Part 3 · Status and Repeats
Every habit has one of four statuses, set in the When section of its form:
- Active — you’re working on it now.
- Scheduled — it starts on a date you pick, and turns active when that day arrives.
- Paused — set aside for now.
- Archived — finished with, kept for reference. Archived habits can’t log effort.
On the Mac these are a row of buttons; on iPhone they’re a menu.
Scheduled adds Starts, a date. Turn on Include Time to start at a set time as well; without one, the habit starts at the default time in Settings › Schedules. Alert me when it starts sends a notification at that moment.
You can also schedule from the list: right-click a habit and choose Schedule…, or Set Status for any of the four. On the Mac, dragging habits onto a status in the sidebar sets it too.
Repeats
Section titled “Repeats”By default an active habit is simply due every day. To see it less often, give it a repeat.
The sheet takes daily, weekly, monthly or yearly, how many of those to wait, and — for weekly and monthly — which days. “Every 2 weeks on Monday” is a normal thing to set. A repeat can be set while creating a habit or at any time after.
The same sheet sets whether the habit comes back at a time of day (Include Time) and whether it alerts you. In the habit’s form, that time is the Comes back at row.
How the rescheduling works: log effort on a repeating habit, and once that day is over it books itself for its next date and shows as Scheduled. Until then it stays where it is, so a habit you finish in the morning doesn’t vanish from today.
To pass over one occurrence, open Schedule… on the habit and choose Skip to its next date.
If you move that date yourself, or set the habit back to Active, it stays as you left it — the app won’t overwrite your choice. Changing the repeat rule recalculates the next date once.
Active and Scheduled
Section titled “Active and Scheduled”Active opens with what’s left to do today. Below it, Later Today holds habits scheduled to start later today (you can log effort on them early), and Effort holds what you’ve already done, dimmed.
In Scheduled, habits are grouped by day, e.g. “In 3 days (Monday, September 21)”. Under a day, Repeating (N)… lists the repeating habits due to come back that day. Under tomorrow, Next Active (N)… lists your active habits that don’t repeat, since those are due again every day.
Once you’ve logged effort on anything today, Effort for Today appears near the top of the sidebar, with everything you worked on.