ClickUp Recurring Task Automation to Save Time

Table of Contents

Why recurring tasks actually matter

If I don’t set recurring tasks in ClickUp, things fall apart. Bills that are supposed to be paid monthly? Forgotten. Updating tags in my database? Never happens. Even taking out the recycling gets skipped unless I see that little green task pop back into my ClickUp each week. The idea is pretty simple: you create one task, you tell it how often it should regenerate, and you walk away. But in real life that never feels as smooth as ClickUp’s marketing page makes it sound 🙂

The first time I tried this I thought I had it dialed in. I set a task for “Change air filters” that should recur every three months. On paper, perfect. In execution, the task reappeared one day late, then kept shifting further out, like some kind of calendar drift. I dug through settings, and it turned out the default was “due date repeats after completion,” which means if you check it off even one day late, the next due date also shifts a day late. That explains why after a year it was nowhere near the original schedule.

For a beginner, this is the main thing to know: there are multiple types of recurrence in ClickUp. Some repeat based on completion date and some ignore completion and just drop a fresh copy on the calendar regardless. If you’ve ever wondered why everything slowly drifts off track, this is the culprit.

Setting up recurring tasks correctly

Go into a task, click the three dots at the top right, and you’ll see “Set recurring.” If you’re new to ClickUp, this is hidden deeper than you’d expect. When you set it, you have choices like “repeat every week” or “repeat on completion.”

Here’s the mental model that helped me. If it’s something like watering plants, you probably want it to repeat after completion, because sometimes you do it early or late and you want the next round to adjust. If it’s something like paying rent, you want it to be on a fixed day, whether or not you already did it. Otherwise you end up with rent day gradually creeping into nonsense territory.

There’s also the choice between whether the same task repeats or a new duplicate is made each time. ClickUp lets you regenerate the exact same task or create a brand new one. For filing invoices, I prefer fresh tasks, because I want an archived record of each month as a separate task. For things like my laundry reminder, I just use the same task reset each week so it doesn’t clutter my board.

Where recurring settings go wrong

The bug I ran into last month: recurring tasks set to “create new task” sometimes miss their parent list. I’d click complete, expecting the duplicate to drop in the same list, but it went missing. Turns out ClickUp lets you pick destination list separately in the recurring menu. If you don’t explicitly tell it, it sometimes saves to inbox, which is basically a black hole in my setup.

Let’s say you create a table like this to check your intended settings:

Whenever something feels off, rebuild that list in real life. It’s saved me from hunting through ten lists looking for a stray task.

Mixing automations with recurring tasks

This one is both exciting and dangerous. You can combine ClickUp’s simple recurring feature with Automations, like “When task is created, assign to X person” or “When task moved to Done, update status Y.” If you already have 20 automations running, expect at least one unexpected side effect 😛

Example: I had recurring tasks for monthly budget review. When they regenerated, an automation instantly assigned them to someone else in my workspace, because I had a dragnet automation that said “All finance tasks assign to finance role.” That meant I never saw my own recurring task. Took me weeks to notice that the work had been secretly assigned away.

The lesson here is to test combinations carefully. If you create a recurring task while an automation rule is active, watch what happens after the first cycle. Sometimes they trigger workflows you forgot existed.

Recurring subtasks and checklist tricks

Another mistake I made was trying to recur subtasks. If you set a subtask to recur, it doesn’t always follow the parent. You end up with duplicates buried three levels down. Instead, I use checklists inside the main recurring task. Checklists reset perfectly and don’t clutter your workspace.

So a recurring task “Deep clean kitchen” has checklist items: wipe fridge, mop floor, empty pantry. The main task resets weekly. I don’t care if the checklist history is gone, because the task completion log itself shows the recurring history.

By contrast, recurring subtasks create a mess because each subtask becomes its own timeline. Beginners often think subtasks and checklists are the same — they’re not. Subtasks act like full child tasks with dates and statuses, while checklists are just text to-do items inside the card.

How reminders intersect with recurring tasks

I underestimated reminders. ClickUp gives you the option of personal reminders that are separate from tasks. If you try to fall back on reminders instead of recurring tasks, you’ll find they don’t carry notes, files, or attachments. So if you think you’ll add a PDF to your monthly recurring report, a reminder won’t cut it. Stick with full recurring tasks for anything heavier than “take out trash.”

What I tested: set a recurring reminder for weekly training, versus a recurring task for the same event. Reminders just ping me once and auto-clear. Recurring tasks stay alive until I actually click complete, which is a huge difference. If you snooze a reminder endlessly, it just becomes clutter. But a task will sit there taunting you until you handle it.

Using recurring templates as a fallback

ClickUp has templates, and if recurring breaks for some mysterious reason — which has happened to me more than once, trust me ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ — then templates are your manual fallback. I keep a few templates saved for “quarterly reporting” and “new client onboarding.” If my recurring setup glitches, I just copy from template and pretend automation doesn’t exist for that week.

Templates also avoid the sliding due date problem, because every time you spawn the task it starts fresh. It’s slower if you want perfect automation, but if your automation dies (and mine always seems to around update season), templates are your safety net.

When to skip recurring tasks entirely

Not everything should be recurring. I used to automate literally everything and ended up overwhelmed. At some point I had tasks regenerating faster than I could close them, which turned my dashboard into a graveyard of overdue copies. The psychology is simple: you start ignoring them. That’s worse than not tracking them at all.

My new rule is only use recurring for things that are truly cyclical and matter if missed. Trash day yes. Writing daily journaling task no — if I want to journal, I’ll just open a doc. Having a daily recurring journal task only made me feel guilty when I skipped it.

The funniest part is, most of what I skip now were the things I thought recurring would “help me build a habit.” Nope. It just became a recurring guilt bomb. So now I reserve it for the ugly but necessary chores like rent, taxes, and my yearly review with the accountant.

The small fixes you need to remember

Most of my recurring setups only worked once I remembered these fixes:
– Always double check which recurrence type is active
– Pick whether you want a fresh task or the same one
– Explicitly set the destination list
– Watch out for automations intercepting new tasks
– Use checklists instead of subtasks if repetition is light
– Don’t rely on reminders if you need file attachments

If you keep those in the back of your head, at least you won’t end up with my kind of chaotic project boards where recycling day shows up under Finance and the quarterly tax prep reminds my roommate instead of me

For anyone really stuck, there are user discussion threads and support pages on clickup.com that show specific setups people use, though sometimes even those examples don’t match what happens in your own workspace. It’s less about having the perfect system and more about being ready for when it stops working suddenly, which it eventually does 🙂