New List Inside…, Rename…, Color, Hide List and Delete…. Hidden lists move to Hidden Lists, where they can be unhidden.

A list’s view has New Reminder (+), with a title, list, notes, tags, start and due dates, and a link.

Reminders among your habits

Reminders also show in All, Active, Scheduled, Paused, the link groups and Effort for Today. Their circle wears the list’s color, and the line under the title names the list.

A reminder’s status comes from Apple Reminders, never set by hand:

Scheduled — its start date is in the future.
Paused — it carries one of your pausing tags, set in Settings › Reminders.
Active — everything else.

Completed reminders leave your habit lists for the Logbook. A reminder falls under a context when one of its tags, or its list’s name, is spelled the same as the context (Part 2), and joins a link group through its link (Part 5).

In Scheduled, a day where reminders are due has a Deadlines button, below Repeating, that lists them.

Excellence asks what you did:

Log Effort works just as on a habit. The reminder moves under Effort for Today and stays open in Apple Reminders, for work that takes more than one day.
Mark as Complete finishes it in Apple Reminders, and it moves to the Logbook.

Right-click a reminder for Log Effort with Note…, Log Progress… for a goal, Complete Reminder…, Move to List, Open in Reminders, and Show Details…. The details sheet holds the reminder’s efforts, a Goal (Part 7) and Notes, all kept in Excellence. On iPhone, tap a reminder for its details. Swipe it right to log effort, or left to complete it.

Reminders and habits together

In Excellence › Habit, in a reminder’s details, files it under a habit.
A habit’s form lists its reminders under Reminders. Click one to edit it, or Detach to unfile it. Add Reminder makes a new reminder, already filed under the habit. On iPhone, the reminder opens inside the habit’s sheet, with Cancel to go back.
Make Habit… turns a reminder into a habit. Its efforts, notes and goal move over, and the reminder is deleted.
Copy to Reminders, on a habit, puts a copy of it in Apple Reminders. The copy doesn’t stay in sync.

On the Mac, you can drag reminders onto Active, Scheduled or Paused in the sidebar; the app asks how to change the reminder to match.

A repeating reminder is shown for reference only, under Repeating · View Only. Excellence leaves its repeat to Apple Reminders, so it can’t log effort or take notes. Make Habit… turns it into a repeating habit with its repeat filled in.

If a reminder Excellence kept notes or efforts for disappears from Apple Reminders, Needs Attention appears in the sidebar. From there you can attach the data to another reminder or delete it.

Finishing up

That’s the tour.

An archived habit keeps its notes, efforts and goal, out of the way.

Anything unclear, or something you’d want the app to do, write to hello@danielhaven.com.